New anti-Semitic graffiti has been found in and around Paris in two separate incidents on February 19 and 21 as France struggles to find answers to its anti-Semitism crisis, JNS reported on Monday.
Several inscriptions, featuring swastikas and the words “Death to the Jews” and ‘’Dirty Jew,’’ were discovered in the 14th district of Paris on Thursday.
Olivia Polski, Deputy Mayor of the 14th district, took to Twitter to denounce attacks against France’s Jewish community. Polski described the inscriptions as an expression of “intolerable and unbearable hate.” Police have opened an investigation for “racial hatred.”
In a separate incident on Tuesday last week, police in the city of Bry-sur-Marne, near Paris, discovered an anti-Semitic graffiti painted in black on the wall of a synagogue. The tag was signed by LDNA, the “African Black Defense League.’’
The same day, tens of thousands of people marched in the streets across France in protest against an alarming increase in the number of anti-Semitic attacks in the country. Recent incidents have included a Jewish cemetery being desecrated with swastikas and Jewish philosopher Alain Finkielkraut being subjected to a torrent of hate speech.
In Paris, former presidents Francois Hollande and Nicolas Sarkozy participated in a rally that was led by Prime Minister Edouard Philippe. President Emanuel Macron and parliamentary leaders attended a vigil at the Shoah Memorial in the French capital.
In recent days, police discovered more anti-Semitic inscriptions in Paris. Portraits of Holocaust survivor Simone Veil were stained with swastikas, and a bagel shop had the German word “Juden” sprayed on its front window.
On Wednesday, as he addressed the annual dinner of CRIF, the umbrella representative group of the Jewish community in France, Macron said his country will adopt the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) definition of anti-Semitism to combat rising levels of anti-Jewish hate.
Macron said: “For the first time in many years, antisemitism is killing people again in France.” He vowed that, in response, the country would “draw new red lines.”
Alarming figures released this month by the French government revealed that the number of anti-Semitic acts in the country soared in 2018, jumping a whopping 74% compared to the previous year.
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