Paris
The Wiesenthal Center urged French Interior Minister, Nicolas Sarkozy, "to take whatever measures necessary to restrain the mayors of mixed Moslem-Jewish municipalities from exacerbating tensions that lead to antisemitic violence and from exercises in Holocaust denial that violate French law."

In a letter to the Minister, the Center’s Director for International Liaison, Dr. Shimon Samuels, stated that: "Despite your firm statements and orders to the Police, the series of antisemitic attacks on Jewish schools and synagogues in Greater Paris has become increasingly violent over the past three weeks."

Samuels gave such examples as, "the 10 July attack by 50 metal bar- wielding young Arabs and Africans on the rue de Flandres Jewish school (19th Arrondissement of Paris), left three teen-agers wounded. This week, the desecration of the Saint Denis synagogue, the profanation of its Holy Torah scrolls and the scrawled ´Jews = Death´ is redolent of a medieval pogrom, tuned to coincide with the period of Jewish mourning for the destruction of the Temple."

The Center noted that: "Both of these incidents can be directly correlated with political events of the local town hall that input the Middle East conflict in a language that incites Arab against Jew. A June seminar funded by Saint Denis, featured the Mayor, Palestinian propagandists and a young French Arabs who had returned from a municipally financed tour to Jenin and Ramallah."

The protest continued: "More horrifying, a Nanterre high-school trip to Auschwitz returned with a stone destined for the Drancy Memorial. The local town-hall now, however, intends to send a delegation to present this stone, impregnated with the ashes of Jewish Holocaust victims, to a memorial in Jenin."

Samuels concluded: "Such one-sided political grandstanding undermines any hope for Middle East peace, betrays the responsibility of France to protect all its citizens and will, inevitably, provoke further violence on French soil."

For further information, please contact Dr. Samuels at +33.609.77.01.58. (© Copyright 2003, Simon Wiesenthal Center 07/31/03)