A suspected anti-Semitic attack last week on a 23-year-old woman and her child on a suburban Paris train has created public outrage in France and sparked a debate about tolerance and how to deal with racist attacks.
President Jacques Chirac expressed his “dread” about the event and said yesterday that for the first time sexual and racial crimes will not be included in his annual Bastille Day list of presidential pardons, to be issued tomorrow.
Prime Minister Jean-Pierre Raffarin also condemned the attack. “Anti-Semitism is a disgrace,” he said. “We want to fight against this intolerable form of racism.” Mr. Raffarin said the attack revealed “a sickness” in French society.
But investigators yesterday expressed doubts about the attack.
Surveillance cameras at the subway station where the attackers reportedly left the train do not show a gang of young men fleeing, and none of the 20 bystanders thought to have witnessed the attack has stepped forward.
Initial reports said a group of six young men attacked the woman and her child, chopping off her hair and scribbling swastikas on her stomach, while other passengers on the train watched.
The young men reportedly attacked the woman and her child in the mistaken belief that they were Jewish.
Despite the doubts, many said the attack focused new attention on racial and religious strains in France, especially given France’s large and growing Muslim minority.
“France has a serious problem,” said David Twersky, director of international affairs with the American Jewish Congress. “A certain percentage of Arabs and Muslims continues to act out against Jews.”
Mr. Twersky said the French government has been “in denial” for years about the depth of anti-Semitic feelings. He said the attack shows “how bad the situation in France is.”
The president of the French Council on the Muslim Culture, Dalil Boubakeur, called the attack an “abominable aggression.”
France has the largest Jewish and Muslim communities in Western Europe, counting about 600,000 Jews and 5 million Muslims. Both groups continue to have a strong impact on French society.
France has approved a law banning the wearing of Muslim head scarves in public schools, which has caused tension in the Muslim community.
A report on anti-Semitism in the European Union issued last year says the Jewish community is generally well-respected and socially assimilated. However, the French Interior Ministry Friday reported rising numbers of anti-Jewish as well as anti-Muslim acts in the first six months of this year.
The EU report found French anti-Semitic sentiment has been on the rise with the success of the far-right National Front Party of Jean-Marie Le Pen in recent years and questioning in the 1990s of the Holocaust.
The number of anti-Semitic criminal offenses also rose dramatically with the upsurge of Israeli-Palestinian violence. Between September 2000 and January 2002, 405 anti-Semitic incidents were documented.
Please read our comment policy before commenting.