En als men weet dat daar een grote magrebijnse bevolking woont kan men denken dat het door de "religion of peace" is ingegeven.
On eve of Jewish Passover, cemetery desecrated in northern French city
Original article: www.ejpress.org/article/15633
AFP Updated: 01/Apr/2007 14:58
LILLE (AFP)---More than 50 tombstones were damaged in an attack at the weekend on a Jewish cemetery in the northern French city of Lille on the eve of the Jewish Passover holiday.
The Lille mayor’s office said it was "shocked" and "disgusted" by the
desecration of 53 tombstones overnight Saturday to Sunday in the Lille-Sud cemetery.
No inscriptions were found on the tombstones, which were tilted and bent as a result of the desecration.
Lille’s Mayor, Martine Aubry, who denounced the attack as a “hateful and anti-Semitic act”, went to the cemetery Sunday morning.
“I have a feeling of fright and sadness. When you see this, it is unspeakable,” Franck Hanoh, a member of the Jewish community in Lille, said Sunday in the cemetery. His great-uncle’s tombostone was also damaged.
“This is a symbol of cowardice and anti-Semitism,” he added.
New French Interior Minister Francois Baroin issued a statement condemning the attack and pledging to mobilise "all means necessary to quickly find the perpetrators of these intolerable acts".
Increase in anti-Semitic attacks
CRIF, the umbrella group of French Jewish secular organisations, condemned the “odious act” and asked the French authorities to use all means to arrest the perpetrators and condemn them to “exemplary penalties”.
Last February, CRIF had reported a 45 percent increase in anti-Semitic attacks in France between 2005
and 2006.
The overall number of anti-Semitic acts -- both physical violence and
vandalism -- rose 40 percent from 134 to 213, while anti-Semitic insults rose 71 percent, from 48 to 82.
According to CRIF, anti-Semitic acts have been on the rise in France
since 2000, year of the second Palestinian uprising which is supported by many in France’s Muslim community, and have since tended to rise and fall in line with developments in the Middle East.
France has one of the biggest Jewish communities in the world, estimated at up to 600,000 people.