LONDON — A wave of anti-Jewish attacks —
ranging from hate mail and graffiti to stonings, shotgun blasts, gasoline bombs
and synagogue bombings — has swept Europe from Britain to Ukraine as the
conflict between Israelis and Palestinians worsens in the Middle
East.
A streak of anti-Semitism, never far
beneath the surface of the Continent since World War II, re-erupted with the
latest Palestinian "intifada," or uprising, in September 2000 and has taken a
particularly ugly turn with Israel's campaign against Palestinian territories
that started March 29.
In recent days, one
synagogue in Marseille, France, has been doused in gasoline and burned to the
ground; another in Lyon, France, was damaged in a car attack; a third, in
Brussels, was firebombed; and a fourth, in Kiev, was attacked by 50 youths
chanting, "Kill the Jews," who then beat up a rabbi. An unidentified assailant
hurled a stone through the window of another synagogue in southern Ukraine
yesterday.
In Britain, which takes pride in a
"multicultural" society, police have logged at least 15 anti-Jewish episodes
this month, including eight physical assaults, synagogues daubed with racist
slogans and hate mail sent to prominent figures among the nation's 300,000
Jews.
The attacks prompted Jonathan Sacks,
Britain's chief rabbi, to say that "anti-Semitism is on the rise in Europe as a
whole." He blamed Islamic extremists for "whipping up" sentiment against Jews in
Britain and throughout the Continent.
But it is
in France, where some 700,000 Jews and 4 million Muslims uneasily coexist, that
the problem is particularly acute. The French Interior Ministry has recorded
nearly 360 crimes against Jews and Jewish institutions in April alone,
coinciding with the escalating violence between Israelis and
Palestinians.
The destruction of the synagogue
at Marseille was the sixth attack on a Jewish religious site in France in less
than a week. In Lyon, 15 masked assailants smashed two cars into a synagogue and
set it on fire. Other arsonists tried to set fire to a synagogue in Strasbourg,
but the damage was minimal.
There were also
attacks on Jewish citizens. A man opened fire on a kosher butcher's shop in a
village near Toulouse. A Jewish school at Sarcelles, near Paris, was ransacked.
Youths stoned one Jewish school bus and set fire to two others in Paris, and a
gang waded into a team of Jewish soccer players, beating them with iron
bars.
In Belgium, authorities blamed the
increased tensions in the Middle East for the attack on the synagogue in the
Anderlecht district of Brussels.
"There is
really a climate of hostility, which is a result of the Israeli-Palestinian
conflict being transposed into the most troubled district of our capital," said
the local mayor, Jacques Simonet.
With one eye
on the growing anti-Jewish violence and another on the 113th anniversary of
Adolf Hitler's birthday April 20, the Simon Wiesenthal Center, which keeps track
of neo-Nazi activities around the world, issued a travel advisory urging Jews to
exercise "extreme caution" in traveling to France and
Belgium.
In a telling reminder of the
Holocaust, a synagogue in the German town of Herford was daubed with the words
"Six million were not enough" — a reference to the 6 million Jews who died at
the hands of Nazis during World War II.
The war
did not eliminate anti-Jewish sentiment. Less than a year ago, a survey showed
that 24 percent of all Austrians would "prefer" to live in a country without
Jews. And even in supposedly neutral Switzerland, a survey reported by the BBC
"indicates that 16 percent of Swiss people are fundamentally anti-Semitic, while
60 percent have anti-Semitic views."
In
Lithuania, Jewish leaders on Friday reported a rise in anti-Semitism that they
believe is related to the prospects that property seized from Jews before World
War II will be returned to its original owners. Prime Minister Algirdas
Brazauskas asked the international Jewish community on Tuesday to select
representatives to open talks with the government on the issue of property
restitution, Agence France-Presse reported. The extremist Freedom Union party
then accused the government of "groveling to Jews," while another group ripped
up an Israeli flag at a protest the following
day.
Meanwhile in France, 70 persons have been
questioned and 16 jailed in the latest attacks on Jews and Jewish interests —
violence that French authorities say has increased significantly since the
September 11 terrorist attacks on New York and
Washington.
Even in Britain, attacks against
Jews totaled 310 last year and 32 so far this year. One was an assault on a
Jewish theological student, David Myers. He was reading a book of Psalms aboard
a London bus when he was stabbed 27 times.
"If
you talk long enough about killing Jews," said Rabbi Sacks, "one day it will
happen, God forbid."