- 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.
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- 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.
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- 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.
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- 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.
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- 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.
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- 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.
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- 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.
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- 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.
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- In Belgium, authorities blamed the increased tensions
in the Middle East for the attack on the synagogue in the Anderlecht district
of Brussels.
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- "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.
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- 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.
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- 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.
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- 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."
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- 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.
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- 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.
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- 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.
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- "If you talk long enough about killing Jews,"
said Rabbi Sacks, "one day it will happen, God forbid."
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