France Tackles Tide of Anti-semitism

The French interior minister, Nicolas Sarkozy, attended a prayer service at a Paris synagogue yesterday marking the recent attacks on a liberal rabbi and the fear that anti-semitism may once more be on the rise in France.

He said he was "absolutely determined" to find those responsible for Friday's stabbing of Rabbi Gabriel Farhi, of the progressive Jewish Liberal Movement (MJLF), which supports greater inter-faith dialogue and a peaceful settlement of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

On Monday his car was set on fire.

Last year there were scores of incidents in which synagogues were firebombed and Jews were insulted and assaulted. Police and government officials attributed the violence to heightened tension linked to the bloodshed in the Middle East and said most of the attacks amounted to vandalism by teenage troublemakers of Arab origin.

But some overseas Jewish groups, particularly in America and Israel, saw in the incidents evidence of mounting anti-semitism in France and a return to the dark days of the collaborationist Vichy wartime government. France was "tolerating anti-semitism", they said.

The Israeli government appeared to provide further ammunition to France's critics this week when it said that 2,556 of France's 575,000 Jews had emigrated to Israel last year - double the 2001 figure and the highest number since the Six Day war.

A Paris university's call for the EU to cut all academic ties with Israel had a similar effect.

Most French Jews are reluctant to speak of growing anti-semitism in France, however, saying that most of the incidents are plainly the consequence of political rather than religious differences.

A spokesman for the Jewish Agency in Paris said the Israeli immigration figures were "more about protecting Israel than fleeing France".

Mr Farhi, 34, was wounded in the stomach in the attack last Friday, but did not require surgery. He told the police that his aggressor had shouted "God is great" in Arabic before fleeing, and he revealed that the MJLF had received a letter earlier in the day warning of "vengeance for the blood of our Palestinian brothers".

Leila Shahid, the Palestinian Authority's chief representative in France, joined the chorus of political and religious condemnation of the attacks yesterday, saying she had been "most profoundly shocked" by them.

Mr Farhi was "one of those rare men of religion who is also a man of peace and of dialogue", she said.

The head of the Paris mosque condemned "an ignoble act" against "a longstanding personal friend and a good man".

Mr Sarkozy, who was joined at the service by representatives of all France's leading religions, has won praise from Jewish groups for classing such incidents as "hate crimes", and by ensuring that far more severe penalties are imposed on crimes inspired by racial or religious hatred.