French Interior Minister Brice Hortefeux discussed with a Jewish community leader the security issue for Jewish sites in France ahead of upcoming Jewish holidays of Rosh Hashana and Yom Kippur.
During the meeting, the minister also raised the arson attack against a Jewish school which happened on the same day in the southern France’s port city of Marseille. No one was injured in the attack which caused minor damage to the school’s dining hall.
The arson attack on the ORT Leon Bramson school on rue de Forge happened in the morning while the 400 students were in classrooms approximately 100 metres away.
A row of tinder dry Cypress trees was set ablaze, the heat damaging four parked cars and melting a metal roller blind on the outside of the cafeteria building. The fire service quickly contained the blaze.
Three aerosol cans believed to have been used as incendiary devices were reportedly found by police at the scene and taken away for forensic tests.
The school handed over tape from security cameras to investigators of the police department’s urban violence squad.
School Principal Maurice Cohen-Zagouri said that while the fire was definitely arson there was no evidence to suggest it was an anti-Semitic attack.
“In our street, only 400 metres away, is a public school a fifth of whose students are Arab. Every day, all year round, they pass by the entrance to our school and we have never had a problem,” he said. However, Marseilles Prosecutor Jacques Dallest emphasised at a media conference that “fire is never trivial” and said the perpetrators of the “gratuitous” attack faced up to 10 years in jail.
He said such incident is rather rare in Marseille.
The Mayor of Marseille, Jean Claude Godin, denounced the incident as “an unconscionable act”.
Police chief Philippe Klayman said he had ordered patrols to be increased around schools and religious institutions and added that “particular attention” would be paid to Jewish institutions during the upcoming holidays.
Around 80,000 Jews live in the southern French city.
The city’s deputy mayor for security, Caroline Pozmentier, recalled that a synagogue was set ablaze in 2002 and a Jewish school in 2005.
During the five first months of this year, 573 anti-Semitic incidents have been recorded in France, the Interior ministry reported. Among them, 101 were physical aggressions and vandalism and 472 anti-Semitic threats, remarks and inscriptions.
(Source: EJP)
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5 Responses
Well, French Jews are definitely getting the message. Anyone that’s been to Israel in the last few years knows that French Jews are making aliyah in large numbers. When will WE wake up to the same message? With all the problems and chesronos Israel has, ERETZ Yisrael IS home. Why do we have to wait until we have to run with just the clothes on our backs? Have we learned nothing from history? Yes, yes, I know – the U.S. is a malchus shel chesed. So was germany – until it wasn’t.
> “Around 80,000 Jews live in the southern French city.”
>> But there are between 150,000 and 200,000 Muslims in Marseilles. ‘Nuff said.
AinOhdMilvado: Your words are EMES. The signs from the Ribbono Shel Olam that we must now return to Eretz Yisrael (en mass) are all over the place. HaRav HaGaon Simcha Wasserman zt”l (who made aliyah in 1979) wrote:
“Yaakov Avinu [said] to his sons: ‘I will show you what will happen in the end of days. There will be a call! Hashem will just call us and we’ll come.’ This is what the Ribbono Shel Olam is showing us in our days. This is what so many have experienced. We see it.” (Reb Simcha Speaks, Artscroll, p. 36)
These are powerful words. Reb Simcha saw the signs and was compelled to end his sojourn in America and move to Eretz Yisrael. I just don’t understand why our leaders in America today — roshei yeshiva, talmidei chachamim, rebbeim, rabbonim — don’t see what Reb Simcha saw. I don’t understand why they are not leading Bnai Torah back to Eretz Yisrael. As I’ve said previously, the ba’alei emunah boarding their Nefesh B’Nefesh aliyah flights are the true leaders of Klal Yisrael in this generation. The rest sit twiddling their thumbs, mired in golus, while events continue to deteriorate in Europe and America. When will they get it and realize that it’s time to leave?
I suppose HaSh-m has His reasons as to why He wants us, or allows us, to be so blind, – still it is very sad to see that the only thing we learn from history, – is that we have learned nothing from history.
AinOhdMilvado, before you and others decide your nevius is emes, please consult with the Urim ViTumim or, at the very least, your LOR. If you are told to move to Eretz Yisrael, may you have much hatzlacha there.
And if you’d truly know history, you’d know that Germany, the most liberal country in Europe, did not degenerate, to the shocking level that it did, through any normal set of events. So to suggest that the hashgacha pratis that caused the events there could occur similarly anywhere is, in my opinion, a mockery of Hashem. “Ki lo machshivosai machsivoseichem vilo darkeichem dirachai, ni’um Hashem”. Nobody knows Hashem’s ways.
May Hashem redeem His people speedily in our days.
#4 HaKatan – I (b’shum ofen) NEVER claimed what I said to be “nevius”. However, we need not be a navi to see what is obvious. Read the newspapers. Look at the statistics of RISING incidents of anti-semitism all over Europe, AND in the U.S.!!! No one is “mocking HaSh-m” except possibly YOU and YOUR “nevius” which seems to suggest that the hashgacha pratis that caused events to unfold as they did in germany, will NOT have them occur in other places. Why would you think that? Why would HaSh-m give a supernatural shmira to the Jews in the U.S.? Because the U.S. has a president that is so in love with the Jews? Because 90% of American Jews are NOT frum and they are inter-marrying at about a 60% rate? Is the scenario here so very different from the one that brought about HaSh-m’s hashgagacha pratis 70 years ago in germany? No, of course I do not know HaSh-m’s thoughts or ways, but if you have eyes to see and ears to hear, – you will pack a bag.