PARIS (EJP)---French President Nicolas Sarkozy, who is touring the Middle East to seek support for a ceasefire in Gaza, has condemned an attack against a synagogue in the southwestern French city of Toulouse.
Unidentified attackers launched two cars packed with petrol bombs at a synagogue in the south-western city of Toulouse, Monday night, causing damage but no casualties.
This attack, which occurred at a time when about a dozen people were attending a class with a rabbi, revived memories of a sharp spike in anti-Semitic crimes in 2002, against the backdrop of earlier fighting between Israel and the Palestinians.
"The President of the Republic believes that our country will not tolerate international tension mutating into communal violence," Nicolas Sarkozy said in statement.
He called for France to unite behind his diplomatic search for peace, dubbing this the "only possible response and dignified attitude for our country faced with the tragic circumstances in the Middle East."
Interior Minister Michele Alliot-Marie branded the attack "stupid and revolting" and added: "My concern is that the situation should not degenerate in our country, that the violence not be imported."
In order to avoid any further violence sparked by demonstrations, she organized Monday a meeting with CRIF and CFCM, the representatives bodies of the Jewish and Muslim communities.
Richard Prasquier, head of CRIF, said it was fundamental for the communities to meet in these most difficult times. “We are French and it is out of question that the Mideast conflict be imported in France,” he declared, stressing the calm and the Republican spirit of the pro-Israel demonstration organized by CRIF on Sunday in Paris .
France is home to Europe's largest Arab and Jewish populations. 600,000 Jews and 3 million Muslims live in the country.
In 2000, with the outbreak of the second intifada, the Jewish community already complained of a spate of assaults and attacks on their cemeteries and synagogues.
By 2002, as fighting raged in the Middle East and Afghanistan and the United States prepared its invasion of Iraq, the number of recorded anti-Semitic attacks had jumped from 32 to 193 per year.
Today, in the wake of Israel’s operation against Hamas in Gaza, street demonstrations against the war have begun to trigger outbreaks of violence.
On Saturday, a mob of protesters burned cars and looted Paris jewellers. At some point last week vandals also smashed part of the the Wall for Peace sculpture in the garden opposite the Eiffel Tower, targeting a panel marked "Shalom" and "Salaam", the Hebrew and Arabic words for peace.
The Union of Jewish Students in France (UEJF) has recorded two attacks on kosher stores in southwestern Bordeaux, one on a Jewish apartment in Paris and another on a synagogue in southern Toulon since New Year's Eve.
"We must not allow the Middle East conflict to shatter our lives together," the group warned in a statement.
The National Bureau of Vigilance Against Anti-Semitism, which monitors anti-semitic incidents in the country, also raised the alarm over an attack on a rabbi's car near Paris last week, as well as a spike in "menacing" anti-Jewish posts in French Internet chatrooms.