France Rocked by 69% Rise in Anti-Semitism as Acts Become ‘Relentless’, PM Warns

I expected that the drop in anti-Semitic violence

of the past couple years was an aberration.

France is back to normal now!

As the percentage of the French population that is Muslim increases, antisemitism increases,

even while the population of Jews in France decreases. It is the nature of Islam!

© Reuters/ Jean-Paul Pelissier

After a two-year drop, France has been hit by a staggering 69-percent rise in anti-Semitic incidents in the past nine months, Prime Minister Edouard Philippe said on Friday.

The French prime minister used the 80th anniversary of Kristallnacht, the night of November 9, 1938, when Jews were “systematically” targeted by the Nazis, to warn about the “relentless” acts of anti-Semitism taking place in his country.

“We are very far from being finished with anti-Semitism,” Philippe said on his Facebook page, branding the number of acts perpetrated against Jews “relentless.”

Despite seeing a drop in offences in the past two years, France has in the past nine months been hit by a 69-percent increase, he said. Although the PM failed to specify how many anti-Semitic acts were recorded in the period, French newspaper Le Monde previously said that 311 incidents were reported last year.

“Every aggression perpetrated against one of our citizens because they are Jewish echoes like the breaking of new crystal,” Philippe said, before outlining government plans to crack down on the rise in anti-Jewish sentiment.

He said the government will be testing a group of magistrates and investigators to help tackle the issue. A national team will also be mobilized in schools from mid-November to aid teachers in fending off growing anti-Semitism, while there will also be a legislative process aimed at the withdrawal of hateful content online.

According to French news outlet France24, Jews in France make up less than one percent of the population, and yet they were victims of 40 percent of crime registered as racially or religiously motivated in 2017.

In March, France was shocked when the body of an 85-year-old Holocaust survivor was found incinerated in her apartment in Paris and with 11 stab wounds. A man was arrested over what is suspected to have been an anti-Semitic attack.

Less than a year before that, 65-year-old teacher Sarah Halimi was beaten to death by a Franco-Malian man before he threw her from a third-story window. The case was prosecuted as an anti-Semitic crime.

Majority of Russians Oppose Decriminalization of Domestic Violence, Poll Shows

Russians change their minds as domestic violence increases

A police officer near a bus © Natalia Seliverstova / Sputnik

Over half of the Russian public believes that domestic violence should be treated as a criminal offence and only a quarter of Russians support the recent decriminalization of first-time offenders.

On Tuesday, Russian think tank Public Opinion Endowment released the results of the poll on attitudes to the decriminalization of domestic violence. The poll revealed that 55 percent of Russians think that the law should list domestic violence as a criminal offense.

Some 25 percent of poll participants said that they supported the recent decriminalization of domestic violence (it still remains a civil offense and is punishable by fines or civil arrest). A total of 21 percent of respondents could not answer the question directly.

In the same poll 79 percent of participants said that domestic violence cannot be justified and 11 percent said it was entirely dependent on the situation. Some 10 percent of respondents could not give an unambiguous answer to the question.

When researchers asked Russians how common they believed it was for families to face domestic violence, 42 percent said that domestic violence took place in the minority of Russian homes. Some 24 percent think that the majority of Russian families face domestic violence, at least from time to time, and 19 percent found the question too difficult to answer.

Russia decriminalized ‘first-time’ domestic violence in February 2017. The sponsors of the motion justified the move by explaining how a legal inconsistency had arisen several months earlier: starting in mid-2016, first-time attacks on people who were not family members or relatives were no longer treated under the criminal code, but the civil code. The situation with first-time attacks on family members remained unchanged – potentially leading to a situation where parents could, theoretically at least, assault their children with impunity, while complete strangers could not.

Still the decriminalization sparked staunch opposition in the mass media and on social networks, as well as concerned statements from abroad. Russian lawmakers had responded to the criticism by saying they were motivated by the opinions of their voters and public opinion polls, which at the time had shown that the majority of Russians support the idea.

A year after the changes came into force, the head of Russia’s Central Investigative Committee said that the number of crimes against women and children had increased and suggested that there may be a link.