French President Francois Hollande met with the new head of CRIF, France’s Jewish umbrella organisation, at the Elysee Palace in Paris on Thursday.
Congratulating Roger Cukierman on his recent election to the post, which coincides with the 70th anniversary of the organisation, which was born from the WWII underground resistance movement, the head of state “reiterated that the fight against anti-Semitic attacks was a priority for the entire government”, according to a statement by his office.
He further committed to meeting with the leaders of all the constituent Jewish organisations that make up the CRIF, after Cukierman called for a “mobilised” response” from the government to the widely-reported “rise in increasingly violent and severe anti-Semitic acts”.
Expressing the concerns of the French Jewish community, which numbers approximately 600,000 members, the largest in Europe, Cukierman told the President that “anti-Semitism is a poison to our society”.
Highlighting the need for an antidote to definitively address the epidemic, he added that “the fight against anti-Semitism has become a national cause, because hatred of others has no place in our Republic”.
Invoking concern amongst European Jewry about the likelihood of spiralling political intolerance having a domino effect in other communities, in the wake of last week’s controversial defeat of a Polish government-sponsored bill to preserve the practice of Shechita (Jewish ritual slaughter), he concluded that "our country must also be careful to respect each other's differences. They refer to traditions that perpetuate such as ritual slaughter that I defended to the President of the Republic. I told him that this was a political, not a scientific question”.
Cukierman also revealed he raised the issue of this week’s arrest of a neo-Nazi in Correze, despite the fact the area is not known for housing any significant Jewish community. Forty year-old Norwegian Kristian Vikernes was held by authorities as a result of what the Interior Ministry described as being “close to the neo-Nazi movement”. He is currently under investigation by the public prosecutor’s office in Paris on suspicion of intent to commit a terrorist act.

 

by: Shari Reyness