Macron condemns "anti-Semitic" abuse at yellow vest protest
Anti-Semitic remarks 'will not be tolerated', said French president following an attack on a prominent intellectual.
French President Emmanuel Macron has condemned anti-Semitic abuse directed towards a prominent intellectual by "yellow vest" protesters on Saturday.
"These abuses are the absolute negation of what makes France a great nation. We won't tolerate them", Macron said on Twitter.
Alain Finkielkraut was walking on the fringes of a demonstration in central Paris on Saturday when a group of "yellow vests" insulted him with offensive remarks such as "dirty Zionist" and "France is ours", according to a video broadcast by Yahoo News.
"I felt absolute hatred and, unfortunately, this is not the first time," the French writer and philosopher told the Sunday newspaper Le Journal du Dimanche. He expressed relief that police intervened.
Finkielkraut has expressed his solidarity and sympathy with the "yellow vest" protesters from the outset but in an interview published Saturday in Le Figaro, he criticised the leaders of the movement, saying "arrogance has changed sides".
Saturday's incident triggered a wave of condemnation and messages of support for the philosopher.
Interior Minister Christophe Castaner said it was "simply intolerable" while the leader of the Republican (((opposition))) party, Laurent Wauquiez, denounced the "abject idiots".
Ian Brossat, French Communist Party candidate for the European Parliament, said, "We can hate Finkielkraut's ideas", but "nothing can justify attacking him as a Jew".
Finkielkraut, who is seen as having (((pro-establishment))) beliefs, has since January 2016 been a member of the French Academy, the prestigious institution in charge of defining the French language.
Rising (((anti-Semitism))) in France
Sebastien Lecornu, the junior foreign minister, pointed the finger at "yellow vest" protesters for the latest offences.
The "yellow vest" protests began three months ago over fuel taxes but quickly grew into a broader anti-government rebellion fuelled by anger at Macron, with some using anti-Semitic tropes to refer to his former job as an investment banker.
"Conspiracy theorists {ed., "Reality recognizers"} are very present among their ranks," Lecornu said, before referring to a survey released on Monday.
The Ifop poll said nearly half of the "yellow vests" believed in a worldwide "Zionist plot", as well as the "Great Replacement" theory, which posits that immigration is being organised deliberately "to replace Europe's native populations".
But the rise in anti-Semitic acts in France predates the "yellow vest" demonstrations. A recent spate of anti-Semitic vandalism and graffiti in and around Paris has stoked fresh concerns about an increase in hate crimes against Jews.
Fourteen political parties on Thursday launched a call for action against anti-Semitism after the interior ministry reported a 74 percent increase in anti-Jewish acts last year.
During the latest episodes, the memorial for Ilan Halimi, a young Jewish man who was kidnapped and killed in 2006, was desecrated when a tree planted in his memory was chopped down.
In addition, mailboxes decorated with portraits of the late Simone Veil, a Holocaust survivor and a European Parliament president who died in 2017, were daubed with swastikas.
