Despite desecrated Jewish graves in France and a deadly attack at a synagogue in Denmark, European leaders on Monday rejected calls from Israel’s leader for a mass migration of the continent’s Jews to Israel, urging unity instead.
Hundreds of Jewish tombstones were found vandalized in eastern France on Sunday, hours after a Danish Jew guarding a synagogue in Copenhagen was shot to death.
Frenchmen have been accused of three deadly attacks on Jewish sites since 2012: one at a school in the southern city of Toulouse, another at a museum in Brussels and one at a kosher market in Paris last month. Twelve people died in total.
“We know there are doubts, questions across the community,” French President Francois Hollande said Monday. “I will not just let what was said in Israel pass, leading people to believe that Jews no longer have a place in Europe and in France in particular.”
French Prime Minister Manuel Valls said Monday that the government would defend French Jews against what he described as “Islamo-fascism.”
“A Jew who leaves France is a piece of France that is gone,” Valls told RTL radio.
Hollande will visit the desecrated Jewish cemetery in the small town of Sarre-Union today, his office said. Of the 400 tombs in the Sarre-Union cemetery, 250 had been vandalized.
Investigators were questioning five minors, ages 15 to 17, in connection with the vandalism, said Philippe Vannier, prosecutor of the eastern Bas-Rhin region. One of the five had turned himself in.
All were from the region and none had a criminal record, he said.
In 2014, more than 7,000 of France’s 500,000 Jews left for Israel, more than double the number in 2013. The Israeli Cabinet on Sunday approved a $46 million plan to encourage still more Jewish immigration from France, Belgium and Ukraine.
The exodus from France accelerated after the March 2012 attacks by Mohammed Merah, who stormed a Jewish school in Toulouse, killing three children and a rabbi.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Sunday that at a time of rising anti-Semitism in Europe, Israel is the only place where Jews can truly feel safe.
“This wave of attacks is expected to continue,” Netanyahu told his Cabinet. “Jews deserve security in every country, but we say to our Jewish brothers and sisters, Israel is your home.”
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