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Comments (0)The burial chapel of a Jewish cemetery in Sweden’s third largest municipality was firebombed. The attack was the third in recent weeks on the Malmo cemetery, according to the Swedish English daily The Local, which cited the Malmo daily newspaper Sydsvenska Dagbladet.
The bottles containing a flammable liquid caused a small fire and little damage to the synagogue.
Other communities in Sweden have faced anti-Semitic attacks since Israel began its Gaza operation more than two weeks ago. The Israeli Embassy was vandalized with offensive graffiti, and there have been repeated arson attacks on a Jewish center in Helsingborg, according to reports.
In other developments, in Paris Molotov cocktails were launched at a synagogue in suburban Paris and at a Jewish community building near Strasbourg. The firebombing near the synagogue in the northern suburb of Saint-Denis also partly burned a Jewish restaurant.
No injuries were reported in either attack.
The National Bureau of Vigilance Against Anti-Semitism blamed the mayor of Saint-Denis, a member of the Communist Party, for the attack, which came after the city called for a pro-Palestinian protest and a pro-Palestinian rally in Paris featuring 30,000 demonstrators turned violent.
“What we feared has arrived,” the bureau’s president, Sammy Ghozlan, told reporters.
The bureau had demanded that police prevent Mayor Didier Paillard’s anti-Israel rally, which “risked provoking … and inciting hate” of Jews, Ghozlan said in a statement, but his calls went unheeded.
Paillard said that the bureau’s accusation was an “unacceptable manipulation,” and the city organized a peaceful gathering in front of the synagogue for Monday night.
French politicians overwhelmingly condemned both attacks, which come as similar crime increases in tandem with virulent anti-Israel rallies across the nation.
In Rome, the mayor and provincial president shopped at Jewish-owned stores to show their solidarity after a trade union called for a boycott of Jewish merchants to protest the Gaza Strip war.
Politicians across the spectrum condemned the boycott appeal by Flaica-CUB, a small, independent leftist union in the retail services and food sector, saying it was reminiscent of the Fascist era.
The boycott call was announced in a flyer, and Flaica-CUB chief Giancarlo Desiderati told newspapers that a list of shops was being drawn up. He later backpedaled, telling reporters that the boycott was only aimed at Israel-made goods.
“It’s an idea that has an undeniable anti-Semitic flavor and that recalls the darkest pages of our history,” Nicola Zingaretti, Rome’s provincial president, said after meeting Jewish shopkeepers in the historic Ghetto neighborhood.
Mayor Gianni Alemanno, joined by Rome’s Jewish community president, Riccardo Pacifici, bought two shirts and a tie from a Jewish-owned clothing store in another neighborhood, and expressed “firm and intransigent condemnation” for the boycott call.
Alemanno recalled that such calls in the 1930s led to the imposition of Fascist-era anti-Semitic laws in 1938.
Numerous other politicians and mainstream union leaders also condemned the initiative, and Jewish leaders and shopkeepers expressed shock and dismay. Pacifici said the Jewish community was considering suing the union for instigating racial hatred.
The president of the Lazio Region, where Rome is located, held a solidarity meeting with Jewish leaders. Piero Marrazzo stressed that Israel’s security was at issue and that beyond being a political group, “Hamas is a terrorist organization” that attacks Israel.
He said the dream was that Israelis and Palestinians may one day live side by side in two states, but “you don’t get there by boycotting Jewish-owned shops.”