Communities Unite Against Anti-Semitic Hate

In Perros-Guirec, a seaside town in Brittany, a Celtic part of France akin to Cornwall in England, residents have held a vigil to protest the anti-semitic vandalism of a memorial to Simone Veil, a holocaust survivor, advocate of women's abortion rights, secular Jewish identity and European integration. Veil was a celebrated French activist and politician of the post-war period, reports the Guardian. However, swastikas and other anti-Jewish hate graffiti has been plastered over the memorial. The Guardian puts the rise in anti-semitic hate in France into a context. The movement against Covid passport requirements, which has sucked in anti-vaxxers, deep conspiracy theorists, the far left and the far right alike, and assorted unfocussed protest groups, has a problem with extremist thought, particularly anti-Jewish and scapegoating of minorities. The French police are investigating several banners held aloft at recent demonstrations which are believed to express hate and derision towards Jewish people.  The Guardian says that there have been multiple reports of vandalism and graffiti bearing Nazi symbols and “Qui?” on buildings, monuments, churches and vaccine centres in recent weeks. The Simone Veil monument has already been attacked four times this year.