European Jewish Congress (EJC) President Moshe Kantor on Tuesday urged French President François Hollande to put the fight against anti-Semitism on the top of the European agenda.
Following a meeting with Hollande at the Elysée Palace in Paris on Tuesday, Kantor said: "The Jews of Europe are currently under attack from two opposing sides. Radical Islamists, some of who are importing their brand of extremist hate and violence from wars in the Middle East, are gunning down Jews on the streets of Europe and the far-right is on the march on these very same streets attacking Jews and evoking memories of the rise of fascism and Nazism in the last century.
“The Jews are caught between a rock and a hard place and it will not take much to turn this crisis into an emergency and we need the European leadership to act forcefully," he declared.
Kantor and a delegation of EJC leaders, including the French Jewish umbrella body CRIF, thanked Hollande for the stance of the French government against anti-Semitism. “We hope that the actions of the French government will be replicated across the continent,” said Kantor, adding: “We call on all European nations to form a task force, not to just to react to anti-Semitic events but to prevent such events as the shootings at the Jewish museum in Brussels and the Jewish school in Toulouse. We hope that this issue will be urgently addressed at the next council of EU leaders meeting.”
“We have to reach the source of hate and that is by showing zero tolerance for hate speech and incitement and preventing the extremists from recruiting the next generation, both by radical Islamists and the far-Right and neo-Nazi parties. We need to bolster existing legislation against racism, xenophobia and anti-Semitism and create working solutions regarding the security for Jewish communities.”
