Jean Pierre-Bloch, the president of the International League Against Anti-Semitism (LICA), has asked French Interior Minister Christian Bonnet to take all necessary steps to identify and arrest the members of the rightwing group which claimed responsibility for last Sunday’s bomb attack against the Jewish-owned travel organization, Club Mediterranee. Pierre-Bloch, who met yesterday with the Minister, told the press that LICA has known for some time about the activity of the terrorist organization and had complained to the police several months ago.
Pierre-Bloch said that he personally has received several threatening letters from the National Front for the Liberation of France which, according to its own communique, last Sunday set off three bombs in the club’s headquarters in downtown Paris.
Police investigators say, however, they have never heard of the front’s existence before and are not yet convinced of its existence. They say the bomb attack might have been carried out by accomplices of the gangsters who had carried out several attacks against club villages as “reprisals” for the arrest and conviction of some of the gang’s members. Police are also investigating the possibility that the bomb attack might have been carried out by some of the club’s competitors in the travel business. The anti-Semitic communique, investigators privately say, might serve as a smoke screen to hide the real reasons for the bomb attack.
Jewish organizations monitoring anti-Semitic activities have not reported any upsurge in recent months and France’s Jewish weekly “Tribune Juive,” in an as yet unpublished survey also failed to find any noticeable increase. The paper’s correspondents reported that anti-Semitic slogans have been scribbled on walls in a number of cities, mainly Marseilles and in eastern France, but not more frequently than in the past. They seem to be the work of an unorganized, small lunatic fringe and some of its supporters are regularly apprehended by the police.
JTA has documented Jewish history in real-time for over a century. Keep our journalism strong by joining us in supporting independent, award-winning reporting.
The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.
