French police are looking for a Palestinian Arab with a Cypriot passport as the likeliest suspect in last Friday night’s bomb attack against a Paris synagogue. The police say they have conclusive evidence that the man, whose identity was not revealed, bought the motorcycle which carried the bomb used in the attacks Four people died in the explosion and 33 more were injured. One of the injured died two days later.
Jewish leaders and Israeli officials have since the explosion charged the Palestinian terrorist groups and the Libyan regime of collusion with the anti-Semitic neo-Nazi organizations operating in Western Europe. The police investigation now seems to be headed in the some direction. Interior Minister Christian Bonnet last night told the National Assembly that police are gathering evidence on “all aspects” which seem to indicate the Palestinian angle.
Israeli Premier Menachem Begin, in an interview with the French weekly, Paris-March published today, also accused extremist Arabs for having carried out or inspired the attack. Begin said that “with (Libyan leader Col. Muammar) Qaddafi everything is possible.”
TEMPERS CONTINUE TO RUN HIGH
Tempers in France continue to run high in the wake at last week’s attack. The opposition parties, especially the Socialists and Communists, continue to attack the government of President Valery Giscard d’Estaing. They accuse it of having failed to take firm action in time and at the same time are trying to build a strong opposition front based on anti-racist and anti-fascist sentiments.
With the Presidential elections only six months away, French political circles believe that the synagogue bombing can potentially become a “surprise factor” in the forthcoming election, which had previously been viewed as an easy election win for Giscard.
Meanwhile, the Jewish community itself is beginning to show signs at a split. Most Jewish community leaders, including the French Chief Rabbi and the Representative Council of Jewish Organizations in France (CRIF) favor a nonpartisan stance in the upcoming elections. The small activist splinter group, Jewish Renewal, is assailing the Giscard Administration and advocating a “protest vote” in favor at the Socialist Party led by Francois Mitterrand.
INCREASE IN ANTI-SEMITIC INCIDENTS
Another effect of the bomb attack was to release into the open what were up to now repressed anti-Semitic feelings. During the last few days, apparently in the wake at the attack, anti-Semitic incidents have increased ten fold, according to police reports. In the last 24 hours, more than a score such incidents were reported by the Interior Ministry.
These included an attack against a Jewish civilian police employee who was shot in the head Police said that the attack on 58-year-old Maurice Cohen, an administrative clerk with the Paris police department, could be connected with the current wave of anti-Semitic attacks. Cohen is described as seriously injured but no longer in a critical condition.
The other incidents included fist fights, daubings of anti-Semitic slogans and the arrest of two men in Nice who shouted during an anti-fascist demonstration, “Jews into gas ovens” and “Hitler should have gotten them all.”
Police arrested at least a dozen right-wing activists this morning, including on 81-year-old former Vichy government collaborator. Ten others were arrested in the south of France and are being interrogated on charges of having mailed last month’s death threats to 67 local Jewish personalities.
SPECIAL FRIDAY NIGHT SYNAGOGUE SERVICE
The Jewish community, meanwhile, is preparing to hold a special service tomorrow night at the Rue Copernic Temple (Reform) to mark the seventh day of the bomb attack. The service will be addressed by Rabbi Alexander Schindler, a former chairman of the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations and presently the president of the Union of American Hebrew Congregations (Reform). Schindler, who will represent the Presidents Conference, said on his arrival here today that he will express “the solidarity and brotherhood” felt by American Jews.
Other American Jewish representatives who arrived in Paris this week to express solidarity with the French Jewish community were Maxwell Greenberg, national chairman of the Anti-Defamation League at B’nai B’rith and Abraham Foxman, the ADL’s associate national director; and Joel Sprayregen, chairman of the Public Affairs Committee of the Jewish United Fund of Metropolitan Chicago.
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