France offers reassurance to Jews after attacks

PARIS, Feb. 16 (UPI) -- France's Prime Minister urged Jews not to consider emigrating Monday, after incidents suggested Europe's Jewish minority is not safe.

A month after an attack by Islamist gunmen on a French magazine office in January, a Jewish graveyard in the French town of Sarre-Union was desecrated Sunday, with over 300 tombstones displaced and spray-painted. It followed an attack on a synagogue in Copenhagen, Denmark, in which a man guarding the door during a bat mitzvah ceremony was shot and killed by a lone shooter. Five youths from the area of the cemetery desecration are in custody, one of whom admitted his role after surprise over the public outrage over the act, a prosecutor said. "France is as injured as you are, and France doesn't want you to leave," Prime Minister Manuel Valls said Monday, days after the Israeli cabinet approved a $46 million budget to finance the cost of an expected increase in immigration to Israel from Europe, and Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu encouraged European Jews to come to Israel, saying, "We are telling our Jewish brothers and sisters that Israel is your home. To the Jews of Europe and to the Jews of the world, I say that Israel is waiting for you with open arms."

France has the world's third-largest Jewish population, behind only Israel and the United States, but anti-Semitic attacks have risen in France to 423 in 2013, compared to 82 in 1999, the Jewish Community Security Service, a police data analysis group, said.

Since the attack in January, security has been reinforced at Jewish schools, synagogues and other institutions.

French President Francois Hollande said Monday, "I won't allow words spoken in Israel that allow people to think that Jews don't have their place in Europe and, in particular, in France."