France Issues of Color And of Creed

By Lisa Beyer.

In the past ten years, police have recorded at least nine desecrations of Jewish cemeteries in France. None of those episodes provoked the torrent of outrage unleashed by the grisly find two weeks ago in a graveyard in Carpentras in southern France. Investigators speculate that four vandals set upon the Jewish burial ground in the hours before dawn, shattering tombstones with sledgehammers and iron bars. The desecraters, who are still unidentified, dragged one woman's body halfway out of her grave. They also exhumed the corpse of an 81-year-old man buried only two weeks earlier and impaled it on an umbrella.

The profanations at Carpentras were followed by a wave of copycat crimes last week. Graves were vandalized or painted with swastikas in at least six other Jewish cemeteries around the country. In the Brittany city of Quimper, red Stars of David were spray painted on 17 stores. In Royan, a 41-year-old schoolteacher was badly beaten by two masked assailants after she discussed racism with her students. Coming on top of recent attacks against North African immigrants, the atrocities that began at Carpentras prompted some French citizens to wonder whether their society were fundamentally sick. Said Paris' Chief Rabbi Joseph Sitruk: "This incident would never have been possible in a France that was united, worthy and responsible."

While the Carpentras scandal has focused attention on anti-Semitism, hostility toward North African immigrants is a graver concern. In a survey in February, 76% of those polled said there were too many Arabs in the country; $ they make up some 2 million of France's 56 million people. In March three men of North African origin were brutally murdered in separate race-tinged attacks. Mayors of several towns, overwhelmed with immigrants, have tried to limit the number of foreign children in their schools. Last week the mayor of Charvieu-Chavagneux was indicted for illegally ordering the bulldozing of a mosque last August; one of the five people who were praying inside was injured.

More than ever, French politicians and commentators are blaming Jean-Marie Le Pen, leader of the far-right National Front, for the current outbreak of intolerance. Recent polls give him the support of 15% of the population. After Carpentras, Interior Minister Pierre Joxe called Le Pen a racist and a provocateur. The National Front leader has aimed his invective mainly at North Africans. But he has also made outrageous remarks about Jews, calling the Nazi gas chambers "a point of detail" in history and making a pun involving the word crematory on a Jewish minister's name.

Le Pen condemned the sacrilege at Carpentras, but his critics argue that his dogma of bigotry has encouraged this kind of depravity. Three weeks ago, the National Assembly passed a law -- apparently aimed at the National Front -- excluding from public service anyone convicted of inciting racial hatred.

In the wake of the desecrations, 2,000 French Jews applied to immigrate to Israel; the usual weekly average is 50. But experts on ethnic conflict caution against alarm. Says sociologist Pierre-Andre Taguieff: "Today antiracism is growing faster than racism. The anti-Semites are marginal."

Underscoring his point, tens of thousands of citizens took part in marches all across France last week to register their disgust with bigotry. In the Paris protest, which drew some 80,000 people, members of all religions and political parties -- except Le Pen's -- rallied together for the first time in recent memory. Even President Francois Mitterrand was there, marking the first time since Paris' liberation in 1945 that a French head of state has taken to the streets to demonstrate.

The forceful silent march raised hopes that this week's parliamentary debate on immigration and integration would produce a moderate consensus, which has so far proved elusive, on how to tackle these prickly issues. But that is not likely to stop the National Front. Le Pen's forces, always part of the problem, seem uninterested in any solution.