SARRE-UNION, France (AP) – French President Francois Hollande said during a visit Tuesday to a vandalized Jewish cemetery in eastern France that the growing number of acts against Jews and Muslims threatens the country’s very foundations.
Hollande spoke in the small Alsatian town of Sarre-Union, where 250 Jewish graves were desecrated over the weekend.
He noted that anti-Semitism and acts against Muslims are both on the rise in France, notably after the attacks last month in Paris on a satirical newspaper and a kosher grocery store that left 20 people dead, including the three gunmen.
“Must we put soldiers in front of cemeteries?” the president asked in a speech after surveying the overturned gravestones.
“How do we understand the unnamable, the unjustifiable, the unbearable?” Hollande said. “This is the expression of the evils eating away at the Republic.”