Stopping briefly at the annual CRIF (French Council of Jewish Institutions or the Conseil représentatif des institutions juives en France) dinner in Paris, French president Nicolas Sarkozy called those engaging in anti-Semitic and anti-Islamophobic actions “racists who should not be accepted in the French Republic.”
In his speech, Prime Minister François Fillon recognized that the number of such acts of hatred is on the rise in France. He announced penalties and the severity of convictions against them will be tightened. Three million Euros will be dedicated to the cause. Approximately 850 people attended the event at the Pavillon d’Armenonville in Paris’ 16th district.
Last year, in his speech, Sarkozy generated controversy when he proposed that 10-year-old French school children be entrusted with the memory of one of the 11,000 French child victims of the Holocaust. Sarkozy later dropped the proposal after a French Education Ministry committee recommended that pupils instead learn in general about the fate of French Jewish children during the Holocaust, instead of “adopting” the identity of individual victims.
