FRANCE: The fear of conflict between France's large Muslim and Jewish communities grew yesterday when details of an attack on a Jewish football team became known.
About 15 north African teenagers burst on to the football field at Bondy, north of Paris, shouting "dirty Jews", as the Maccabi team were practising on Wednesday night. The assailants wore hoods and keffiyehs and were armed with baseball bats, metal bars and bowling balls.
All but one of the Jewish players, aged between 16 and 20, ran away. The 16-year-old goal-keeper was knocked to the ground with a metal bar. "They kept hitting me and calling me 'dirty Jew'. They threw a bowling ball at my head before going towards the goalpost," he told the Figaro newspaper.
The Jewish team had left their belongings in a pile beside the goalpost. The attackers stole mobile telephones, credit cards and clothing. The goalkeeper received three stitches in the head before being released from hospital a few hours later.
"We've reached a new level in anti-Semitic acts," Sammy Ghozlan, the president of the Council of Jewish Communities for the Seine-St-Denis department said. "What is serious is that they are no longer attacking property."
Also on Wednesday evening, a bus carrying 30 Jewish children from the Lubavitch sect was attacked by youths throwing stones in the 20th arrondissement of Paris. A young girl was slightly injured in the eye. Earlier in the day the Israeli Prime Minister, Mr Ariel Sharon, announced that he was establishing a commission to "organise the practical aspects" of bringing French Jews to Israel.
The French Prime Minister and presidential candidate, Mr Lionel Jospin, denounced the attack at Bondy as "an abject act". The campaign is dominated by the repercussions in France of Mr Sharon's assault on the West Bank, and the broader question of violent crime. Mr Jospin has taken a new tack, warning against the demonisation of young men, despite their disproportionately high crime rate.
At a rally in Bordeaux on Thursday night he called for a "pact of confidence" with young people. "I refuse to equate the youth of my country with delinquency," he said. "It's as if the young, for some people, were a dangerous class, like workers in the 19th-century. I am not afraid of the young."
The week had started with another example of the violent crime for which the right blames Mr Jospin's government. Mr Jean-Charles Denis (48), an affluent farmer from Brittany, shot dead Regis Ryckbusch (36), a policeman. Mr Denis was drunk driving when he collided with three young people in a car. They ran to the Vannes police station, where Mr Ryckbusch opened the door. Mr Denis fired 25 rounds from a Kalashnikov, killing the policeman. The killer was so drunk that police were not able to question him until the following afternoon.
President Jacques Chirac noted that the homicidal farmer used a "weapon of war" and called on authorities to crack down on arms-trafficking. Kalashnikovs from the former Soviet Union can be purchased in France for €150.
The centre-right candidate, Mr François Bayrou, received an unexpected boost in popularity when he slapped a 15-year-old boy. As education minister, Mr Bayrou had banned the wearing of Muslim headscarves in French schools.