Today's Date:

The speaker of the Israeli Knesset, Reuven Rivlin, thanked France Monday for its fight against anti-Semitism at a ceremony at the Jewish cemetery of Herrlisheim near Colmar where 127 gravestones were vandalized at the end of April.

We very much appreciate the French government s efforts to combat anti-Semitism and neo-fascism, said Mr. Rivlin who was accompanied by Knesset member Eli Menahem.

« We trust France, the mother of all democracies, which has had experience of the disasters of fascism, to fight this phenomenon », he continued, adding he hoped the perpetrators would be brought to trial.

« The vandals have shown that the nightmare could become a reality again, » Mr. Rivlin told the 50 or so who had gathered for the ceremony, before reciting a prayer in Hebrew.

Haut Rhin Prefect Paul Masseron said « justice will be done, » echoing the words of Education Minister François Fillon at an inter-faith ceremony at the Herrlisheim cemetery on May 6.

The desecration of the Jewish cemetery, discovered in the morning of April 30, provoked a wave of indignation in France, relayed at the highest level of the state. 127 tombstones were defaced with neo-Nazi and Anti-Semitic graffiti. The stone reminding visitors of the Jewish prayer for the dead was one of those defaced with the words, « Juden raus. »