PARIS, Jan 13: France, home to Europe’s biggest Muslim and Jewish communities, has seen 55 anti-Semitic attacks since the start of Israel’s Gaza offensive, a Jewish student group said.

President Nicolas Sarkozy has appealed for calm and warned that perpetrators of hate crimes will be severely punished if they try to “transpose” the Arab-Israeli conflict to France.

Raphael Haddad, president of the Jewish Students Union of France, said on Monday night that his group had registered 55 anti-Semitic attacks since the start of the Israeli military offensive.

Haddad said the violence was more intense than in 2001 when France was rocked by the spill-over from the second Palestinian intifada that was crushed by the Israeli army. He made the comments at a meeting in Paris of concerned Jewish and Arab groups organised by urban affairs minister Fadela Amara, who has responsibility for France’s volatile high-immigrant suburbs.

Hafid Bouchefa from a community group in a Paris suburb said tensions were running high in ethnically-mixed neighbourhoods.

“There are young people there who are not thinking things through. These are the same ones who torched cars during the 2005 riots,” said Bouchefa.

Participants at the meeting also said they were worried by mass anti-Semitic SMS messages and emails making the rounds and agreed to draft a common appeal urging Jews and Arabs to “live together” in peace.

Three synagogues have been targeted in a week and there have been huge pro-Palestinian protests in cities across France.

In the latest attack, vandals on Sunday night hurled nine firebombs at a synagogue north of Paris in Saint-Denis, setting fire to the next-door kosher restaurant.—AFP