| Vandals scrawled swastikas and "SS" initials on 88 Jewish tombs in eastern France, an anti-Semitic attack that President Jacques Chirac on Saturday called "intolerable." The inscriptions were discovered Saturday in the Jewish cemetery in Brumath, 10 miles north of Strasbourg near the French-German border, authorities said. Chirac condemned "this intolerable act with the greatest firmness," his office said in a statement. The French leader also asked that the government "take all the measures necessary without delay to find, arrest and bring to justice the authors of this odious act." The government says the number of anti-Semitic acts appears to have rebounded this year, with 166 counted in the first nine months of 2004, compared with 127 for all of last year. In 2002, the Interior Ministry counted 195 such acts. |