The Return of Hate; Anti-Semitism, fueled by an angry minority, is on the rise. But the real problem is that no one seems to care.

Byline: Marie Valla and Christopher Dickey, With Eric Pape in Carpentras

The dead are locked into the old Jewish cemetery in Carpentras, France, and it's for their own protection. In 1990, four young neo-Nazis hopped over the crumbling stone wall one night, broke tombstones and pulled the remains of a body from its grave. All France was shocked. Outrage spurred more than a million people to march. The country searched its soul and its collaborationist history of anti-Semitism in World War II--76,000 Jews sent from France to the death camps. The public and the government united: never again.

Yet today France records several anti-Semitic incidents every week, and the public is unmoved. For Jews throughout Europe, this apathy is hurtful--and alarming. It's as if bonds of trust and understanding forged in the 60 years since the Holocaust have been broken, threatening their safety and identity. The sense of menace may be out of proportion to the actual physical danger, but it is no less real. In an unsettling sign of the times, growing numbers of French Jews are migrating to Israel, a country effectively at war--890 in 2001 and 2,566 in 2002, with about the same number leaving in 2003.

Belatedly, efforts to reassure French and European Jews are gathering momentum. The Champs-Elysees last week was draped with Israeli flags as Moshe Katsav made the first state visit by an Israeli president since 1988. Brussels hosted a major conference on anti-Semitism, after much debate and many delays, under the auspices of the European Commission--which itself has been accused by Jewish leaders in America of standing by while anti-Semitism surges.

In Carpentras, a picturesque town in Provence that is home to France's oldest synagogue, you get a clear sense of the history that feeds what many French Jews call their "malaise." First built in the 14th century, the synagogue is steeped in lore. Through the Middle Ages, the Renaissance and the Enlightenment, the Jews of Carpentras were banned from such professions as medicine and subjected to deportation or to pogroms. Often they wore the equivalent of yellow stars. Even today, if you slip down the side street next to the majestic entrance of the 15th-century Saint Siffrein Cathedral you will find the Jewish Gate, a back door for those who converted to Roman Catholicism or, unconverted, were forced to listen to catechism.

The synagogue itself is easy to miss. A modest inscription from Psalm 118 next to the entrance reads: HERE IS THE DOOR THAT LEADS TO ETERNITY. THE RIGHTEOUS WILL PASS THROUGH IT. But to do so, you must be buzzed in, and you are videotaped as you go. Metal grilles secure windows, and the sidewalk has been raised to deter car bombers. There has not been a violent incident in Carpentras since the graveyard desecration 14 years ago but, says Genny Levy, a volunteer caretaker, "we have to be vigilant."

The French are increasingly mindful of this history. France today is home to the third biggest Jewish community in the world, after Israel and the United States. These 600,000 Jews live alongside an estimated 5 million Muslims, and until relatively recently they more or less lived in peace. But that changed with the beginning of the second intifada in the occupied territories three years ago. Increasingly, anti-Semitic incidents are perpetrated by young Muslim immigrants who react to scenes on television--Israeli troops attacking Palestinians, dead children in the Gaza Strip--and use those tragedies as an excuse to attack Jews.