Netanyahu slams 'shocking' anti-Semitic vandalism in France

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Tuesday slammed the "shocking" anti-Semitic vandalism of a French cemetery, which prompted a cabinet colleague to urge French Jews to "come home" to Israel.

"Today something shocking happened in France. Eighty Jewish graves were desecrated with Nazi symbols by wild anti-Semites," Netanyahu said in a video clip released by his office.

"I call on the leaders of France and Europe to take a strong stand against anti-Semitism. It is a plague that endangers everyone, not just us," he said.

The graves were daubed with swastikas at a Jewish cemetery in the village of Quatzenheim, close to the border with Germany in the Alsace region.

Photos show the Nazi symbols in blue spray-painted on the damaged graves, one of which bears the words "Elsassisches Schwarzen Wolfe" ("Black Alsatian Wolves"), a separatist group with links to neo-Nazis in the 1970s.

Immigration Minister Yoav Gallant said the vandalism "conjures images of dark times in the history of .