Excerpt:
Ending a long and conspicuous silence on the burkini ban in France, the president of the umbrella group of French Jews appeared to support the ban, saying he favored limiting "political-religious" symbols.
In an interview published Monday on the Actualite Juive Jewish news website, Francis Kalifat of CRIF for the first time directly addressed the ban last month by 30 French municipalities on the full-body swimsuit favored by Muslim women seeking modesty.
Kalifat said lawmakers should "consider differentiating religious symbols from political-religious symbols." Radical and sectarian Islam and its fanatics, he said, "are looking for ways today to destabilize the French republic with the aim of vanquishing the societal model we inhabit today."