For some unknown reason, without a single shred of evidence, the New York Times blames yesterday’s attack on a Jewish center in Paris on “neo-Nazis:” Neo-Nazis in Paris Vandalize and Burn a Jewish Community Center. (Hat tip: davesax.)

PARIS, Aug. 22 - Fire swept through a Jewish community center in eastern Paris in the early morning hours on Sunday after arsonists broke into the building and scrawled swastikas and anti-Semitic slogans inside. It was the latest in a wave of neo-Nazi acts across the country.

The community center, which prepares kosher food for needy Jews, occupies the ground floor of a five-story residential building. There were no casualties.

President Jacques Chirac and other politicians were quick to issue statements condemning the attack and vowing to find and punish those who carried it out. The Paris mayor, Bertrand Delanoë, visited the scene on Sunday and said he felt “shock and horror.”

The attack comes at a particularly sensitive time for the city, falling between two emotional anniversaries. On Aug. 18, 1944, the Red Cross entered a Nazi detention camp outside Paris, freeing about 1,500 Jews who were awaiting deportation to death camps in Germany. A week later, Paris itself was liberated from the Nazis.

Much of the neo-Nazi activity in France this year has been concentrated in the eastern region of Alsace, traditionally a German-speaking area along the German border. Officials there say Alsace’s neo-Nazi movement is an extension of a broader movement in Germany. On Saturday, about 3,000 people took part in a neo-Nazi march in the German town of Wunsiedel, about 250 miles from Alsace, to commemorate the death, in 1987, of Hitler’s deputy Rudolf Hess.

What would we do without the New York Times to protect us from the big bad awful truth? Islamic group claims responsibility for Jewish center attack.

The group, Jamaat Ansar Al-Jihad, issued a claim of responsibility Sunday evening on the Islamic Web site known for militant Islamic comment.

The message said the attack was “in response to racist acts by Jews in France against Islam and the Muslims and the desecration of Muslim cemeteries by Jews”.

“It is also meant … as a simple response to the racist and savage acts by Jews in Muslim countries like Palestine and other Muslim and Arab countries,” it said.

It said such “acts are carried out by the descendents of monkeys and pigs, with the help of the French government which stands idle before the Jews at the expense of the Muslims in France,” AFP news agency reported.