French Interior Minister Christophe Castaner said the latest desecration was “an expression of pure hatred” and President Emmanuel Macron pledged that France would fight anti-Semitism “until our dead can sleep in peace.”

PARIS—France has decided to create a national office to counter hate crime.

French Interior Minister Christophe Castaner announced the creation of this new body within the police following the desecration of 107 graves with swastikas and other anti-Semitic graffiti  in a Jewish cemetery in the eastern Alsace region.

The vandalism took place just hours after a similar one in the nearby village of Schaffhouse-sur-Zorn, where anti-Jewish inscriptions were found. Last week, anti-Semitic tags were drawn on the walls of the town hall in Rohr, not far from Westhoffen.

Earlier his year, swastikas on 80 gravestones in a Jewish cemetery in the village of Quatzenheim were discovered.

Castaner said the latest desecration was “an expression of pure hatred” and President Emmanuel Macron pledged that France would fight anti-Semitism “until our dead can sleep in peace.”

The new anti-hate crime office will be crated in France’s gendarmerie -the paramilitary police- and will be charged with investigating anti-Semitic, anti-Muslim and anti-Christian acts.

Concretely, this office will have the form of a “cell”, already tested for a few months in Alsace on acts similar to those of Westhoffen, said the minister’s office.

The president of CRIF, the representative bidy of French Jewish institutions, Francis Kalifat, welcomed the creation of a body to fight against hatred. He told daily Le Figaro: “I welcome this announcement because it’s been months, maybe years, that I keep saying hate – whether it’s anti-Semitism, racism, homophobia, or even sexism – gangrene French society and one must take radical measures. The announcement of the creation of a national office specifically dedicated to the fight against hatred can only be welcomed positively.”

Also this week, France’s parliament approved a resolution calling on the government to adopt the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance’s working definition of anti-Semitism which states that anti-Zionism is a form of anti-Semitism.