The Very Real Jewish Exodus From France

Tablet Magazine: French Jews are quietly moving to New York, London, and Israel

The imperiled condition of French Jewry, at this point, is pretty well-trod territory. That said, one’s shock at a statistic like the 58 percent rise in anti-Semitic attacks in France last year, may not diminish.

A few weeks ago, an article chronicled the growth of a French Jewish community in the United Kingdom. To accommodate the influx, St. John’s Wood Synagogue in London started hosting French-language Shabbat services. Here’s one about the French Jews arriving in Israel at a rate of 2,000 per year.

Earlier this week, La Stampa revealed a similar expansion of French Jews in the Upper West Side of New York.

To understand what’s happening, we have to go to the Jewish Centre on 86th Street where, in March 2012, the Jewish New Yorkers urged their French counterparts to commemorate the victims of the shooting in the “Ozar Hatorah” school in Toulouse, where the jihadist Mohammed Merah killed a rabbi and three children.

Leading the ceremony was Zachary, 29, a transport manager from Strasbourg. “If New York is full of French Jews- he explains- it’s because in 2002, in connection with the second Palestinian Intifada, a season of physical aggression began towards us from the Arabs that still hasn’t stopped. It just brought the conflict from the Middle East onto our streets.”

From the sounds of it, the ferment of French Jewry’s plight has been a full decade in coming and not just a few years as it’s been assumed. It’s stunning to remember the way that former Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon–at the height of the Second Intifada no less–infamously instructed French Jews to move to Israel for their own safety. His remarks were blasted by French leaders–both Jewish and not–including the French foreign ministry, who called on Sharon for an explanation of his “unacceptable comments.”

It’s manifested itself not just in terrorist attacks, arson, assaults, or acts like the planting of a fake bomb near the Hillel Center in Lyon earlier this week, but in language as well. For each incident of anti-Semitic graffiti, consider several thousand or more digital analogues. Writing in Tablet today, Jillian Scheinfeld outlined an actual, popular trend of anti-Semitic hate speech on Twitter.

Last October, when the hashtag #UnBonJuif reached the top three on Twitter’s trending topics list in France, a French Jewish student group, the Union of French Jewish Students, complained directly to the San Francisco-based social networking giant asking for the names of Twitter users promoting the anti-Semitic hashtag. When Twitter failed to respond, the students took their case to a French court—and won.

A court order may ultimately impel Twitter to police its users more thoroughly, but even if that accomplishment is managed, there’s still a whole world offline and in the dark.

Anti-Semitisme: does France really have anti-incitement laws?

The French seem to have laws against incitement and even against Holocaust denial (Gayssot law). Yet France produces lots of antisemitic material - with total impunity as the case of cartoonist Zeon shows.  As many Europeans he is obsessed with Jews and the United States.  These images come from Zéon's blog.  

Isn't this Holocaust-denying?

Photoshopping (above).

This cartoon comes with the following invitation: spread this image widely.

David Meyer, an Israel-bashing rabbi testified in Congress on European anti-Semitism

Times of Israel: "Twelve experts of varying religions and homelands urged the US Congress to speak out against hate speech and anti-Semitism throughout the world, notably Europe. The human rights subcommittee of the US House Foreign Affairs Committee held a two-hour hearing on Wednesday in which experts testified that anti-Semitism is resurgent, particularly in Europe."

It is indeed odd that David Meyer, a French rabbi who lives in Belgium and who is a relentless and harsh critic of Israel who advocates a bi-national State was invited as an "expert" on anti-Semitism to the United States Congress.  Rabbi Meyer is more known for his criticism of Israel on the European media than for his fight against anti-Semitism.  Pity that in his exposé before the Committee he didn't elaborate on his unbelievable views on Israel.

In 2010, he gave an interview titled "It is more than time for Israel to wake up" to the French communist paper L'Humanité. This is how he was introduced: "Rabbi David Meyer holds dual French and Israeli citizenship. He is the author of several books and now lives in Belgium. He has been a committed militant for years and has unrelentlessly denounced the colonization [settlements] which he considers a fault on the part of the Israeli leadership. He has also been a critic of the blockade imposed by Tel Aviv [the capital of Israel!] on the Gaza Strip. He strongly condemns the attack against the peace flotilla off the strip of Palestinian land and calls on the Israeli leadership to "open their eyes" and to come out of their "messianic bubble".

"What is your reaction to last week's tragic events [Turkish flotilla]?
David Meyer: "I find them appalling. And I think that in such circumstances the role of religion is to show to those in one's own camp [the Jews] that they are no longer able to see [i.e. that they are blind]. There in the Jewish world and in Israel an inability to see what it means to put hundreds of thousands of people in prison for years just because they voted for Hamas. This is what Israel is doing in the Gaza strip. It is a sign of absolute failure of Israel vis-à-vis the Palestinian issue. This is very serious. Israeli leaders have no excuses, no mitigating circumstances. You do not kill civilians, especially when you are responsible for the situation created by the blockade. If the Jewish world does not wake up, nothing Jewish will be left in the State of Israel and it will of no interest. Jewish tradition teaches us that man must be able to surpass himself and see the human side even in his enemy and in the friend of his enemy. If the Jews of Israel are no longer capable of this, Israel will not survive. This is my fight and I am determined to continue."

When asked about a European movement JCALL inspired by J Street, Meyer boasts that over the previous decade he has gone much further and said things much harsher about Israel than those contained in the "call" and that he "even said before the last election that one has to become a dissendent on the face of what the State of Israel is becoming. We must call a spade a spade and say that there are moral faults when creating an injustice that is not necessary for one's survival. The colonization [settlements] is not necessary. I signed the petition to express that while showing my commitment to Israel". He complains that religion in Israel has "infected the secular world". And how will the future of Israel unfold? " I have always thought that long-term solution will be a federal and bi-national State, but it should go through a temporary phase of two States, Israel and Palestine. My model is Belgium, where we live together even if we do not like one other. Obviously, what is happening in Belgium is worrying, because if the federal model no longer works here, there is little change it will succeed there." He praises Jimmy Carter and criticises Barack Obama: "An outside power - the United States have the capacity - must force Israel out of its isolation and say, as Carter did in his time: "Enough is enough". I was hoping that Obama would do it, and I do not understand his procrastination."

58% rise in anti-Semitic attacks in France in 2012

France saw an increase of 58 percent in anti-Semitic incidents in 2012 compared to the previous year, according to a report by the French Jewish community. The report released Tuesday by the SPCJ, the security unit of France’s Jewish communities, showed that 614 anti-Semitic acts were documented in the republic last year compared to 389 in 2011.

"2012 has been a year of unprecedented violence against Jews in France", according to the report, which referenced the shooting murders of a rabbi and three Jewish children on March 19 by an Islamist radical at a Jewish school in Toulouse. Incidents in which the victims were accosted physically or verbally on the street witnessed an increase of 82 percent, to 315 last year from 177 cases in 2011, SPCJ said.

A fourth of the 96 physical anti-Semitic assaults involved a weapon. The SPCJ report reflects a near doubling in physical anti-Semitic assaults, of which 57 were documented in 2011. SPCJ notes two peaks in anti-Semitic attacks in 2012: following the Toulouse shooting, when 90 acts were recorded within 10 days, and after the October 6 bombing of a kosher supermarket in Sarcelles in which two people were lightly wounded, when 28 acts were recorded in the next eight days.

Jewish Child and 20-Year-Old Attacked in France

Sadly, but the only thing European Jews can do is to express "profound indignation"...  again and again and the situation gets worse!

Algemeiner: Two young Jews were attacked in France this week, one in Marseille and one in the same Toulouse school where a gunman killed a rabbi and three Jewish children in March of 2012.

- On Monday a young man wearing a Star of David pendant was assaulted outside Marseille’s main railway station, Gare Saint- Charles, by a group of men who approached him on a scooter, shouted anti-Semitic slurs at him, hit him, stole his MP3 player and 100 euros, tore the pendant off his neck and drove away.

-  Meanwhile, on Wednesday at the entrance to the Ohr Torah school in Toulouse, which was renamed from Otzar Hatorah after the shooting last year, a student left the school wearing a kippa and was approached by a woman brandishing a knife. School guards immediately arrested the woman, and she was later sent to psychiatric detention. She did not reveal a motive for trying to attack the student.

-  Since the March gunman attack at the Toulouse school, anti-Semitic incidents in France have increased by 45 percent, reported SPCJ, the security service of the French Jewish community. Eugene Caselli, the president of the Urban Community of Marseille Provence Métropole, expressed his "profound indignation and rage at this unacceptable act of racist violence," according to the Jerusalem Post.

Must Jewish celebrities behave like Dhimmis?

Point of no return (December 10, 2012)

If you'll pardon the Yiddish expression, Jews the world over kvell with pride when they learn that the makers of the film 'Untouchable' are two French Jews of North African origin, Olivier Nakache and Eric Toledano. The film has confounded all expectations and enchanted audiences all over the world. It's one of the box-office smash hits of 2012. 'Untouchable' is the story of a black carer 'from the other side of the tracks' who injects a bit of excitement into a rich paraplegic's limited existence - limited, that is, from the neck down.

But the actor who plays the quadriplegic, François Cluzet, has been outspoken on behalf of a Palestinian terrorist with a French mother, Salah Hamouri. Hamouri, a member of the Marxist PFLP, was jailed for seven years for plotting to assassinate the Sephardi chief rabbi Ovadia Yosef. Having become something of a 'cause celebre', he was subsequently released in the exchange with the Israeli prisoner Gilad Shalit in 2011, but remains unrepentant.

 Cluzet has never been challenged for falsely alleging, on France's FR 2 (the TV channel which first broke the 'Al Dura' hoax), that Hamouri was jailed by Israel merely for speaking out against Israeli 'colonialism'. In spite of the main watchdog against antisemitism (BNVCA) berating them for 'disinformation and incitement to hatred', the French media have never made any effort to correct Cluzet's lies.

Where do Olivier Nakache and Eric Toledano stand? The two friends are ostensibly proud of their heritage. Their first film was based on their experiences running the Jewish summer camp of Yaniv. They appeared on French-Jewish radio to promote their film 'Untouchable'. But instead of condemning Cluzet's political views, they gave evasive and mealy-mouthed answers. They claimed that Cluzet had been misunderstood and misrepresented. Cluzet is not the first, nor will he be the last, actor to hold anti-Israel and pro-Palestinian views. Hollywood is full of 'useful idiots' like him. Hardly a week goes by without some celebrity climbing on a boycott bandwagon or signing petitions. If Cluzet is nominated for an Oscar in February 2013, shouldn't the media and the selection committee be made aware of his political militancy? Equally, the issue here is whether two proud Sephardi Jews should use their position in the public eye to correct defamation and distortion. Do they have a duty not to let Cluzet get away with it ? Or must Jews who have achieved fame and fortune always behave like dhimmis?

French writer: Israel knew of plans to kill Sadat and did nothing

"In their [Israelis] eyes, Yasser Arafat embodied Palestine, and Palestine is an obscene word in their eyes." Gérard de Villiers

The New York Times interviewed Gérard de Villiers, the French author of the best-selling S.A.S. espionage series. Unsurprisingly he had to claim that Israel knew that Egyptian President Anwar Sadat was going to be murdered and did nothing about it. A truly appalling and unsubstantiated accusation:

"In 1980, he wrote a novel in which militant Islamists murder the Egyptian president, Anwar Sadat, a year before the actual assassination took place. When I asked him about it, de Villiers responded with a Gallic shrug. “The Israelis knew it was going to happen,” he said, “and did nothing.”"

De Villiers, wrote an conspirational Israel-bashing piece in Atlantico, a conservative French news site, about Arafat's "poisoning". This is a translation of what he wrote:

"The discovery by a Swiss scientific laboratory of polonium-210 traces on clothes that belonged to Yasser Arafat only strengthens the rumours that have been circulating among the intelligence community since his death to the effect that the Israeli Secret Services assassinated the old Palestinian leader. Obviously, there is no evidence and there may never be any. However, several factors argue in favor of this thesis. Foremost the blind hatred, which can verge on the irrational, rooted at the heart of the Israeli leadership. Somewhat comparable to the hatred the United States feels towards Iran since the hostage taking at the U.S. Embassy in Tehran in 1979.

Israelis have never considered the Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO) as a possible partner, but as a ennemy. They did everything to kill it off. Including contributing significantly to the birth of Hamas, with a view to weaken the PLO. From their point of view, they have succeeded by splitting the two Palestinian movements, but in the process they created a new and much more determined ennemy. When they besieged Arafat in his Ramallah headquarters, they clealy tried to kill him, by shooting directly at him. In their eyes, Yasser Arafat embodied Palestine, and Palestine is an obscene word in their eyes. He had to disappear. Despite all his faults, the old leader was still an icon. The physical elimination of political opponents is a constant and official dogma of Israeli policy. Israel is the only country that officially maintains a brigade of assassins, the kinodim. A special Mossad unit with professional assassins. There are around sixty of them including a dozen women. They are the official executioners of the State of Israel. When they kill they do not break the law. They carry out a sentence issued by the "war cabinet" and the Prime Minister. Such a sentence must relate to a person who is a danger to Israel. They have killed mostly PLO and Hamas executives. And they made a few mistakes. In Norway, Lillehammer, they killed an innocent waiter by mistaking him for a terrorist, Abu Nidal. [...]"

Back to Arafat's "poisoning":

"There is nothing surprising about their use of poison. I met in Amman, Jordan, Khaled Mashal, when he was only the Hamas spokesman and two Mossad kidonim had tried to poison him by shooting a deadly gas at him with a gun. Another example: the Mossad has for a long time used a "home" product, a toothpaste laced with Thallium. It is a highly toxic slow-killing substance. The "target" is poisoned every morning while brushing his teeth .... As to Arafat, it has been stressed that he did not show symptoms caused by polonium-210 similar to those of Litvinenko when he was poisoned in London by the Russian Secret Services. They disregard the fact that Litvinenko had received a strong dose fit to kill a herd of elephants ... The Israelis are far more subtle. A much lower dose is sufficient to kill. One last point: there is no doubt that Mossad would have access to polonium-210 designed to trigger nukes which Israel has."

Not to be gay-friendly in Paris is like wearing an SS uniform in Israel

Source: A Former French Minister Roselyne Bachelot and her son Pierre Bachelot attended a pro- same-sex marriage demonstration in Paris. For them not to be not to be gay-friendly in Paris would to down like wearing an SS uniform in Israel.   This was said on January 27 ... the Holocaust Memorial Day.  Sadly, the Holocaust is now used to any purpose...

French historian: islamophobia has replaced antisemitism

Commenting on a survey showing that 74% of French respondents believe the Muslim religion is ''intolerant'' and incompatible with their social values, French historian Michel Winock told Le Monde that one of the things that had struck him was that islamophobia had replaced antisemitism in France.

Whereas, Martin Schulz, President of the Israel-bashing European Parliament, told during Holocaust Remembrance Day that "Jews are living in fear in Europe".  Every year one hears the same speeches... and nothing changes.  All this points to the fact that lessons have not been learned.  Who would have thought?

New book exposes indifference to Nazis after World War II

A lot has been written about the Holocaust and its perpetrators, but very little about the many Nazis who escaped all form of punishment.  It was left to the victims, like Simon Wiesenthal, who with his wife had lost 90 members of his family, to go after their tormentors and killers. Even those who were tried were treated with astonishing leniency.  That was the case of the infamous Edmund Veesenmayer, a German politician, officer (SS-Brigadeführer) and war criminal. He significantly contributed to The Holocaust in Hungary and Croatia. He was a subordinate of Ernst Kaltenbrunner and Joachim von Ribbentrop; and collaborated with Adolf Eichmann in Hungary. Veesenmeyer was sentenced to 20 years' imprisonment in 1949, which was reduced to 10 years in 1951. He was released on December 16 of the same year, having served almost 6 minutes for each murder that he was responsible for (500,000 victims).

Algemeiner: A new book claims that governments around the world were unwilling to track down Nazi criminals in the wake of World War II because of “vested interests.”

The UK’s Daily Mail writes that “Nazi Hunt: South America’s Dictatorships and the Avenging of Nazi Crimes,” by German historian Daniel Stahl [1], calls the half-hearted efforts of postwar governments a ‘coalition of the unwilling.’

Stahl writes that the French feared prosecutions would expose their collaboration during the war, the South Americans feared a spotlight on their own murderous regimes and the West Germans wanted to help ‘old comrades’ get away.

The Daily Mail article refers specifically to Joseph Mengele, “The Angel of Death,” Gustav Wagner, responsible for 150,000 deaths at the Nazi extermination camp of Sobibor and S.S. Colonel Walther Rauff, one of the developers of the mobile ‘gas vans’ used to kill Jews before the static death camp gulag was built.

Even Interpol, the international criminal police organization, failed to aid in tracking down the Nazis.

Interpol secretary general Marcel Sicot, responding to a request in 1962 from Jewish organizations to more vigorously track them down, said: “Why should war criminals be prosecuted since the victor always imposes his laws, anyway?”

“No international entity defines the term ‘war criminal.’” Sicot said he regarded the criminal prosecution of Nazi crimes as “victor’s justice.”

Is there an Anti-Zionist political party? Yes. In France.

French comedian Dieudonné will be a candidate at the parliamentary elections for France's Anti-Zionist Party in June at Dreux (Eure-et-Loir).

To our knowledge, although in other European countries anti-Semitism remains a major cause for concern, France is the only country with an anti-Zionist party and where an "artist" with Dieudonné's views remains tremendously popular.

More on Dieudonné HERE.

Cannes film festival: hatred Israel meets with applause by journalists

(ANSAmed) - CANNES, MAY 17 - "I do not want my film in Israel at least until the Israelis treat the Palestinians in occupied territories better," the Egyptian director, Yousry Nasrallah, has said of his film "After the Battle", which is competition at the 65th Cannes Film Festival. The comments, which are sure to spark controversy, came as the director answered a question from an Israeli journalist, who had inquired as to whether the film would be released in Israel. Nasrallah's firm response was greeted by applause from some in the press room. "Why are you applauding?" asked Nasrallah. "I don't have anything against Israel, I have Israeli friends like Gitai, but while my people have tried to review some of their positions, the same does not seem to apply to Israel".

The French media are absolutely delighted at Nasrallah's double-standards.  When European journalists applauded  him, he pretended to be surprised and criticised them...  Nasrallah also said that Israel is not a ally of the Egyptian revolution... or Arab Spring if you prefer.

And last year at Cannes: Top antisemitic slur film director Lars von Triers wins best movie at European film awards

New French F.A. Minister deplores leniency towards Israel

Le Monde: A report on foreign policy written in 2010 by the newly appointed French Foreign Affairs Minister Laurent Fabius indicates that a Socialist government will make a departure from the excessive leniency of Sarkozy's (not noted to be a great friend of Israel either) policy towards the Israel government:

"We shall break with the excessive leniency of the French government towards the Israeli leadership.  We shall tell them to move out quickly from the colonized territories."

French lawyer: Israel war crimes question festers

Yesterday we posted a translation of this interview without realising that Euronews has posted an English version.  It has also posted a version in Turkish and Arabic (but not a Hebrew one!) and several other languages.

- Gilles Devers, avocat : "les crimes de guerre israéliens sont trop gros pour être cachés" (original in French)
- Israel war crimes question festers
- “Europa spielt mit Palästina ein doppeltes Spiel”
- Devers: “L’Europa con Israele fa il doppio gioco”
- Gaza: “El crimen es demasiado grande para ser ocultado”
- Gilles Devers o advogado que defende a Palestina nas mais altas instâncias jurídicas
- “İşlenen suç İsrail’in saklayamayacağı kadar büyük”
- Адвокат Жіль Девер: “З яких таких причин безпеки не дозволяють експортувати квіти з Гази?”
- جيل دفيرز ليورونيوز: ملف الأسرى الفلسطينيين سيحال إلى المحكمة الجنائية الدولية


Consuelo Maldonado, Euronews: Gilles Devers, you are the spokesman for a group of lawyers who, in 2009, filed a complaint of war crimes against Israeli officers with the International Criminal Court. Since then, what progress has there been?

Gilles Devers: The facts are established in the Goldstone Report. Everybody knows that warcrimes and crimes against humanity have been committed. While Palestine has the legal competence but has not exercised it because of the occupation, it can transfer this to the International Criminal Court. We are in a waiting phase which, unfortunately, corresponds with a double standard that has always been a mark of international law. But the crime is too big to be hidden.

Euronews: You have been given a mandate by Gaza’s minister of justice to defend the rights of Palestinian prisoners. Are you looking at filing a new complaint with the international court?

Devers: For the prisoners it is systematic torture, unfair judgements and conditions of detention – three chapters of violation of international law, therefore yes, the prisoners’ cases will be put before the International Criminal Court.

Euronews: You are also investigating a case which in Gaza is called ‘the number cemeteries’. What is that about?

Devers: Some detainees die in prison and Israel refuses to hand over their bodies, which is to say they make dead bodies serve sentences. Therefore, through the International Red Cross, we tell the families when someone has died, but the family does not have a death certificate, so they do not even know, are never sure if there has been a death, and the bodies are buried in numbered cemeteries. The person becomes a number and continues to serve out his sentence when he is dead.

euronews: How many are we talking about?

Devers: When we last visited Gaza, we worked with the authorities and found that 350 families were concerned.

European TV: French lawyer says Israel punishes Palestinian prisoners' corpses

"A number of inmates die in prison and Israel refuses to return the bodies, i.e. Israel enforces sentences on corpses. So we notify the families through the Red Cross that they have died, but the family does not get a death certificate, and it cannot even be sure, it is never sure, whether death has occurred or not, and the bodies are buried in cemeteries which are numbered. The person becomes a number and continues to serve the sentence when dead."

This is what Europeans listen to on Euronews (funded among others by the European Union), and other European news outlets about Israel. Gilles Devers is a French lawyer and is interviewed in French by Spanish-speaking journalist Consuelo Maldonado.The transcript has been translated with the help of Google.  You can read the original and watch the video HERE.  Bear in mind that Euronews offers "information from a European perspective".

Euronews:
"Maître Gilles Devers, good evening. You are the spokesman for the group of lawyers who filed in January 2009, a complaint before the International Criminal Court for war crimes against Israeli officers. Since then, has there been progress?"

Gilles Devers:
"The facts were established by the Goldstone report, everyone knows that war crimes and crimes against humanity were committed. If Palestine has jurisdiction and cannot exercise it because of the occupation, it may transfer it to the International Criminal Court. Currently, we are in a waiting phase, which corresponds, unfortunately, to a double standard that marks the life of international law, but the crime is too big to be hidden."

Euronews:
"You have been appointed by the Minister of Justice in Gaza to defend the rights of Palestinian prisoners. Are there any plan to file a new complaint with the ICC?"

Gilles Devers:
"For prisoners, it is the systematic torture, judgments that are not fair and also there are the conditions of detention, three chapters of international law violations. So yes, the files of prisoners will be filed with the International Criminal Court."

Palestinian Authority unhappy with Gilad Shalit's release terms, complains to Europe

Issa Qaraqe came to Brussels with a nine other people and was also received by the Belgian parliament.  He told Belgian newspaper Le Soir: "At least people listen to me here in Brussels. European parliamentarians, European Commission senior officials, Catherine Ashton cabinet, the two chambers of the Belgian Parliament and several organisations have received me and listened to me. My message is to plead with them to put pressure on Israel - and if needs be to reconsider the association agreements that include a clause on human rights - to make this State [of Israel] respects the rights of prisoners on the one hand (those Gaza have no right to family visits, for example) and their release of the other. Israel considers itself above international law and this is everybody's concern". As to Gilad Shalit's release the minister, who spent ten years in detention in Israel, claimed that it sent the wrong signal that the only way to free Palestinian prisoners requires the kidnapping of Israeli soldiers.

Qaraqe Calls on European Parliament to Investigate Palestinian Prisoners Situation
BRUSSELS, December 6, 2011 (WAFA) - Minister of Detainees and Ex-Detainees, Issa Qaraqe, Tuesday called on the European parliament to send a fact-finding committee to investigate Palestinian prisoners’ conditions and suffering in Israeli jails.

In a meeting in Brussels with Vice-Chairman of the Foreign Affairs Committee of the European Parliament, Tokia Saïfi [a former French Minister in Jacques Chirac's government], Qaraqe gave a detailed description of the difficult situation prisoners face in Israeli jails, which violates all international laws and humanitarian values.

He added that Israel does not care for any criticism regarding its violent and inhumane measures against prisoners, including 23 members of the Palestinian parliament, who are also considered international parliamentarians and cannot be detained under any justification.

Qaraqa said there is an unjustified delay by the European parliament in taking the required decisions to insure the protection of prisoners.

He stressed the need for the European parliament to support the Palestinian bid to the United Nations in order to determine the legal status of prisoners, and to be able to protect them in accordance with the relevant laws.

On her part, Saifi said she will support the request to send a fact-finding committee to the Israeli prisons as soon as possible, stressing the need to get all the information for the parliament in dealing with the prisoners’ issue.

French Jewish policians evicted ahead of election

The negotiations between the French Socialist party and the Greens for the appointment of candidates in Paris  for the upcoming elections resulted in the booting out of several Jewish politicians Serge Blisko, Tony Dreyfus, Danièle Hoffman Rispal and Daniel Goldberg.

The CRIF (French Jewish umbrella organisation) also points out that Yves Contassot who will be put forward as a candidate is a well known Israel-basher.  The whole left Socialist party and the Greens are anti-Israel, but Contassot is know for among one of the most virulent.

Elisabeth Guigou, a former minister who will replace, Daniel Goldberg also has a history of Israel-bashing and supports Israel boycott campaign.

More 'warnings' and criticism from France to Israel

This is a little known fact. France has a Consulate in Gaza, thus recognizing the legitimacy of  Hamas terrorist government in the Gaza Strip.  And the site HERE.  It is very cleverly done.  America has a virtual e-consulate in Gaza, France has a physical very real consulate.

Source: Aroutz Sheva 7

France warned Israel on Tuesday not to endanger civilians after one of its diplomats and his family was wounded in a retaliatory strike carried out by the IAF.

French foreign ministry spokesman Bernard Valero said the French consul in Gaza, 'Franco-Palestinian' citizen Majdi Shakura, was injured in an airstrike on the Hamas-run enclave in the early hours of Monday morning.

According to Shakura, the blast blew out the windows of his house, resulting in the diplomat and his 13-year-old daughter being cut by flying glass and his 42-year-old wife to miscarry two months into her pregnancy.

The strike reportedly targeted the nearby home of a member of the Hamas terror organization, which controls Gaza. Local emergency services said a 20-year-old member of Hamas' 'naval security forces' was killed in the strike.

"France regrets this airstrike," Valero said. "While being committed to Israeli security, France notes the absolute necessity of avoiding all harm to civilians. The Israeli authorities have been reminded of this imperative."

Legal experts note – contrary to popular belief – there is no such requirement under international laws governing warfare.  Billeting combatants, storing munitions, and launching attacks from civilian areas as Hamas does is a violation of international law. Nor is Israel proscribed from launching counter-strikes on such areas if legitimate military targets are present.

Abravanel: Antisemitic ministers and Holocaust deniers enter the new Greek government

In other words a minister of the Greek government [Adonis Georgiadis] was called by a neonazi [Konstantin Plevris] to defend his book which advocated the extermination of the Greek Jewish Community.  (About Plevris see: - K. Plevris: "I am a Nazi and a fascist, I am racist, anti-democratic and I am an anti-Semite" and Kostas Plevris: Hitler could have rid Europe of the Jews but did not.)  And guess what?  Nicolas Sarkozy has sent his congratulations to the new Government. European politicians, the elites, the media and the European Commission have remained silent and focused their attention on Berlusconi's departure.  Thus avoiding unpleasant subjects.

“Let’s talk about the myth of Auschwitz and Dachau and talk about these ovens, to talk about these gas chambers, whether the gas chambers were insulated to hold gas inside or they were simple bricks” (George Karatzaferis). 

Source: Abravanel blog

A. What happened ?

Under international pressure over erroneous political decisions concerning the economic policy, the socialist government led by Yorgos Papandreou collapsed. A new government of national unity was formed led by former European Central Bank vice-president Lukas Papademos and supported by the majoritarian socialist party PASOK, the conservative Nea Dimokratia and the far-Right LàOS; the leftist SYRIZA and the Greek Communist Party have declined to participate. Although there is a long history of public antisemitism within all greek parties, it was usually kept under control by moderate leadership; these new developments mark the first time that the antisemitic far-Right gains institutional access and real power by entering in four ministries with one minister and three undersecretaries.

B. The recent history of the LàOS party

Until 2000 the greek Far-Right practically consisted of two major groups: the faction inside the greek conservative party of Nea Dimokratia and a small neonazi galaxy of groups in which the violent Chrisi Avgi, (Golden Dawn) was prominent. The domination of the two major parties, the conservative Nea Dimokratia and the socialist PASOK in which nationalistic and antisemitic sentiments were tolerated but also kept in check, gave grounds to the often cited but misleading assumption that a strong Far-Right does not exist in Greece.

All this changed when Yorgos Karatzaferis, a parliamentarian from Nea Dimokratia was expelled in 2000 when he accused the party leader of being surrounded by gays. Immediately after he created his new party called LàOS, (Popular Orthodox Rally), which managed 4 years later to enter the European Parliament and 3 years afterwards to enter the Greek Parliament.

French newspaper op-ed: analogy of occupation and rape of Palestine by Israel

Source: CRIF

Libération, a French newspaper with a large readership, published an op-ed by Rana Nashashibi, a Palestinian from Jerusalem, who is a teacher and a militant, entitled : "Peace process, an empty concept". She explains that Israel is not at war with the Palestinians because it is the occupying and colonial power.

Then she develops the idea of the Palestinian  people being raped by Israel.  This was developed at length in this essay 2004 at the German Goethe Institute: Violence against Women, The Analogy of Occupation and Rape; “The case of the Palestininan People”

She writes in Libération (translation): "We, Palestinians, we want a peace which gives us back justice and freedom. The international community wants Israelis and Palestinians to reach an agreement without interfering and without putting pressure on Israel. This situation can be compared to that of the police officer who flies to the rescue of a raped woman raped and then asks the couple to agree to inform him of the situation, so that he may bless it. Those who read this sentence, particularly the militants who fight against violence and rape, know that this demand and this situation are absurd! How can an agreement be forced upon an usurped Palestinian woman without stopping in the first place transgressions (violations) and rape?"

No wonder that only 32% of the Israeli public consider that France is friendly to Israel.  There is not a single French newspaper which has a neutral line on Israel.  They are either critical or ferociously critical.  And don't say it is anti-semitism - quite a few French journalists are Jewish ... and one of the main shareholders of Libération is Jewish: "In January 2005, Édouard de Rothschild invested 20 million euros for a 37% majority shareholding in the French newspaper Libération. The left-wing daily was founded by philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre and Maoist militant journalist Serge July in 1973 but in recent years has sustained substantial losses."