France: Court slaps $15,000 fine on admirer of quasi-Nazi salute

Via JTA:

A French court fined and gave a suspended prison sentence to a man who disseminated a picture of a quasi-Nazi salute being performed at a Jewish school.

On Wednesday, the Toulouse Appeals Court hit Noel Gerard with a $15,000 fine and a six-month suspended term for incitement to hatred.

In 2014, he shared a picture on social media of a man performing the salute known as the quenelle in front of the Ohr Hatorah school, where in 2012 a jihadist killed a rabbi and three children, the news site 20minutes reported.

The quenelle is promoted by the anti-Semitic comedian Dieudonne M’bala M’bala, whose critics say it is a variant of the Nazi salute designed to express admiration for the murder of Jews without incurring the punishment reserved in the French penal code for doing so.

French courts rarely hand out prison sentences, even suspended ones, and such heavy fines on actions like the one committed by Gerard.

Gerard, 34, who is known in online anti-Semitic circles as “Joe le Corbeau” — French for “Joe Crow” — was arrested in 2014 near Marseille in southern France.

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France: BDS activists convicted of Holocaust denial

Via Midi-Libre, Liberation:

Two BD Sactivists were convicted by a Montpellier court of incitement and Holocaust denial and fined 3000 euro.  They will also have to pay a very symbolic one euro in damages to each of the civil parties that joined the case: LDH (League of Human Rights), LICRA (International League against Racism and Anti-Semitism ), France-Israel Association, MRAP (Movement against Racism), Lawyers without Borders, and the antisemitism watchdog BNVCA.


The two, Saadia Ben Fakha (26) and Husein Abu-Zaid (58), are members of BDS France 34, the local branch in Hérault.  Abu-Zaid is the group's spokesperson. 

In August 2014, the two posted on their Facebook account, an image comparing the Israeli army to Nazi Germany along with a caption saying "The Nazis and Zionists are two sides of the same coin" and that "What Hitler did to the Jews was done so that the world will sympathize with them and give them all the rights".

LDH Montpellier, who often participate in BDS activities, discovered the Holocaust-denial posting and requested that it be removed.  However, BDS did not explicitly condemn it until LDH turned to the police, and even then absolved their activists of all responsibility.

The two claimed they had clicked on it by accident, and did not see or read the image before sharing it.  BDS 34 supported its two activists and denied they were antisemitic.

BDS protest to free Saadia and Husein (photo via BDS France 34)

LDH, on the other hand, found that Ben Fakha had posted pictures of bodies of Israeli soldiers along with inappropriate comments, as well as photos of herself making the Quenelle, the reverse-Nazi salute created by the antisemitic comedian Dieudonné.

Saadia Ben Fakha, posing next to a picture of Ahmed Yassin, founder of Hamas and its spiritual leader (via JSS News)

BDS also condmened LDH because they gave exposure to the issue, and allowed 'Zionist' groups, that is, French racism and antisemitism watchdogs groups, to join as plaintiffs. 



Update, via Elder of Ziyon, the post in question:

France: Popular extreme-right band 'Les Brigandes' is the new star of the fascist scene

Via Get the Trolls Out, LICRA (h/t glykosymoritis):

Les Brigandes, which we mentioned before in our January highlights, is an ultra-conservative band made up of seven young women of, shall we say, "unbridled creativity". The group is growing in popularity among all those involved in some way with the world of the fachosphère – the name given in France to all groups or movements perceived as fascist. Under their wolf masks, the group – whose name pays tribute to the Vendean royalist insurgents – spread a fundamentalist, conspiracy message that is fiercely hostile to any kind of difference. A message in which a white, ultra-catholic, Putin-loving France is idealised. The group is led by Marianne, their spokesperson for "alternative" media, supported by Maxime, who posts the young women's numerous musical creations on the Le Comité de Salut Public (Committee of Public Safety) website.

The problem with this latest expression of hate on the internet is the surprising popularity of their videos: 50,000-100,000 views for most of their songs. This sort of makes them stars in the making for the extreme right.

(...)

Inspired by conspiracy delusions, Les Brigandes imagine themselves to be living in a world controlled by lobby groups. The names of these groups certainly cannot be mentioned... yet through their songs, they are revealed to be the famous jewish-zionist-freemasonic coalition. Nothing original here: this are the same clichés that the movement led by Alain Soral refer to in one of their interviews. They accuse the Jewish elite of promoting Muslim immigration with the aim of destroying the European Christian civilisation, thus subscribing to the popular extreme-right theory of "great replacement", the title of their album. 

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Belgium: Comic Dieudonne given jail sentence for anti-Semitism

From BBC News:

Controversial French comedian Dieudonne M'bala M'bala has been sentenced to two months in jail by a Belgian court for racist and anti-Semitic comments he made during a show in Belgium.

Dieudonne was also fined €9,000 ($9,500; £6,300) by the court in the city of Liege. He was not in court.

The comedian, who insists he is not anti-Semitic, made the remarks during a show in Liege in 2012.

He has several convictions for anti-Semitism and hate speech.

read more

UK: That's right. A "Nazi mob" did not attack Jews in Paris. It was a pro-Palestinian mob.

During the Gaza War, there was a near pogrom of Jews in France.  Recently, Vanity Fair ran a whole spread about those events (The Troubling Question in the French Jewish Community: Is It Time to Leave?)

It should be noted that from the very beginning, pro-Palestinian sites tried to prove that the Jews were making it all up.  Following up on the Vanity Fair article, the British Telegraph joined in with antisemitic pro-Palestinians with an article titled "Was Paris's Chief Rabbi rescued from an axe-wielding Nazi mob?"

UK Media Watch broke down their claims one by one (here and here).

What I think most interesting here is that the Telegraph insisted on talking about a "Nazi mob" and "Nazi sympathizers".

This apparently due to the "Nazi-style" of the attackers:

In her report, Ms Brenner’s also claims ‘dozens of pictures’ were taken of youths making ‘Nazi-style’ salutes outside a Kosher supermarket where four Jews were murdered by an Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (Isil) linked gunman in January.

Well, if it's "Nazi-style", the people doing it must be Nazis.  Right?

This is what happens when journalists report about something they no nothing about.

The "Nazi-style" salute in question is the "Quenelle", invented by the French antisemitic comedian Dieudonne.  You don't need to be a neo-Nazi to do it.

Specifically in this case, though, I did not find anybody doing the Quenelle in front of the Hyper-Cacher.  Instead people went for the more "non-biased" fuck-you.

Swastikas and other "Nazi" symbols are used by pro-Palestinians as well.   Assuming otherwise just shows the journalist in question has no idea what they're talking about.


Wouldn't life be so easy if we knew that every swastika and every Nazi salute were comitted by Nazis?  Wouldn't it be nice if the only people who adored Hitler were right-wing European fanatics?

The Queen, doing a Nazi salute as a child

Sadly that is not the case, as any Jew who spends some time online can easily verify.   Adoring Hitler is a cross-cultural phenomenon. 

 A mob shouting "Death to the Jews" is not by definition "Nazi".  And so it is indeed true that there was no "Nazi mob".  There was a "Muslim" and "Pro-Palestinian" and "Anti-Zionist" and definitely "Anti-Semitic" mob.




By pretending there wasn't, the Telegraph is itself engaged in antisemitism.
 

UK: Fringe artist sends Quenelle to Israel supporters

Because the way to prove you're not antisemitic is by attacking Jews with an antisemitic gesture.  This is anti-Zionist logic.

Via Jewish News:

A musician performing at the Edinburgh Fringe this week provoked an angry reaction from British Jews by performing a ‘quenelle’ salute outside Edinburgh Castle – with Fringe organisers absolving themselves of responsibility.

Alison Chabloz, whose solo acoustic show is called ‘Autumn’s Here,’ opposes Israel and has sent Israel supporters images of people performing the quenelle, an inverted Nazi salute dreamt up by a French anti-Semitic comic.

Lawyer and anti-Semitism campaigner Mark Lewis was among those Chabloz targeted with the offensive images.  more

France: "They would always scream, ‘Go back to your country.’ They meant Israel."

If I break this down to specific incidents, I could blog just about this article for a couple of days.

Via The Atlantic:

Like many of the banlieues that ring Paris, Montreuil bears no socioeconomic or aesthetic resemblance to the Paris of popular imagination. The architecture is rude, the parks are unkempt, and the people, many of them immigrants from North Africa, are estranged from la belle France. On the way to Montreuil, in the Métro, I passed defaced posters of the musician Lou Reed. Stars of David had been drawn on his nose. Other graffiti was less ambiguous: Nique les Juifs—“Fuck the Jews.”

I was visiting a vocational high school, the Daniel Mayer School. The school is associated with ORT, which is a Russian acronym for the Society for Trades and Agricultural Labor. ORT was founded in 1880 to educate the destitute Jews of the Pale of Settlement, the vast ghetto created by czarist Russia for its Jewish subjects. In France, ORT schools educated a generation of Polish and Russian survivors of the Holocaust; today, they primarily educate the children of North African Jews.

The Mayer School is housed in a seven-story building in Montreuil, near the Robespierre Métro station. The principal, Isaac Touitou, gathered a group of students—mainly ages 17 and 18—and teachers in the library to talk with me. These were mostly the children of striving working-class parents; the school, which has a reputation for rigor, is a ladder to the middle class. Its students graduate as opticians, dental technicians, accountants, computer programmers. The school also functions as a haven for young Jews living in a dangerous environment.

“Once we get here we’re safe,” one of the students told me. “Getting here from home is the hard part.” Many of the students live in distant and equally perilous suburbs, including Sarcelles, the site of anti-Jewish riots this past summer; and Créteil, where Jews have suffered beatings and rapes by anti-Semitic gangs.

Each of the 10 students had a story to tell about brutality. “I was in a public school in Créteil but I had to leave. People would yell at me in the halls: ‘Dirty Jew.’ ‘Fucking Jew.’ ‘I want to kill all of you,’?” a student named Paola said. “Two years ago they attacked my brother. They would always scream, ‘Go back to your country.’ They meant Israel.”

The ORT school had itself been the target of harassment. Touitou described a recent incident in which about 20 or so students from a neighboring public school had gathered in front of the building and made the quenelle.

The students I talked with in the library generally agreed that their future lay outside of France. “A lot of the Muslims hate us here,” a student named Alexandre said. His parents had already moved to Israel. They were two of the roughly 7,000 French Jews who left for Israel in 2014. Alexandre would be joining them after graduation.

Zionism, which at its essence is a critique of Europe—Theodor Herzl, its founder, interpreted the Dreyfus affair in France and the pogroms in Russia as invitations to seek an alternative Jewish future outside of Europe—is perpetually resuscitated by anti-Semitism. Paola said, “Those kids told me to go to Israel, so that’s what I’m doing.” Others were contemplating the possibility of life in Quebec, and some dreamt of America.

The students talked about ways in which Jews concealed their identity. I’d heard that it had already become fairly common practice in some of the apartment blocks in the banlieues for Jews to remove the mezuzot from their doors. A mezuzah is a piece of parchment that contains Bible verses and that is placed in a case and then affixed to a doorpost. In some suburbs, mezuzot had become pointers for those in search of Jews to harm. 

But the students told me something new. “Jewish people are telling other Jews to take down their mezuzot,” one of the students said. “People are being pressured to hide that they are Jewish. The pressure can be very intense.” The impetus for this new campaign seems to have been an incident that occurred in early December, in which a group of robbers broke into an apartment in Créteil. They told the occupants that they knew they were Jewish, and therefore wealthy, and then they raped a 19-year-old woman in the apartment.

“Everyone is saying ‘Je suis Charlie’ today,” Wendy, another of the students, said, in reference to the popular slogan of support for the slain Charlie Hebdo cartoonists. “But this has been happening to the Jews for years and no one cares.”

“It would be nice if someone would say ‘Je suis Juif,’?” Sandy, another student, said.

Everyone agreed that more attacks were inevitable. “Next week or next month, no one knows,” David Attias, a teacher at the school, said. “But it’s coming. Everyone knows it.”

The next attack came that afternoon. I met with the students on the morning of January 9. Several hours later came the massacre at the kosher supermarket, about a mile away. One of the dead was a graduate of another ORT school.

France: Dieudonne gives Ahmadinejad gold ‘quenelle’ statue

Times of Israel:

Dieudonné and Ahmadinejad holding the golden quenelle

Iranian ex-president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad called Dieudonne M’bala M’bala a “great artist” during a meeting in Tehran with the French comic who is a repeat inciter of hate against Jews.

Dieudonne visited the Islamic Republic last week, the news site fararu.com reported, and presented Ahmadinejad with a golden statue of a man performing the quenelle a gesture reminiscent of the Nazi salute that Dieudonne is promoting as a sign of discontent with the establishment but that French Prime Minister Manuel Valls has called a gesture of “anti-Semitic hate.” 

Dieudonne calls the statue a “golden quenelle” and has presented a number of them to personalities he defines as anti-Zionist.

Dieudonne performing the anti-Semitic quenelle gesture

Ahmadinejad is a noted Holocaust denier who during his presidency expressed his wish that Israel would disappear.  On his official Twitter account, Ahmadinejad wrote about the encounter: “Visiting an old friend, a great artist. #Dieudonne #all4Palestine.”

During his eight years in office through 2013, Ahmadinejad ran competitions of cartoons on the Holocaust, soliciting drawings that suggested the genocide never happened or is happening to the Palestinians. Dieudonne has more than 10 convictions for inciting hatred against the Jews, including through ridiculing the Holocaust and suggesting it is fabricated. 

Dieudonne, whose shows are regularly banned in France and who is facing accusations of tax evasion in addition to ongoing probes into anti-Semitic speech, is the inventor of the word “shaonanas.”  A mash up of the Hebrew word for the Holocaust and French for pineapple, it is widely understood to be a code word suggesting the Holocaust never happened without violating France’s laws against denying it.

More on Dieudonné HERE.

France: Soldiers guarding Jewish schools regularly attacked and threatened

At first every incident made the news.  Now it's becoming the norm.

Welcome to Jewish life in France.


Via Le Progres h/t LDJ:

This past Friday the soldiers standing guard outside the Nah’alat Moché Jewish school in Villeurbanne (Lyon) were approached by three men.  One waved a gun (which turned out to be fake), shouted antisemitic slogans and made the Quenelle gesture.

The same man had made the Quenelle gesture at the soldiers also this past Wednesday, January 28th.

All three men were arrested by the police.

This is the third attack on soldiers at this school in less than a week.  Previously one man was arrested after drawing his finger across his throat, and somebody unknown tried to blind the soldiers with a laser pointer.

France: "They don’t give a stuff about Palestine, the black cause, or social inequalities"

Civil war has broken out in the bizarre world of Dieudonné, the black, anti-Semitic comedian at the centre of the “Nazi” salute row surrounding the footballer Nicolas Anelka a year ago.

Several black supporters of Dieudonné M’bala M’bala, including former bodyguards, have turned against him, complaining of his increasingly close connections with white, allegedly racist, groups in France and what they claim is his supposed obsession with personal enrichment.
(...)

The campaign is led by Jérémie Maradas-Nado, alias Jo Dalton, a former leader of the Black Dragons, a gang which defended black people from attacks by white skinheads in the 1990s. He was for several years the leader of Dieudonné’s bodyguards.

Of Dieudonné and Mr Soral, Mr Dalton now says: “At first I told myself that these guys were breaking new ground – that they were courageous. Then I saw more and more people with shaven heads and swastikas. By allying himself with fascists, Dieudonné has betrayed the black cause.”

(...)

Another former Dieudonné bodyguard, named only as Jessie, told the newspaper Libération: “In truth, they don’t give a stuff about Palestine, the black cause, or social inequalities.” Dieudonné has retaliated by accusing Mr Dalton of “extortion” and being a “Zionist stooge”. Mr Dalton has created, with friends, a website called Les Vrais Savent (“Real People Know”). In recent weeks they have posted the alleged email exchange between Mr Soral and Ms Bangoura – and the purported image of Mr Soral – in an attempt, they say, to reveal the true nature of Dieudonné’s political theories.

More: The Indepdent

France: Jewish leaders rip theaters for scheduling Dieudonné show

Sadly this is typical of many French "elites", like the powerful Fimalac group. They turn their noses up at the Front National and wouldn't touch it with a barge pole but see nothing wrong in rolling out the red carpet for Dieudonné!

Dieudonné and Holocaust-denier
Robert Faurisson

JTA (via Times of Israel)

The umbrella group of French Jewish communities condemned 20 theaters that plan to host the overtly anti-Semitic one-man show of comedian Dieudonne M’bala M’bala.

The CRIF umbrella issued the condemnation on Tuesday in connection with the show by Dieudonne, who has been convicted multiple times for inciting hate against Jews. He intends to take his newest act, titled “The Impure Beast,” on the road later this month. Among other anti-Semitic references, it features dirty jokes about Ilan Halimi, a French Jew who was tortured and murdered in 2006 because he was Jewish.

“CRIF deplores the many theaters that chose to offer him a podium to disseminate to an instrumentalized audience his hatred of Jews and of those who dare criticize him,” CRIF said in a statement about the six-month tour, which is due to begin on Dec. 27 at the Zenith Nantes Metropole, one of the largest event halls in western France. CRIF singled out for criticism the Fimalac event hall operator, which owns Zenith.

Approximately one-third of Dieudonne’s 20 bookings across France are in theaters owned by Fimalac, CRIF said, and called on Culture Minister Fleur Pellerin to “remind the firms of their obligations, moral and otherwise.” Dieudonne is the inventor of the quenelle gesture, which echoes the Hitler salute and has become a preferred greeting in anti-Semitic circles across the French-speaking world, but which Dieudonne says is a gesture of discontent with the establishment. He wrote “The Impure Beast” after many French mayors banned his previous tour in their municipalities at the request of then-interior minister Manuel Vals, who is now France’s prime minister.

France: Jewish restaurant vandalised in Paris

Paving stones and a petrol bomb were thrown at the Jewish restaurant Zekaï on November 6 at around 4 a.m.  The restaurant is fitted with bulletproof glass windows and door and the attackers were not able to get in.  No one was hurt.

The owner reported that African and North African youths had often passed in front of the restaurant doing the "quenelle" and shouting "F... Jews".

Via: JForum

France: Jewish leader indicted for calling a convicted anti-Semite an anti-Semite

Roger Cukierman, president of France’s largest Jewish group, was indicted for calling the comedian Dieudonne M’bala M’bala a “professional anti-Semite.”

Cukierman, who heads the CRIF umbrella of French Jewish communities and organizations, announced the indictment on Monday in a video that appeared on the CRIF website.

“So I am being indicted for having stated on Europe 1 that Dieudonne is a professional anti-Semite. Isn’t that funny? For once, Dieudonne is actually comical,” Cukierman said.

Dieudonne has 10 convictions for inciting racial hatred against Jews, according to CRIF. He also invented the quenelle salute, which French Prime Minister Manuel Valls said was an inverted Nazi gesture of anti-Semitic hate, and the term “shoananas,” a mashup of the Hebrew word for the Holocaust and the French word for pineapple, which is used to suggest the genocide never happened without explicitly violating France’s laws against doing so.

More: Times of Israel

UK.: West Brom boss reveals why he had to sack Anelka

Nicolas Anelka’s quenelle gesture embarrassed and damaged West Bromwich Albion, the club’s chairman has said. Speaking for the first time about the affair, Jeremy Pearce said it had been a “huge issue in terms of our standing”.

West Brom terminated the player’s contract after he had made the gesture – a form of Nazi salute – during a Premier League match in December 2013. The move came after the Football Association banned Anelka for five matches and fined him £80,000. Mr Peace told the Express and Star newspaper that attempts to make the player apologise failed. He said: “We got Nicolas in here with his advisers.

Richard Garlick (Albion’s technical director at the time) was dealing with him. “I was in my office in the room next door. I said I want him to say ‘I am sorry to all these people’. “They tried to draw up a statement. There was a mealy-mouthed paragraph and I said (to Garlick): ‘He hasn’t apologised, get him to apologise.’ “It was quite clear he wasn’t going to so, bang – out. Right, sever the contract, cut it. It was gross misconduct, because of the damage he’d done. Mr Peace added that he felt “extremely strongly” that Anelka should have apologised, “because of the damage (he caused) to everyone, to the community he affected, the embarrassment he caused to the club”.

More:  Jewish Chronicle

Switzerland: Sports fans make the Quenelle on TV

Swiss network RTS invited people to sit on the stands during their World Cup show.  Some of the fans used the opportunity to make the Quenelle.

Massimo Lorenzi, head of the sports department, tweeted an apology, to which Dieudonné, the antisemitic comedian who invented the gesture, replied on Facebook: Does anybody want to explain to him what is the Quenelle?

More: 20 Minutes, Meltybuzz

France: Man claims synagogue, Hitler quenelles are 'anti-Zionism', not anti-semitism

The correctional tribunal of Bordeaux on Wednesday convicted the defendant, a 28-year-old Moroccan native, of incitement to racial hatred for performing the quenelle in front of a synagogue, and fined him the equivalent of $4,130.

(...)

The defendant, who was arrested, interrogated and then released pending trial on January 17, said he is not an anti-Semite. “On my Facebook account I try not to confuse anti-Semitism and anti-Zionism,” he reportedly said during his trial.

His Facebook account also features a photo of a man performing a quenelle in front of a portrait of Adolf Hitler, with the caption: “I committed suicide but nowadays I’d get the Nobel Peace Prize.”

More: Times of Israel

France: Jews met with quenelle, then attacked

I've already reported several times that the quenelle gesture is being used to harass and intimidate Jews.  Add this one to the list.

Via JSS News:

On Saturday a father and son were attacked on their way home from the synagogue in Sarcelles, near Paris.

The Jews, who were wearing distinctive Jewish clothing, were met by a group of four Black men, who made the quenelle gesture at them.  When the father responded with a gesture of his own, the two were attacked.  The father was lightly injured.

UK: Footballers charged by FA over support for antisemitic quenelle

The two voiced support for the quenelle after the FA decided it's an antisemitic gesture.

Benoît Assou-Ekotto and Yannick Sagbo are facing bans for tweeting their support for Nicolas Anelka’s quenelle goal celebration. 

(...) 

Manchester City midfielder Samir Nasri and Liverpool defender Mamadou Sahko escaped with a rap on the knuckles for being photographed performing the quenelle gesture itself prior to Anelka using it to celebrate a goal in West Bromwich Albion’s Premier League game at West Ham United on December 28. 

But Assou-Ekotto, on loan at QPR from Tottenham Hotspur, and Sagbo were both charged with improper conduct for postings made on Twitter in the wake of Anelka’s celebration. 

With Anelka having been found guilty of an anti-Semitic act just over a month ago – something which saw him banned for five matches and his West Brom contract terminated – the FA was free to pursue others caught up in the *quenelle* scandal. 

They included Assou-Ekotto, who tweeted in French in response to Anelka’s celebration: “I congratulate you on the beautiful quenelle.” 

Sagbo tweeted a picture of the celebration alongside the word: “Legend.”

More: Daily Telegraph

France: Quenelle used to harass Jews

In January I brought an interview with two Jewish teenagers who noted that people make the Quenelle gesture at them as an insult towards Jews.

In an article in Deutsche Welle on the situation of French Jews, the story repeats itself.

"I am French, born in Paris, says Salome Roussel. "I'm thinking about moving to Israel, because French people are more and more against Jews. They say we are a lobby, that we are the masters of the world, and it's not so!"

(...)

Salome Roussel cites a recent incident on the Paris metro as being illustrative of the pressures Jews face in France. A man sitting in front of her on the train smiled at her and caught sight of the Star of David she wears on a pendant around her neck. As he was getting off the train, he made the 'quenelle' gesture at her. 

He did it because "I've got a Star of David, and I'm a Jew," says Roussel, adding: "I'm not the system!"

France: Jewish comedian harassed after saying Quenelle is antisemitic

Michaël Youn, a Jewish actor, singer and comedian has taken on the services of a company to moderate discussions on his social media accounts.  Youn has suffered from racist and antisemitic comments on his Facebook and Twitter accounts, after he tweeted that Dieudonné's Quenelle gesture is antisemitic.

More: DJN via LDJ