France: Catholic-owned kid's magazine claims Israel not a real country

Some background: Youpi magazine is owned by the influential media group Bayard. "Bayard is a French press group created in 1873, just after the 1870 war, by Father Emmanuel d'Alzon (1810/1880), founder of the Catholic religious congregation Augustinians of the Assumption. This congregation is still the exclusive owner of the group." "It edits educational and Catholic publications such as La Croix and Catholic Digest." "Assumptionists , profoundly anti-semitic religious order, whose newspaper La Croix ( The Cross) became a daily in 1883. In 1890 it boasted that it was ‘ the most anti-Jew journal of France’"  The author of the article is Bertrand Fichou, editor in chief of Youpi and a prolific writer of children's books.

Via I 24 News:

A French children's education magazine that provoked a firestorm of criticism on Sunday after deeming Israel a state with disputed legitimacy along with the likes of North Korea said it will remove the edition from sale. The publisher Editions Bayard Jeunesse apologized, "to all those who may have been hurt" by this publication.

The controversial fact sheet featured in the latest edition of 'Youpi' magazine read, "we call these 197 countries 'states', like France, Germany, or Algeria. There a few more, but not all other countries in the world agree that these are real states (for example Israel or North Korea)."

The magazine's calling into question of Israel's legitimacy sparked major backlash on social media, with Israel's Ambassador to France Aliza Bin Noun saying she was "shocked" at the publication which she said encouraged anti-Zionism, and in turn, anti-Semitism.

"Shocked by this lie taught to children. Such a rhetoric can only encourage anti-Zionism, inseparable from anti-Semitism," she wrote on Twitter, tagging French President Emmanuel Macron in her statement. President of France's umbrella Jewish group CRIF, Francis Kalifat, told i24NEWS that Bayer's statement reflected "political revisionism."

"Unintentional or intentional, I do not know," Kalifat said. "I prefer to think it is unintentional. The Bayard publication conveys political revisionism."

"Israel has been recognized as a sovereign state since 1948 and by the United Nations since 1949," he said, adding that such intentional revisionism would represent an attempt by the company to "de-legitimize" Israel "this time by targeting its youngest readers." 

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