france 2005

 

A total of 504 antisemitic incidents were recorded in France in 2005 compared to 974 in 2004, a decrease of 48 percent. A notable trend was the staunch anti-Zionist stand of part of the Afro-Caribbean community in support of the antisemitic comedian Dieudonné, who quipped in 2005 that the Shoah was a “pornographic memory.”

 

the jewish community

The French Jewish community, numbering about 575,000 out of a total population of 58.5 million (1999 census), is the largest in Europe. The greatest concentration is in the Paris area (300–350,000), followed by Marseille (80,000), Lyon (30,000), Nice and Toulouse (20,000 each). Strasbourg, where 12,000 Jews live, is a major religious and cultural center. In comparison, the foreign population (i.e., holding foreign nationality) amounts to about 4.3 million, while French citizens of foreign origin number 19.7 million (official census figures). The number of Muslims was estimated at 4 million, including 2 million holding French citizenship. (French legislation forbids census questions relating to religious affiliation.)

The three main organizations of French Jewry are the Conseil Représentatif des Institutions Juives de France (CRIF), the Consistoire Central and the Fonds Social Juif Unifié (FSJU). There has been a dramatic revitalization of communal life since the early 1980s, reflected in the large number of Jewish private schools (about 100, attended by 30 percent of Jewish schoolchildren, or some 30,000 pupils) and synagogues (over 150 in the Paris area). Since the beginning of the antisemitic wave which began in autumn 2000, many families have transferred their children from state-run secular schools to private Jewish (mainly Orthodox) schools. Further, immigration of French Jews to Israel has been rising: 3,000 left in 2005 compared to 2,400 in 2004.

On 15 March 2004, a law was promulgated which forbids the wearing of religious symbols (such as a large cross, a skullcap or the Muslim hijab [headscarf]) in state schools and in the civil service. It came into effect in September 2004.

 

Political Parties and Extra-Parliamentary groups

Far Left, Greens and Communists

These political forces are part of the anti-globalization movement. The extreme left, which participates in the elections, is split between three Trotskyite factions: the Ligue Communiste Révolutionnaire (LCR; led by Olivier Besancenot), Lutte Ouvrière (led by Arlette Laguiller) and the Parti des Travailleurs (led by Daniel Gluckstein), which have a combined constituency of 8−10 percent. Anti-Zionism is historically part of their agenda, and they support the idea of “one democratic and secular state in Israel/Palestine,” although some voices within the LCR now openly advocate a two-state solution. Not all favor an alliance with political Islam: in fact, as rigorously secular parties, both Lutte Ouvrière and the PT are against it, while the LCR is divided. The pro-Islamists are influenced by the Socialisme par en bas – which might be regarded as a French branch of the British Socialist Workers’ Party − which has integrated into the LCR.

The Communist Party is divided between ‘modernists’ and ‘hardliners’. The former, led by party First Secretary Marie-Georges Buffet and her predecessor Robert Hue have toned down the party’s anti-Israel rhetoric significantly and support the existence of Israel alongside a Palestinian state. A group led by Mouloud Aounit, secretary general of the anti-racist MRAP (Mouvement national contre le racisme) and a regional councilor elected on a Communist slate, is very anti-Israel and supports dialogue with the followers of Swiss fundamentalist theologian Tariq Ramadan (see below). MRAP’s fight against Islamophobia has completely overshadowed its struggle against antisemitism.

Orthodox communist and sometimes Stalinist groups on the fringe of the Communist Party, such as the Pôle de Renaissance Communiste de France (publication: Initiative Communiste), Renaissance Communiste and Gauche Communiste, are particularly supportive of Palestinian hardliners (mostly the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine – PFLP) and promote extreme anti-Zionism as a part of their ‘anti-imperialist’, anti-American agenda. They suffered a setback when the leadership of the party decided to fire Bruno Drweski, an academic and director of the party’s theoretical review, La Pensée, on the grounds that he worked with the controversial Réseau Voltaire, led by Thierry Meyssan (see below).

            The Green Party, which is divided on the issues of anti-Zionism and cooperating with the Islamists, finally expelled one of its founding members, Ginette Skandrani, who had become a key figure in the ‘red−brown’ galaxy of fringe groups which harbor extreme anti-Zionist views. She later joined the campaign staff of the aggressively anti-Zionist comedian M’Bala M’Bala Dieudonné (see below), who announced his candidacy for the 2007 presidential election. Not all the ecologist movement is left wing. The Mouvement des Ecologistes Indépendants, led by Antoine Waechter, is more center right and has elected a notorious antisemite, Jean Brière (a former Green Party spokesman, fired in 1990 after he had written conspiracy theory material against the ‘Jewish lobby’), to its national board.

The anti-globalization movement is a loose network of more or less formal groups. The most influential is ATTAC (originally founded in order to support the concept of the Tobin tax on financial profits), which is divided between a radical left tendency, inclined to dialogue with Ramadan’s followers, and a strictly secular, republican-left and anti-Islamist leadership led by Pierre Cassen. José Bové, spokesman of the anti-globalization movement, leads a peasant union, the Confédération Paysanne, but his goal is to be the candidate of the alternative left in the 2007 presidential election. The anti-globalization Internet portal, Indymedia (http://indymedia.paris.org) is often accused of allowing antisemitic texts to be posted online, although the site is moderated and the most extreme material is deleted.

 

Extreme Right Parties

The Front National (FN), founded in 1973 and led by 78-year-old Jean-Marie Le Pen, had approximately 50,000 members after the 2002 presidential election, and has certainly no more than 15,000 now. The party polled 14.7 percent of the vote in the 2004 regional elections and a mere 9.81 percent in the Euro-election, due to competition from the arch-conservative, anti-EU Mouvement pour la France, led by former minister Philippe de Villiers, which won 7.92 percent (Villiers’ second-in-command Guillaume Peltier, is a former leader of the FN and the MNR youth movement). The vote for the extreme right still reaches a high level in northern France, the southeast and the Riviera, and in Alsace-Lorraine, and the party attracts a significant proportion of the working-class and unemployed.

Le Pen’s daughter Marine seems a likely successor to her father when he steps down (although Le Pen still plans to run for president in 2007). Despite Marine’s attempts to moderate the party’s image (see ASW 2004), the FN remains an ultra-right movement, whose lower ranked and even national leaders often exhibit anti-Jewish prejudice or endorse denial of the Holocaust. For example, a former FN regional councilor Georges Theil, received a six month suspended sentence and a heavy fine, on 7 October 2005, after he published, under the alias Gilbert Dubreuil, a booklet entitled “Un cas d'insoumission, comment on devient révisionniste,” which draws heavily on the writings of Holocaust deniers Maurice Bardèche and Robert Faurisson. Further, the party’s second-in command, Bruno Gollnisch, a university professor in Lyon, was suspended from his tenure for five years by the Higher Education Board, after he stated, inter alia, at a press conference on 11 October, 2004: “There is no longer any serious historian who supports the findings of the Nuremberg Trials” (see ASW 2004). On 13 December 2005 Gollnisch’s immunity was revoked by the European Parliament in Strasbourg and he was to face trial in May 2006 for denying the Holocaust. Another anti-Jewish high-level executive of FN was Bernard Antony, leader of the party’s Catholic fundamentalist wing. Apparently, his membership was not renewed in 2005, and he now focuses on his movements Chrétienté-Solidarité and AGRIF (an association which seeks to prosecute ‘anti-French racists’ and those holding ‘anti-Christian’ views). In early January 2005 Minister of Justice Dominique Perben ordered an inquiry into Le Pen’s remarks in Rivarol that the German occupation of France was not especially inhumane. About 76,000 Jews, including 12,000 children, were murdered then. On 8 March 2005 the charges against him of denial of Nazi crimes during the occupation were dropped.

The Mouvement National Républicain (MNR), led by Bruno Mégret, is now only a shadow of its former self, having polled only 1.44 percent in the 2004 regional elections and lost all its councilors; in the Euro-election it obtained a mere 0.31 percent. Two members of the national leadership, Hubert Kohler and Hubert Massol, are veteran activists of the extremist antisemitic fringe.

The Mouvement pour la France (MPF), led by Philippe de Villiers, has become a growing force on the rightist political scene. Although far right by French standards, it is not an extremist party. The MPF was an arch-conservative, mostly upper-middle class party with a distinctly Catholic tone, opposing ‘liberal’ values and promoting nationalism and opposition to the European Union. On 11 September 2005, in a speech at the party’s summer university, Villiers outlined the new orientation of the movement, which he said was designed to attract disillusioned FN activists and voters. The new program evolves mainly around the notion that France is being Islamized and should return to its Judeo-Christian roots; that it should adopt highly restrictive immigration laws; and that it should reject the multi-cultural society. In respect to Islam, the MPF is more extreme than the FN. However, although many former executives of Le Pen’s party have switched to MPF (including the hardliner Jacques Bompard, mayor of Orange in 2005), it is not openly racist, and is neither antisemitic nor anti-Israel, in fact quite the opposite.

 

Extra-parliamentary Groups and Activities

In January 2005, the Renseignements Généraux (the state security police) released a report concerning the far right scene in 2004/5. It estimated that the total number of activists ranged between 2,500 and 3,500. Specific mention was made of Alsace, where 35.5 percent of far right activity purportedly took place. The report stressed that the main target of far right activity had become the Muslim community. It identified 20 groups, split into five ideological subdivisions: the skinhead movement (1,000−1,500 activists); the ‘Identity’ movement; ultra-nationalists; neo-Nazis and soccer ‘hooligans’.

The skinhead movement is divided between the French Blood & Honour division (although an unofficial branch exists in northern France, under the name Blood & Honour Midgard) and local, unaffiliated groups mostly concentrated in Alsace (where ‘white noise’ music concerts draw an audience of up to 1,000 people, 90 percent of them from Germany), northern France, and the southeast. Skinheads publish fanzines that are overtly antisemitic, deny the Holocaust and justify the use of violence against immigrants and people of foreign origin. One of their publications is called Charlemagne, referring to the French Waffen SS division of the same name; another, Genocide. Skinheads are often implicated in racist attacks against immigrants and colored people.

The ‘Identity’ movement (total membership, according to the police report, 500) revolves around Bloc Identitaire, led by Guillaume Luyt and Fabrice Robert. Membership is about 350. It publishes the quarterly ID (for Identité), which has an address in Belgium in order to avoid prosecution. In 2005, the Bloc became a high- profile group in the media due to its initiative to distribute pork meals to the homeless in Paris, thus excluding both Jews and Muslims. The Bloc also maintains an online ‘press agency’ Novopress (www.novopress.info). A rival national revolutionary faction is led by Christian Bouchet, former leader of Nouvelle Résistance and Unité Radicale. His organization, Réseau Radical, which runs the www.voxnr.com website and publishes the magazine Résistance!, numbers about 40 loosely organized activists. The group promotes hard-line anti-Zionism and supports Palestinian jihad, Arab nationalist movements such as the Baath party and Muslim fundamentalist groups. Another ‘Identity’ movement is Terre et Peuple, led by former GRECE president and FN national leadership member Pierre Vial. This subdivision includes the Groupe union défense (GUD), a mainly student group with a record of violence and extreme antisemitism, which is now active under the name RED (Rassemblement des Etudiants de Droite).

The ultra-nationalist movement consists of four groups with followings of between 30 and 80: Œuvre française, a rabidly antisemitic movement led by Pierre Sidos; Cercle franco-hispanique, led by Olivier Grimaldi, an admirer of the Spanish Falange; Renouveau Français, the new name of the Garde Franque (a fascist and Catholic fundamentalist group belonging to the transnational European National Front) and Marshall Pétain devotees, who gather in two rival factions of the Association nationale Pétain-Verdun.

Neo-Nazis (who may also be skinheads) were probably responsible for several Jewish cemetery desecrations in 2005 (see below). In February, then Minister of the Interior Dominique de Villepin announced that he would ban extremist neo-Nazi groups. On 18 May, the Alsatian movement, Elsass Korps, was outlawed. This was a loose group of some 30 ‘white power’ neo-Nazi skinheads, with a record of convictions for racist violence. Other neo-Nazi groups are Combat furtif-Werwolf (about 100), also in Alsace; la Meute de Fenrir (neo-Nazi skinheads) in northern France, and the French section of the German-Austrian based Truppenkameradschaft IV, an association of former French Waffen-SS soldiers, which also attracts younger recruits to the neo-Nazi scene.

Although violent and racist, those groups are perceived today as posing a minor threat, when compared to radical Islamist organizations.

 

Islamist Groups

The strength of the Islamist movement should be assessed against the relatively low level of religious practice among French Muslims, which is about 15 percent. On the other hand, anti-Jewish prejudice among those who are devout remains high: according to a survey released in 2005 by the academic institution CEVIPOF, 46 percent of religious Muslims manifest some kind of antisemitic prejudice, while 28 percent do not. Antisemitic prejudice among them tends to diminish with level of education: while 37 percent of those with two years higher education have antisemitic prejudices, only 20 percent of those with a university degree do. It is also important to stress that only a minority of religious Muslims feel bound by the decisions of the official body representing French Islam, the Conseil Français du Culte Musulman (CFCM; see below), elected in June 2005. This body is divided between three factions: one consists of moderate followers of the Grande Mosquée de Paris, led by CFCM chairman Dalil Boubakeur and supported by the Algerian government; another is the orthodox Sunni Union des Organisations Islamiques de France (UOIF; led by Laj Thami Breze), who are guided by the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood and by the Egyptian-born Shaykh Yusuf al-Qaradawi, the UOIF’s supreme religious authority; and a third tendency is the Fédération Nationale des Musulmans de France, a predominantly Moroccan organization whose former chairman, Mohamed Bechari, seems to be close to the Moroccan Islamist party PJD.

The UOIF remains a controversial organization. While it agreed to meet with representatives of CRIF for the first time in September 2004, Shaykh Qaradawi, who chairs the European Council for Fatwa and Research (based in Ireland), has condoned suicide bombings against civilians. At the March 2005 annual meeting of UOIF in Le Bourget, near Paris, the Comité de Bienfaisance et de Secours aux Palestiniens (Committee for Charity and Assistance to Palestinians − CBSP) distributed video tapes urging jihad and death to the Jews. CRIF asked the UOIF to ban the distribution of such material and complained to the authorities.

CBSP, a registered charity, allegedly raises money for institutions linked to the Islamic movement of the Arab-Israeli mayor of Umm al-Fahm, Shaykh Ra`id Salah. Comedian Dieudonné attended the UOIF meeting at Le Bourget. The UOIF has no links to the anti-globalization movement, supports a socially conservative agenda and prefers to collaborate with right-wing parties such as the majority UMP (Union pour un Mouvement Populaire) and the UDF (Union pour la democratie francaise).

While CFCM-affiliated organizations mostly represent the older generation of Muslims who were born abroad and maintain strong links to their native countries, the younger, French-born generation of practicing Muslims (estimated by state security agencies at 200,000) are more attracted to the Swiss fundamentalist theologian Tariq Ramadan, and the groups which disseminate his thinking, Présence Musulmane and the Collectif des Musulmans de France. Ramadan, who advocates a modern orthodox Islam, rooted in the reality of European societies and values, has close ties to the anti-globalization movement, with which he shares a virulent anti-Zionism, like that appearing on the main French Islamic website www.oumma.com.

The important role of the Internet in the emergence of a ‘virtual’ Muslim identity in France can be seen in the existence of several well-designed sites with a wide audience, such as www.saphirnet.info and the www.mejliss.com. Other radical websites are www.islamiya.info; www.quibla.net and http://news.stcom.net. In June 2005, a Paris court declared the webmaster of the Islamiya website guilty of incitement to racial hatred, after he posted online a collection of photographs equating the fates of Palestinians and Jews.

Of the few outspokenly antisemitic Islamic groups, mention should be made of the Strasbourg-based Parti des Musulmans de France (PMF), led by a man with far right connections, Mohamed Ennacer Latrèche, who received his religious education in Syria and frequently travels to Damascus.

Of particular concern to the authorities is the growing Salafi movement, inspired by Saudi ulama (Muslim scholars). According to a report of the Renseignements Généraux, the Salafis number some 5,000 and control about 30 mosques. Salafi activity is noticeable especially on the Internet, at sites such as www.darwa.com, http://www.sounnah.free.fr and http://www.salafs.com. Most Salafi followers belong to the school of thought which strictly abides by the rulings of the pro-government Saudi religious establishment, as shown by the condemnations of the London bombings which went online shortly after they took place, at www.darwa.com, inter alia. There is no organized, open expression of the jihadist trend, such as that characterizing the British al-Muhajiroun, for example (although the group claims to have established a French branch in Lille). Three other Islamic fundamentalist groups are widely represented: the pietist Tabligh movement, estimated at about 10 percent of religious Muslims; Foi et Pratique which split from it, led by Tunisian Muhammad Hamami; and the French branch of the Lebanon-based Ahbachi movement, with headquarters in Montpellier, under the leadership of Shaykh Khalid al-Zant. In 2005, the state security agencies warned against the growth of radical Islam among prisoners and converts. They identified 173 prison inmates who had converted to Islam and become Salafis (some of them of the jihadist kind); in fact, about 25 percent of those who converted to Islam in France have reportedly joined the Salafi movement. Renseignement Généraux estimates the number of active, militant converts at 1,610 (there are some 30,000 converts per year, according to the Ministry of the Interior). In January 2005, Farid Benyettou, a self-proclaimed imam of Algerian origin, was arrested in Paris, after he had set up a recruitment cell for jihadists who were sent to Iraq through Syria. Benyettou was being monitored by the security agencies because of his high visibility during the anti-war and pro-Palestine demonstrations in 2003. Police dismantled several other cells, many of which had raised money through organized crime.

 

The Radical Anti-Zionist Scene

The support for radical Islam and extremist Palestinian movements is not confined to the ranks of Islamic fundamentalists. The war in Iraq has radicalized people who are more Arab nationalist than religious zealots. These militants often try to build alliances with secular groups belonging to both ends of the political spectrum. This is exemplified by the case of Nouari Khiari, who was jailed in April 2005 because of his reported involvement in raising money for jihad. An activist at anti-Zionist demonstrations, he also spoke at the European Social Forum in Paris (2003) and signed a petition of the Indigènes de la République, a left-wing movement which claims that France is still a colonial state and treats the Muslims as second-class citizens. Among secular but radical groups, one should also mention CAPJPO (Coordination des Appels pour une Paix Juste au Proche-Orient), led by Olivia Zemor, a Jew, which campaigns for the boycott of Israeli goods and for the severing of scientific cooperation between French and Israeli universities. CAPJPO was the driving force behind the short-lived attempt to create an anti-Zionist/radically pro-Palestine political movement, Euro-Palestine, which ran for the 2004 Euro-election in the Paris district. Other secular radical organizations which do not recognize the right of Israel to exist are: Palestine en Marche; Mouvement Justice Palestine and, since December 2005, the Mouvement de Soutien à la Résistance du Peuple Palestinien (MSRPP), which supports Hamas and the al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigade. A religiously oriented pro-Hamas group is the Comité Cheikh Yassine, led by Imam Abdelhakim Sefraoui, who belongs to Dieudonné’s campaign staff. Finally, the Réseau Voltaire, led by Thierry Meyssan, disseminates conspiracy theories which try to demonstrate that the 9/11 bombings were a joint US-Israeli plot aimed at justifying the war against radical Islam. Originally a left-wing, anti-fascist and pro-gay rights group, the Réseau Voltaire became a rallying point for anti-Zionists of all kinds after 2001. In November 2005, it held an international conference entitled “Axis for Peace,” attended by Dieudonné, hardline Communists, Polish representatives of the right-wing populist Samobroona, Russian Slavophiles; US conspiracy theorists (Christopher Bollyn, from American Free Press), officials from Iran and Syria and Israeli Arab Palestinian activist Ahmad Tibi. Due to the French authorities’ refusal to grant visas to several prospective panelists, the conference was held in Brussels.

 

Anti-Jewish Prejudices among the Afro-Caribbean Community

The most publicized case of radical anti-Zionism among this community, and which most Jewish institutions consider to be plain antisemitism, is that of the well-known Cameroon French comedian M’Bala M’Bala Dieudonné. After entering politics in the 1990s as an opponent of the Front National, he became increasingly disenchanted with the left and began promoting the theory that the trade of African slaves was a Jewish enterprise, which explains why the French state commemorates the Holocaust and does not recognize responsibility for the crime of slavery. Later, he became an avowed anti-Zionist, who considers Israel a racist and colonial state, similar to Nazi Germany. In February 2005, while performing in Algiers, he said the Shoah was a “pornographic memory” (see also below). Popular among immigrant youth and blacks, Dieudonné spreads his message through several websites such as http://lesogres.org; http://intox.hopto.org and http://dieudo.net/2007. Each time he was sued by a Jewish organization for antisemitism in 2005, he was found not guilty by the courts. However, four Jewish activists who assaulted him in Martinique (French West Indies) on 1 March received a suspended jail sentence. Moreover, on 9 October 2005 a group of Dieudonne’s friends invaded the TV studio of France 3 and demanded the resignation of the host of the show "On ne peut pas plaire à tout le monde" (You Cannot Please Everyone) Marc Olivier Fogiel. On 29 September 2005, Fogiel and France 3 had been fined (Foigel, 5000 euros) by a Montpellier court for a clumsy sketch, considered by the court as a ’racial insult’, in reply to an antisemitic sketch by Dieudonné.

Even more extreme than Dieudonné are the French branch of Nation of Islam (which appears to be an unofficial chapter of the US-based movement) and the racist and separatist Tribu KA, which spreads outright hatred of Jews. Believing in a mixture of Egyptian divinities and black supremacism, the movement has a network of websites such as www.africamaat.com and www.menaibuc.com, which claim that the black man was once the ruler of the world while the white man was at a low level of civilization.

 

antisemitic activity

According to the Ministry of the Interior, a total of 504 antisemitic incidents were recorded in 2005 compared to 974 in 2004, a decrease of 48 percent; the decline was notable especially during the second half of 2005. The number of violent incidents dropped from 200 to 98, while the number of threats fell from 774 to 406. Nevertheless, CRIF, the leading Jewish organization in France, stressed that the figure for violent acts against Jews was still ten times higher than in 1990. Notably, there was a spate of heightened antisemitic activity during the visit of Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon to France in July 2005, manifested in graffiti on many Paris walls which incited to hatred and violent attacks against Jews. The major trends in 2005 appeared to be:

• a continuing decline in the antisemitic activity of the extreme right, the majority of which, however, remains ideologically hostile to the Jews and to the State of Israel;
• an increase in the antisemitic discourse within the Islamic fundamentalist movement, often disguised as anti-Zionism;
• an ongoing debate within the extreme left on the necessity of an alliance with the bloc of the Islamist movement which supports the anti-globalization movement (such as the Tariq Ramadan faction);
• a staunch anti-Zionist stand among part of the Afro-Caribbean community in support of comedian Dieudonné.

The decrease in antisemitic manifestations in 2005, especially in violent acts, might be explained, inter alia, by: intensive educational work, enforcement of anti-hate legislation, and the absence of trigger events in the Middle East (see General Analysis). It should be noted that racist actions, which mostly targeted the Muslim/Arab community, also decreased, but to a lesser extent (22 percent).

 

Violence, Vandalism and Harassment

As in previous years, Jewish schoolchildren were attacked and abused in or near their schools. In separate incidents in Paris in April and May, three Jewish girls were assaulted and called “dirty Jews.” In Lyon two Jewish youngsters were attacked in February by a group of youths who slashed the clothes of one of them with a knife and shouted "We have a Jew.” The perpetrators were charged with attempted homicide. In Nice, a Jewish pupil was insulted, kicked and beaten by his classmates in March at the Jules Romain High School.

Several adults, often identifiably Jewish, were also assaulted, especially near synagogues. A rabbi in Aix-en-Provence was struck by the same attacker on two successive days in September. The culprit was arrested. Sarcelles was the scene of several antisemitic incidents: unidentified men assaulted a Jewish youth and called him a dirty Jew on 19 July and a day later a Jewish man coming home from synagogue with his three children was verbally harassed by a similar group; police were investigating the possibility that the two events are connected. Similarly, in March a 16-year-old was attacked near the synagogue by eight people.

            Petrol bombs were used in several incidents to attack synagogues and Jewish property. Synagogues in Pierre Fitte near the 93rd Arrondissement in Paris, Sarrebourg and Stains, as well as the Sinai Jewish School in Paris and a Jewish pastry shop were all damaged by such weapons. Further, a wooden rail car of the deportation train at the Holocaust memorial in Drancy was set alight on 20 February. A note left there was signed ‘Islamic group for Palestine’, ‘Bin Ladin’ and bore a swastika. President Jacques Chirac condemned the act. Jewish cemeteries were desecrated in Remiremont, Gerstheim, Sarreguemines, Tour-de-Peilz and Avignon.

 

Propaganda

On 18 February 2005 French comedian Dieudonné, speaking in Algiers, attacked CRIF, labeling it a Zionist terrorist body. He defended his right to call commemoration of the Holocaust ’remembrance pornography’. Prime Minister Jean-Pierre Raffarin, addressing CRIF on 12 February 2005, alluded indirectly to Dieudonné when he said there were artists who sought applause for fomenting hatred. A day later Dieudonné claimed the phrase had been used by Israeli historian Idit Zertal. In response, Zertal told Liberation that the phrase never appeared in the original of her work Nation and Death. She said she found Dieudonné’s racist style repugnant and advised him to learn some history. On 15 December, during a performance in Paris, Dieudonné encouraged the audience to boo while he called out names of Jewish artists and philosophers.

            In February 2005 the underground band Pass-Pass, which has never been given radio time, played a song in Villeurbanne, near Lyon, which was abusive and threatening to Jews and approving of Hitler. Although the band is almost unknown, the Jews of Lyon and Paris are disturbed and CRIF has reported it to the state prosecutor.

On 13 May young people of North African origin shouted ’dirty Jews’ and ’death to the Jews’ at a group of students from Israel who took part in unveiling a plaque in Lyon in memory of students and teachers from a local school who were deported during WWII. Complaints were filed with the police.

On 26 February, following the ban on broadcasts from Iran’s Sahar-1 satellite network for antisemitism (see below), French Holocaust denier Robert Faurisson was interviewed by the Mehr News Agency. He complained that free speech had been abrogated by the ban, continued to deny the Holocaust and said Jews used their sufferings in WWII to get privileges, and to control policy and the media throughout the world. He claimed Jews were powerful and the French government was under the influence of CRIF. Referring to Holocaust denier Ernst Zündel, deported on 1 March 2005 from Canada to Germany as a hero, he said he had been persecuted because he defended Germany against the lies of the Holocaust.

 

responses to racism and antisemitism

Legal Activity

On 10 February 2005 the French Broadcasting Authority ordered the French satellite provider Eutelsat to stop transmitting broadcasts from the Iranian satellite TV channel Sahar 1, following screening of the antisemitic movie For You, Palestine: Zahra’s Blue Eyes, in December 2004, as well as the antisemitic series al-Shatat (The Diaspora – see ASW 2004). The Conseil d’Etat confirmed the decision on 4 March, following an appeal by Sahar, and the ban became effective from this date.

            On 13 June Judge Emmanuel Binoche ruled that Internet service providers must filter access to the AAARGH (Association of Veteran Fans of Stories of War and Holocausts) which disseminates Holocaust denial (see ASW 2004). Eight human rights organizations petitioned for this decision, the first enforcement of the June 2004 Trust in the Digital Economy law. However, this precedent does not prohibit AAARGH from finding another server.

At the end of May the Versailles Court of Appeals found Jean-Marie Colombani, editor of Le Monde, sociologist Edgar Morin, writer Daniele Sallenave and MEP Sami Nair guilty of racial defamation of the Jewish people in a June 2002 article, “Israel-Palestine: The Cancer.” They were ordered to pay a symbolic fine of one euro to the France-Israel Association and Lawyers without Borders, both of which alleged that the article targeted a religious group worldwide. CRIF was satisfied that the ruling set limits to incriminating ’the Jews’ in the name of criticizing Israel. The case went to the Cour de Cassation.

On 21 June 2005 the Lyon public prosecutor’s office began an investigation of the distribution by Lyon University III of a pamphlet, "The Book of Cultural Philosophy." The pamphlet will be examined for antisemitic content.

 

Official and Public Activity

The daily La Parisien reported that in the fall 100 young policemen learnt during their training about French collaboration with the Nazi regime and about the role played by French police in the deportation of Jews and members of the French resistance movement. Further, on 30 August a decision was taken by the French National School of Magistrates for judges, students, police and judicial functionaries to study the characteristics of antisemitic attacks. One magistrate in each of the 35 courts of appeal would oversee relations with the local Jewish community.

In November the Foundation for Shoah Remembrance distributed a DVD about the Holocaust to 28,000 high school students, teachers and libraries in the Paris area. The DVD deals with the deportation of 76,000 Jews from France and the liberation of the concentration camps.