Fascist Leader Attacks Boycott of Israel

What a surprise.  First the Hitler loving leader of Christians United 4 Israel, John Hagee, hates BDS and then the leader of the French fascist party, Marine Le Pen adds her weight to the call.

Fascist Le Pen Opposes BDS

Marine Le Pen has had a little local difficulty in recent months.  She has been trying to clean up her act and pretend that the French FN are no longer anti-Semitic.  Gone are the days when her pater would talk about the gas chambers as being a ‘mere detail’ of history.  Unfortunately Jean Marie le Pen  found it difficult to keep his mouth closed, with the result that he was barred from the headquarters and expelled, only to be reinstated by a French court.

Marine's old dad, Jean, is angry that he has brought up his daughter to be a good anti-Semite and now she's pretending that she loves Jews

Marine has been trying to convince people that though the FN hates Muslims and Blacks it loves Jews.  True there are a few Jewish idiots who accept this nonsense and focus their attacks on French muslims.  But anyone with a few grey cells can see through what is happening.  After all it’s pretty transparent,.  Racists change their targets but their principles never change.

Tony Greenstein

French far-right leader slams BDS to woo Israel lobby

Ali Abunimah 14 July 2015

Marine Le Pen, leader of France’s far right Front National party. (Rémi Noyon/Flickr)

French presidential hopeful Marine Le Pen is attempting to win the favor of Israel lobby groups for her far-right Front National party.

Trying to bury the National Front's   anti-semitic legacy

According to the website of the pro-Israel group Europe-Israël, Le Pen told the founder of the European Jewish Parliament, a communal organization based in Brussels, that “anti-Semitism has no place in the Front National.”

Enough to make a fascist wince

Le Pen also reportedly told Ukrainian oligarch Vadim Rabinovich at their meeting in the French city of Strasbourg that “she would not accept Front National members who have anti-Semitic opinions” or “who support a boycott of Israel.”

The far-right leader reportedly characterized the boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS) movement in support of Palestinian rights as “racist.”

Le Pen’s conflation of anti-Semitism, of which her party has a long and notorious tradition, on the one hand, and Palestine solidarity activism, on the other, converges with the strategy being pushed by the Socialist administration of President François Hollande.

Why we need BDS

The Front National’s anti-immigrant and anti-Muslim invective are increasingly in tune with mainstream French xenophobia, especially in the wake of the murders at the anti-Muslim magazine Charlie Hebdo and at a Jewish supermarket in Paris in January.

In the US, there is nothing new in prominent pro-Israel figures, such as Anti-Defamation League President Abraham Foxman, pursuing alliances with notorious anti-Semites and Islamophobes for the sake of Israel.

Omar Barghouti - one of the principal supporters of BDS in Israel

But in France, the Front National remains saddled with its history of Holocaust denial and of promoting hatred and suspicion of Jews.

Seeking the endorsement of Israel lobby groups is therefore a shrewd way for Le Pen to try to shed that baggage. In that vein, we can expect that the BDS movement will be an increasingly popular target for ambitious French politicians, just as it is for American ones.

Earlier this month, for instance, presumptive Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton assured Israeli-American billionaire Haim Saban of her determination to fight BDS.

Family feud

The meeting also comes amid a bitter family feud between Marine Le Pen and her father, Front National founder Jean-Marie Le Pen. The party has moved to expel the elder Le Pen and strip him of his title of “honorary president.”

At issue is Jean-Marie Le Pen’s off-message comments minimizing the Holocaust, praising France’s wartime collaborationist Vichy regime and referring to Nazi death camps as a mere “detail” of the Second World War.

Earlier this month, a French court overturned a party ballot to dump him, ensuring that embarrassing litigation will persist in the run-up to the 2017 presidential election.

Flirtation

Marine Le Pen’s comments can be seen as a reciprocation of recent flirtations with her party by certain Israel lobby figures.

In February, Roger Cukierman, president of CRIF, the main pro-Israel umbrella group of Jewish communal organizations in France, raised eyebrows when he appeared to bless the Front National leader.

He acknowledged in a radio interview that the Front National was starting to draw Jewish voters, but said it was a very small minority.

“I think we in the Jewish world are all aware that behind Marine Le Pen, who is personally beyond criticism, there are many Holocaust deniers [and] supporters of the Vichy regime,” Cukierman said, “and therefore for us the Front National is a party to avoid.”

Cukierman’s apparent praise of Le Pen, and his attempt to distinguish her from the rest of her party, drew a sharp rebuke from Serge Klarsfeld, the French attorney and activist whose father was murdered by the Nazis at Auschwitz.

Splits

Similarly, Le Pen’s meeting with European Jewish Parliament founder Vadim Rabinovich has highlighted disagreements among some pro-Israel groups.

“She is not her father,” Rabinovich told JTA of Marine Le Pen. “We have had a constructive dialogue where we accepted the need to combat anti-Semitism, and I believe she is sincere about this.”

But Europe-Israël President Jean-Marc Moskowicz resigned from the European Jewish Parliament in protest over the meeting, stating that it was “not the role of the European Jewish Parliament to interfere in the relationship between French political parties and the Jewish community of France.”

Moskowicz, however, does not seem to oppose meeting Le Pen in principle. Rather, he objected on foreign policy grounds, including that “the party of Ms. Le Pen is still unclear regarding Israel.”

He cited statements of Le Pen deputy Florian Philippot “in favor of recognizing a Palestinian state without negotiations with Israel.”

Calling the meeting “more than premature,” Moskowicz said it “would have been better to wait for Marine Le Pen to take positions in support of Israel, against anti-Semitism and to fight the boycott, which she has not done for the moment.”

The implication seems to be that if Le Pen affirms pro-Israel and anti-BDS positions as a matter of party policy, Europe-Israël too might be ready to give her a second look.

Divide and rule

Le Pen’s comments underline the advantage French politicians – even those who head notoriously anti-Semitic parties – see in posing as champions in the fight against anti-Semitism.

But the approach they are taking may only deepen divisions in French society, rather than effectively addressing the problem, according to Parti des Indigènes de la République (PIR).

PIR – the Party of the Indigenous Persons of the Republic – is an anti-racist and decolonial political collective that says that Black people, Arabs and Muslims still occupy an inferior place in contemporary France, just as they did in French colonies.

In March, PIR took aim at what it called “state racism” and “state philo-Semitism” that pit Jews against other segments of French society under the guise of fighting anti-Semitism.

“It is true that traditional anti-Semitism exists in France, fueled by the far-right,” PIR observes. “But there is no state anti-Semitism. Jews are not discriminated against in housing or employment, are not harassed by the police and are not subjected to large-scale anti-Semitic propaganda in national media.”

This contrasts with the condition of millions of French citizens and immigrants of Arab and African ancestry or Muslim faith.

But, PIR warns:

There is a state policy, rooted in colonial history, that is being reactivated in light of contemporary issues. This policy is based on the preferential treatment given to the fight against anti-Semitism as against other racisms. This is helping to deepen the tensions between different segments of French society, exposing Jews to the condemnation of the most disadvantaged in the hierarchy of racisms. Based on this logic, we see a racist offensive against young indigenes [people of Arab and African ancestry or Muslim religion], accusing them of being the vector of a new anti-Semitism. [The state] claims to be the protector of the Jews, all the while using them … as a baseball bat to hit Blacks and Arabs.

Since the January attacks in Paris, there has been a big leap in Islamophobic attacks in France, but little government effort to fight the phenomenon.

Many critics accuse the government itself of stigmatizing young Muslims in its fight against “radicalization.”

There has been a fivefold increase in physical attacks against persons and numerous acts of vandalism against mosques, according to a recent report from the nonprofit group Collectif contre l’islamophobie en France (Collective Against Islamophobia in France).

In June, French interior minister Bernard Cazeneuve admitted that the number of anti-Muslim acts “is certainly underestimated because too many victims are reluctant to report them,” fearing that they would not be believed or that nothing would be done.

By contrast, President François Hollande, announcing a raft of new laws and policies aimed at fighting anti-Semitism, stated in February that anti-Jewish statements online should be treated with the same severity as child pornography.

According to PIR, this differential approach is being supported by pro-Israel organizations in the Jewish community – with the effect of further conflating Judaism and Jews, on the one hand, with Israel and Zionism, on the other.

In an expansive essay, PIR’s Houria Bouteldja writes:

Those who use the Jews for Israeli interests are indeed Zionist organizations in complicity with Official France, which attends the CRIF dinner every year and makes Zionist organizations its privileged interlocutors. This attitude of French rulers has been denounced by Jewish organizations – UFJP [French Jewish Union for Peace], IJAN [International Jewish Anti-Zionist Network] and Another Jewish Voice, who rightly see the danger for Jews all over the world. It is important to note that these activists, who previously claimed internationalist and class identities, now feel obliged to identify as Jews to distinguish themselves from those who are confiscating Jewishness for political ends.

Among those now joining in – with the apparent collusion of at least a few pro-Israel activists – is one of France’s most pernicious organizations: the Front National.

For Bouteldja, the message of recent political developments in France is clear: “If one is clearly anti-racist, and worried about the rise of the extreme right that will target first and foremost the populations of the [predominantly Arab and Black] neighborhoods; and if one is concerned about Jews who have become targets of terrorist groups, one must have the courage to attack the current forms of state racism: Islamophobia, anti-Blackness and Romaniphobia, as well as state philo-Semitism, which is a subtle and sophisticated form of anti-Semitism of the nation-state.”

Completing Hitler’s Goal – Netanyahu Seeks to Make Europe Judenrein

Creating a Climate of Fear - the Invention of anti-Semitism

No sooner than 3 reactionary lunatics had murdered 17 people in France, including journalists on Charlie Hebdo and 4 Jewish people in a kosher supermarket, then Benjamin Netanyahu was on the scene.  What was Netanyahu’s message to the Jews of France?  To offer comfort, to encourage them to stand up to anti-Semitism, to promise that Israel will in future make it clear that its genocidal attacks on the Palestinians have nothing to do with diaspora Jewish communities?

Coubillay -  supermarket killerPerish the thought.  Like a parasitic leech, Netanyahu sought to complete the work of Amedy Coulibaly, who killed the shoppers in the supermarket solely because they were Jewish.  The true home of French Jews was Israel, a sentiment that every anti-Semite will agree with.  Once again Zionism demonstrates that it is the hand that fits into the anti-Semitic glove.

In fact the millions who demonstrated in Paris and elsewhere in France proved the complete opposite.  That anti-Semitism has shallow roots today in France.  It showed that this is equally true of the Muslim community and the outpouring of praise for Lassana Bathily, who hid Jewish shoppers in the freezers of the supermarket, demonstrates that the mass condemnation of the 3 killers is not a condemnation of Muslims, despite the attempts of politicians such as Nigel Farage, Marine Le Pen and David Cameron to do exactly that.

Lassana-Bathily - hero of kosher supermarket

The official attempt to translate the outpouring of public outrage for what has happened into a condemnation of ‘terrorism’ has been less than successful.  Reporters without Borders  condemned the hypocrisy of the world leaders:

“On what grounds are representatives of regimes that are predators of press freedom coming to Paris to pay tribute to Charlie Hebdo, a publication that has always defended the most radical concept of freedom of expression?

"Reporters Without Borders is appalled by the presence of leaders from countries where journalists and bloggers are systematically persecuted such as Egypt (which is ranked 159th out of 180 countries in RWB’s press freedom index), Russia (148th), Turkey (154th) and United Arab Emirates (118th)." 

Countries like Egypt and Bahrain torture journalists yet they were welcomed on a march in support of press freedom!  Equally hypocritical has been the French government which has used the attack on Charlie Hebdo, not to defend freedom of speech but to restrict it.  Palestinian marches have been banned in France and those who attend them face a year or more imprisonment.  Clearly the lessons learnt by some in the West is that freedom of speech is only worth defending when you agree with them.

I am confident that despite a spike in the emigration of French Jews to Israel (it is estimated that 10,000 will go this year) that the vast majority of them will stay.  After all, there is no more dangerous place on Earth if you are Jewish than Israel.

The newly formed Zionist group, Campaign Against anti-Semitism, has been quick to exploit the situation, too quick.  It took to using a rigged poll, in which people were invited to say that today's Britain reminded them of the 1930's (it is doubtful that many of the respondents were around then or even know what it was like) and half agreed.  Likewise the finding that a quarter of British Jews are thinking of moving to Israel is another piece of invented nonsense.  The Jewish Chronicle opinion poll 'JC poll reveals 88 per cent of British Jews have not considered leaving UK' which was scientifically valid, shows that 88% of Jews have no intention of leaving the UK.  No doubt this is very disappointing to the Zionist fanatics of the CAA.  It is also no doubt disappointing to the rank opportunists and hypocrites of the Tory-Lib.Dem. government, not least our very own racist Home Secretary  Theresa May.  She took advantage of the CAA poll, knowing nothing about it or its defects, to suggest that she was shocked that Jews were considering leaving Britain because of anti-Semitism, just as her fellow Cabinet member, Eric Pickles, was asking Muslims to prove that being a Muslim was compatible with a British identity.

Once again 'anti-Semitism' is being used in pursuit of a racist agenda.

Tony Greenstein  

Translation  - Jim Cohen, Paris

The trap set for the Jews of France

 

Thursday 15 January 2015

Bureau National de l’UJFP – The National Bureau of the French Jewish Union for Peace

In the past several days we have experienced the same repeated shocks as all our fellow citizens. As Jews we were profoundly upset by the horrible attack carried out on Jews only because they were Jews. This can only evoke memories of the worst periods of Judaism in France. All we believe in as activists, citizens, and human beings, and all that we struggle for – the value of life, equality among human beings, and ta’ayush (living together) – was trampled in the editorial office of a magazine and in a kosher market. We are convinced that freedom of expression is a fundamental value of any democratic society and that it must be defended at all costs against obscurantist violence.

We are also conscious of the rise of a formidable anti-semitism in France. But we seek to analyze it and understand its causes, because like all racisms it breeds blindness, hatred and bloodshed. For years our association has been denouncing the trap set for French Jews and it is important to describe this trap again in the wake of this murderous attack.

This trap has been laid by several different instances, at several different levels, yet not without coordination. It began with Ariel Sharon’s provocations on the esplanade of the  al-Aqsa Mosque, which unleashed a second Intifada in 2000. The Israeli government decided that France, which is home to the largest Jewish community of Europe, was a necessary and indispensable tool of its policies. The executive arms of these instances in France was made of the Israeli embassy, the Jewish Agency and the CRIF, that is, the so-called representative council of Jewish institutions in France. Their aim is to embark all Jews of France in a current of unconditional support to all actions of the Israeli government, including the worst. The CRIF seeks to impose the image of a totally homogeneous Jewish community in full support of a flawless Zionism and unequivocal support to the regime’s actions.

The same mission is then pursued within the network of secular Jewish associations, from which our organization was bound quickly to be ejected because the orthodoxy says there is no salvation outside Zionism. To imagine a collectivity of nearly 600,000 French Jews speaking with a single voice is just as stupid and insane as attributing a similar unanimity to five or six million Muslims, among whom there are, obviously, religious observers, secular or otherwise and in varying degrees, and even a few friends of Zionism! Such reasoning promotes the assimilation, in everyone’s mind, between Jews and support for Israeli policy whatever it may be. And this is policy which occupies, colonizes and kills Palestinian Arabs every day. 

Israel’s successive governments have addressed themselves over the same period of time to French Jews, urging them to leave France, with all its supposedly anti-semitic Muslims, and make their aliyah to Israel.

To complete the picture, there is a family of French intellectuals who espouse a “clash-of-civilizations” view of the world. Caroline Fourest, Pierre-André Taguieff, Jacques Tarnéro, Alain Finkielkraut and others lead the charge both against Islam and for Zionism. Successive French governments, for their part, have continually confused legitimate criticism of Israel and Zionism with anti-semitism and racism. Most French media have taken up the same chorus. After the massacre of Toulouse in March 2012, one could even hear some journalists who, when speaking of Israel to Jewish citizens of France in front of the school targeted by the assassin, called it “your country”. And let us not forget the Rufin report on racism and anti-semitism (2004), which called for penalization of anti-Zionism, described as a new form of anti-semitism.  

Into this trap, many Jews have fallen, given their emotional and familial ties and their identification with Israel, and given Israel’s history as presented in Zionist mythology. Little by little they have become the potential “representatives” in France of the Israeli soldier or the Israeli settler, abandoning their critical judgment in the heat of increasingly problematic confrontations. They have at the same time sacrificed their own capacity for empathy with others, including occupied peoples, people deprived of all their rights and subjected to massacres as in Gaza last summer. Their only concern is to preserve at any cost this “small, fragile state surrounded by enemies” and alone capable, they believe, of protecting them from anti-semitism. 

Any criticism of that state has thus been defined as an act of anti-semitism; any meeting in solidarity with Palestine becomes a gathering of fanatics who are seen as a threat to them personally. Local Jewish communities, at the urging of the CRIF, have thus tried to prohibit such meetings, thereby reinforcing the animosity against themselves. The vicious cycle is only reinforced over time; each new attack on the occupied territories only worsens the tensions and contributes to the syndrome of sectarian withdrawal.

In these same years, the social crisis has deepened in the working-class districts where Jews, Arabs and Africans could often be found together in the same public housing, confronting similar difficulties. In these ghettos of poverty, the young French post-colonial citizen who undergoes job discrimination and is prevented from entering certain night clubs because of his physical appearance, tends to identify with that last non-decolonized pocket of the Arab world – oppressed Palestine. Sometimes he wears the keffieh, a symbol of resistance. Each time he seeks to express his solidarity, his free speech is infringed upon and assimilated to anti-semitism.

His wish to take part in political debate is thereby negated, rejected and likened to racism. He’s designated as the racist one, in addition to having to undergo racism and social exclusion as a black or an Arab. Little by little a resentment develops within him against that community which the government claims to protect against him and the likes of him. (It may be noted in passing that Jews are recognized as a legitimate community while the pejorative term “communautarisme”, with strong connotations of “clannishness”, is reserved for others, Muslims in particular.)

And do not wearers of skullcaps also often bear the insignia of the Israeli paratroopers? They can demonstrate without fear their support for the Israeli army and its massacres in Gaza, and can even take part in those actions – the French government and the national press will say the same nice things about him as about “Operation Protective Edge”. They’re on the side of the good guys’: they’re white and western and have the law of the strongest in their favor. Violent groups such as the Jewish Defense League may insult Palestine and Arabs, beat them up and commit acts of vandalism and never be brought to justice; the police just watch them and remain silent, as we witnessed in July 2014 near the synagogue on Paris’ rue de la Roquette (there are plenty of videos to prove what actually occurred).

At the same time young Arabs were not allowed to demonstrate for Gaza. We cannot forget that young man who was arrested – like others, on the basis of his appearance – while on the sidelines of a demonstration this past summer and as he was leaving for home, simply because he was wearing a keffieh? He was struck by a police office and was sent immediately to a hearing before a judge. A journalist from Libération, witness to the scene, saw the young man break into tears before a partial and inflexible judge and wrote an angry article. The young man was sentenced to three months in prison and it still today under house arrest with an electronic bracelet in his outlying suburb.

The French justice system operates with a double standard: stigmatization for some to the dubious benefit of others, thanks to an official discourse which depicts the Arab world as the backward, barbaric, terrorist Axis of Evil, while Israel is a model of democracy; young Arabs and Africans are painted as potential dangers to society while Jews are a protected category, fully integrated into a West recently redefined as Judeo-Christian. Here too is a source of anger.

The powerlessness of those unable to transcend their miserablecondition has sent hundreds of youths of all horizons – even a handful of Jews it seems – into the arms of IS and al-Qaeda. Thus the trap closes shut. Jews, reduced to a homogenous body, will be taken to task for all these injustices, humiliations, muzzlings, and all that arrogance displayed while under the protection of successive French governments: don’t touch our Jews, you eternal foreigners, you barbarians unassimilable into our republic. 

If you can’t harm Israel, some tell themselves, at least you can try to harm its Jewish supporters. The festering wound of the Palestinian question, unresolved because the powerful of the world refuse to resolve it, contributes to the emergence of a desperate and suicidal terrorism.

A powerful mechanism for assigning people to their supposed identities of origin has arisen in the context of the post-1989 world. The Jews of Europe, and those of France in particular, have served as footsoldiers in this new formation.

It is with a sense of gravity that we undertake to remind our fellow Jews that we are French; we can live at home here and be “happy like Jews in France” (according to an old saying transformed by historian Elie Barnavi), and we can achieve this happiness with our fellow citizens of all origins. The importation of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is of your doing because you have been manipulated into serving an unjust cause. The rising terrorism of IS and al-Qaeda, against which we must all struggle because it is a murderous and suicidal dead-end, will require us to wage struggles in common against all forms of racism and exclusion and for the expression of opinions in all their diversity – including those of Muslim and Jews – in a spirit of exchange and dialogue. Freedom of expression cannot be limited to a single world view.

The National Bureau of the UJFP – France Jewish Union for Peace – 15 January 2015

Researching antisemitism

 

Date 14 Jan 2015

‘… the claim in the report, for example, that “more than half of all British Jews feel that antisemitism now echoes the 1930s” verges into irresponsible territory – it is an incendiary finding, and there is simply no way to ascertain whether or not it is accurate. Moreover, the very inclusion of such a question in the survey, which most credible scholars of the Holocaust utterly refute, was a dubious decision in and of itself, and raises issues about the organisers’ pre-existing hypotheses and assumptions. Professional social researchers build credible surveys and analyse the data with an open mind; the CAA survey falls short both in terms of its methodology and its analysis.

However, unfortunately, the organisation’s survey about antisemitism is littered with flaws, and in the context of a clear need for accurate data on this topic, its work may even be rather irresponsible.

Its report is based on two surveys – one of Jews living in the UK, exploring their perceptions and experiences of antisemitism, and one of the general population of the UK, exploring its attitudes towards Jews.

In the first one, the data about Jewish attitudes are based on an open web survey that had very limited capacity to assess whether respondents were in any way representative of the British Jewish population. So the percentages quoted are of survey respondents, not of Jews in the UK. The findings might be representative of the Jewish community in some way, but it is at least equally likely that they are not. Unfortunately, due to quite basic methodological flaws and weaknesses, there is absolutely no way the researchers or any readers of the report can really know.

The second survey, conducted by YouGov, is much better – the results are certainly broadly representative of the UK population. ….

A far more accurate and honest read of the YouGov data would highlight the fact that between 75% and 90% of people in Britain either do not hold antisemitic views or have no particular view of Jews either way, and only about 4% to 5% of people can be characterised as clearly antisemitic when looking at individual measures of antisemitism. This figure is similar to Pew data gathered in 2009 and 2014 which estimated the level of antisemitic attitudes at somewhere between 2% and 7%, and Anti-Defamation League data gathered in 2014 which, while also flawed, put it at 8%, and, more robustly, identified the UK as among the least antisemitic countries in the world. It is possible that the proportion has risen in light of the summer’s events in Gaza (and those interested should look out for the next results from the Pew Global Attitudes Survey), but the notion that it has risen to such a significant degree seems to be highly implausible.

British Jews reject‘fortress Judaism’

January 15, 2015 Rabbi Janner-Klausner

These British Jews, alongside their neighbours, defeated the Nazi-affiliated British Union of Fascists, who wanted to free the country of foreigners “be they Hebrew or any other form of alien”, dispersing their three thousand-strong rally. Jewish workers ensured the “Blackshirts” were the only aliens on British turf. The so-called Battle of Cable Street took place in 1936.

Yesterday, the Campaign Against Anti-Semitism claimed that more than half of Jews believe anti-Semitism in Britain now echoes that decade, the 1930s. The survey reported that almost half of Jews fear they have no future in Britain, while a quarter have thought about leaving the country.

The findings depict a Jewish community of fear and fatalism, but they worried me for another reason. They demonstrated a disconnect between a particular perception of Jewish life — and the lived experiences of most British Jews. I was not alone. Yesterday, British Jews publicly rejected the “Fortress Judaism” narrative and the self-definition of Jewish life through perceived danger and discrimination.

77% of us have witnessed antisemitism disguised as a political comment about Israel. 82% believe antisemitism is fuelled by biased coverage of Israel. 84% find boycotts of Israeli businesses intimidatory. Powerful statistics to add to a press complaint or meeting with the local police about a boycott protest.

Elsewhere:

In the summer of 2014, as Israel and Hamas battled, all over the UK antisemitic chants were bellowed at protests, boycotters threw kosher goods out of supermarkets, Jews were assaulted and intimidated in the streets and social networks were used to regurgitate ancient antisemitic prejudice. Antisemitic incidents in Britain reached their highest recorded level. London alone saw its worst ever month for hate crime, 95% of it antisemitic.

CIMADE - French Group Saved 10,000 Marseilles Jews Boycotts Zionisation of Holocaust

Pastor Marc Donadille with his wife and children. Donadille worked with CIMADE, a Protestant movement to save the Jews of southern France by smuggling them to Le Chambon-sur-Lignon. France, between 1939 and 1943.

'Righteous' French Group Boycotts Jewish Event

Holocaust Rescuers Object to Memorial's 'Pro-Israel' Slant

By JTA

Madelaine Barot of Cimade

Published February 12, 2013.


The deportation of foreign born Jewish men in occupied Paris was carried on May 14 1941.  Summons were sent to Czech, Austrian, and Polish Jews.  They were instructed by the French prefecture of police to come to specific locations in the capital in order to have their papers examined. Approximately 5000 foreign born Jewish men between the ages of 18 and 40 reported to the various assembly points. Once arrived, they were forbidden to leave.  The detainees were put on buses and driven to the Gare d'Austerlitz train station and immediately boarded onto four special trains bound for the internment camps of Beaune-la-Rolande and Pithiviers in the Loiret near Orleans.


Paris — A French organization that saved Jews during the Holocaust has declined to attend a commemoration because it was organized by pro-Israel Jews. 

The Marseille branch of CIMADE, a French Protestant group established in 1939, declined to attend the region’s main memorial ceremony for Jewish Holocaust victims because of the pro-Israel attitude of CRIF, the umbrella group representing French Jewish communities, which organized the event together with the municipality.

Rabbi Bernhard Rosenberg, one of those who insists on conflating the holocaust with Israel - demands that the Zionist anthem Hatikvah is played, even though the victims of the holocaust were overwhelmingly anti-Zionist

The values that led CIMADE to save Jews make the group "equally committed to oppose the colonial, discriminatory and bellicose policy of Israel with regards to the Palestinians," CIMADE regional deputies Françoise Rocheteau and Jean-Pierre Cavalie wrote in a letter to the local CRIF branch on Dec. 21. It also said CIMADE was determined to fight "apartheid."

Boycott Israel Picket

The letter, which was published online on Feb. 11 by a group which promotes a boycott of Israel, was a reply to an invitation extended by CRIF to CIMADE to attend the 70th commemoration on Jan. 20 of the deportation and subsequent murder of thousands of local Jews.

Marseille had a Jewish population of 39,000 in 1939, according to Beit Hatfutsot, the Museum of the Jewish People. Only 10,000 remained after the Holocaust. CIMADE organized "vital relief and later resistance" in connection with the murders, according to Yad Vashem, and helped smuggle Jews to safety. Yad Vashem named Madeleine Barot, who headed CIMADE during the Holocaust, a Righteous among the Nations in 1988. She passed away seven years later.

"We understand our positions may appear unacceptable, making us unwelcome at your commemoration," the CIMADE representatives wrote. "We cannot keep silent on our convictions but do not wish to cause a scandal."

Read more: