People recollect on the sidelines of the Silent March In Memory Of Mireille Knoll

Politics

Для борьбы с антисемитизмом требуется свобода слова

Apr 13, 2018 Noëlle Lenoir

ПАРИЖ – Рост популизма на Западе вызвал – и это неудивительно – прилив антисемитских настроений. В Великобритании Лейбористскую партию трясёт от обвинений в том, что её лидер Джереми Корбин терпимо относится к антисемитским заявлениям своих левацких сторонников. В Венгрии главным элементом недавней предвыборной кампании переизбранного премьер-министра Виктора Орбана стала атака с едва скрываемым антисемитским акцентом на филантропа Джорджа Сороса.

Во Франции существуют два источника антисемитизма: ультраправый Национальный фронт и некоторые сегменты большой мусульманской диаспоры страны. Французские методы борьбы с проявлениями антисемитизма вполне могут стать полезным примером для остальных стран.

Начать с того, что французский общественный договор основан на принципах мирного сосуществования различных религий, ни одна из которых не может спонсироваться государством. В то же время принцип верховенства закона имеет обязательный приоритет над любыми конкретными религиозными нормами.

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0 Comments on this paragraph, 6 Comments on this article

Paul Daley Apr 14, 2018

So, "hate speech" becomes "free speech" when politically convenient or popular, and vice versa. It takes some of the shine off the law to see rights and crimes mutate one into the other depending on the direction of the political tide.
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Vanishing Leprechaun Apr 14, 2018

I have some remarks to make to this text.
Number one, the word “antisemitic” is a mistake. Also Arabs are Semites, and there is also a Jewish line of thought (don’t know if it is correct) which supports the idea that Jews aren’t Semites. We should use the more correct terms “anti-Jews” or “anti-Judaism”.
Number two, the problem in Labour anti-Judaism affair, is that some Labour militant has been suspended by a MP commission because they supposedly were “anti-Jews”. Little problem: these militants were Jews! Anti-Jews Jews! The actual target of such political maneuver weren’t anti-Jews, but Corbin instead. Exactly as in U.S. the Mueller’ target isn’t Trump (which is a false flag), the actual target is Sanders.
https://www.opendemocracy.net/naomi-wimborne-idrissi/another-jew-suspended-for-antisemitism-why-is-uk-labour-party-making-such-une
Number three, female circumcision has nothing to do with Islam, it is a tribal (“polytheist” in the language of the Koran) custom, non approved by Islam, as any custom of “polytheist” origin. So an Imam which tolerate female circumcision can be targeted for “excess of tolerance” by Islam itself.
Number four, “Anti-Zionism” isn’t a “reinvented form of anti-Semitism.” (A typical Macron’s “bêtise”), because “anti-Zionism”, which is an hypocrite way to call “strong political criticism about Israel politics”) is a current practice of Jews people, even Zionists.
This is the “anti-Zionist” Tel Aviv Newspaper Haarez:
https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/radio-host-faces-ax-for-ashamed-to-be-israeli-post-after-gaza-deaths-1.5969387
Again, Anti-Jews Jews?
And Mr. Noëlle Lenoir cannot ignore that the Jews Paris community, the Lubavitch, are actually Hasidim, thus strong critics of the Israel politics and sympathizing with Palestinians. But there are also “secular” Jews who detest Israel, and a huge amount of Jews all around the world who don’t tolerate the offense of identifying Israel with Judaism.
For instance, about the Charlie Hebdo attack these Jews people:
http://www.ujfp.org/spip.php?article3762
I suggest also to take a glance to the US Jew historian Norman Finkelstein. But be careful! It is an Anti-semite!
Anti-semitism is a false flag. It’s politics, stupid!
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Henk Crop Apr 14, 2018

You can discuss this issue from the principle or legal point of view.
However why not discuss it from the practical point of view ?
Islam has many values which are not compatible with Western values, free speech is just one of them. Others are respect for democracy and civil law, respect for other religions or infidels, equality of women.
Islam is both a political as well as a religious movement.
Islam does not allow to change its laws or deviate from them. A Moslim is not allowed to leave Islam.
The question is for both the West and the Islam how to get along ?
The West simply does not have an answer to such a dedicated movement.
The EU Elite bends over backward so as not to see problems it causes.
Around the EU borders huge population explosions takes place. In Africa, the Middle East, Pakistan, Banglah Desh. This will lead to conflicts and millions of refugees. Mostly Moslim, who prefer to flee to the EU.
Given the developments in the world, the EU laws and the current policies, the EU values will eventually be replaced by Islamic values.
Our children will then become a surpressed minority.
The EU has only one political leader who has a practical vision on this issue, that is Viktor Orban, PM of Hungary.
But instead of listening to him Brussels plans to punish him, for protecting his people and their values.
Our Elite keeps the EU in a nose dive.
Courts are not going to change that, but think tanks and politicians.
However than they would also have to consider facts and figures, and see what happens beyond their borders.
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j. von Hettlingen Apr 14, 2018

Noëlle Lenoir defends free speech in fighting „anti-Semitism“ in France and highlights the legal case against the French historian, Georges Bensoussan, author of the 2012 book “Jews in Arab countries.” In 2015 he claimed that French Muslims “were 2-3 times more likely to harbor anti-Jewish sentiments than French people generally.” He even alleged that in Arab families, “antisemitism is in the air one breathes,” suggesting it being “imbibed with their mother’s milk.”
Bensoussan’s statement landed him in court, as the Collective Against Islamophobia in France and the International League Against Racism and Anti-Semitism filed separate legal complaints against him, accusing him of “inciting racial hatred.” He was then acquitted. But the circumstances remind the author of the Charlie Hebdo cartoonists, who were sued in 2007 for depicting the Prophet Muhammad. The editor was later found not guilty of insulting Muslims.
Muslim groups such as Collective Against Islamophobia in France were furious at the ruling, while those who defend freedom of speech could breathe a sigh of relief. France is known for its constitutional system of secularism (laïcité), and “religion is confined to the personal and private sphere.” A French court views a grotesque charge of a hate crime against Muslims or Islam through the prism of law and often refrains from reining in any criticism of Muslims or Islam. Yet many Muslims in France do believe that the freedom of speech needs to be curtailed.
In 2006 Bensoussan edited a book called “The Lost Territories of the Republic,” in which the Muslim-populated suburbs – les banlieues – were said to be rife with anti-Semitism and racism, and depicted as hotbeds of radical Islam. In these lost neighbourhoods, the young and unemployed Muslims of North African origin have a fraught relationship with the authorities. Raised as terrorists of today and tomorrow, many had been recruited as Islamist militants fighting in Iraq or Syria.
The author says: “Meanwhile, those stoking anger over the Israeli-Palestinian conflict have launched a campaign of intimidation against anyone who would dare to identify the sources of today’s anti-Semitism,” which has been on the rise across Europe in recent years. Last month the 85-year-old Mireille Knoll, a Holocaust survivor, was found murdered in her burned-out Paris flat. Last year a 65-year-old Orthodox Jewish woman was beaten and thrown out of her window. Police said these homicides were driven by anti-Semitism.
Troubled by developments in recent years the author deplores that the “fundamental principles” of secularism in France, that have “guaranteed peaceful religious coexistence since the end of World War II” are now being “threatened, not so much by the National Front and other populists (whose leaders have been prosecuted for anti-Semitic musings and Holocaust denial), but by the growing influence of radical and hardline interpretations of Islam.”
What unsettles the author is “the rise of advocacy and activist organizations with obscure origins and funding, some of which promote the establishment of Sharia law.” She fears that this trend is prevalent within the political establishment and the civil society, aiming to “create a culture of victimization among French young people of Arab origin.” This no doubt stokes resentments against Islam and Muslims. Any hostility drives them into the hands of jihadi groups.
While supporting the Palestinian cause is a political point of view, taking revenge on Israelis or Jews in France is a crime, and perpetrators have to face the full force of the law. That said, genuine and legitimate criticism of Benjamin Netanyahu’s right-wing policy must – by the same token – not be seen as anti-Semitism.
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Marc Laventurier Apr 13, 2018

Last year Macron explicitly equated 'anti-zionism' with 'anti-semitism'. Where was the Académie Française? See: https://www.nytimes.com/2017/07/17/world/europe/macron-israel-holocaust-antisemitism.html
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