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Europe

France uncovers radicalization network that led to murder of teacher, 7 to be charged

2020-10-22

[Jpost] Less than a week after French teacher Samuel Paty was murdered and beheaded, Gay Paree is uncovering the extent of the radicalization and hate networks that led to the unprecedented murder. While La Belle France has dealt with extremism for years as well as many brutal murders, such as Ilan Halimi in 2006, the attack on the Toulouse ...lies on the banks of the River Garonne, half-way between the Atlantic Ocean and the Mediterranean Sea. The Toulouse metropolitan area is the fourth-largest in La Belle France... Jewish school in 2012, the Bataclan massacre and the Charlie Hebdo

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Europe

France vows firm response to wave of anti-Semitic vandalism, Dutch schoolbook reads like Arab propaganda

2019-02-13

[IsraelTimes] Government says anti-Jewish attacks ’spreading like poison’ after 74% surge in 2018, tries to link incidents to yellow vest protests. But the rise in anti-Semitic acts in La Belle France predates the "yellow vest" movement and there was no evidence on Tuesday tying the latest incidents to the movement. Interior Minister Christophe Castaner revealed Monday that the number of anti-Jewish offences reported to the police surged 74 percent last year, to 541 from 311 in 2017. In a statement Tuesday, Castaner said 183 involved assaults and at least one murder, while 358 were anti-Semitic threats or insults. "Anti-Semitism is spreading like poison," Castaner said while visiting a memorial site outside Gay Paree for a young Jewish man who was tortured to death in 2006. A tree planted at the site where 23-year-old Ilan Halimi’s body was found had been chopped down, and a second tree was partly sawed through. Also in recent days, the word "Juden" (German for Jew) was scrawled on the window of a bagel bakery in Gay Paree, and swastikas were drawn on Gay Paree postal boxes decorated with a portrait of former government minister and Holocaust survivor Simone Veil. ‘JEWISH PIG’ Last weekend, an anti-discrimination advocate revealed a graffiti saying "Macron Jews’ Bitch," in English, on a garage door in the center of Gay Paree, and the phrase "Jewish pig" scrawled on a wall in the city’s northern 18th district. President Emmanuel Macron was also targeted in graffiti discovered Monday at the headquarters of French daily Le Monde, using anti-Semitic tropes to refer to his former job as a Rothschild investment banker. Junior foreign minister Sebastien Lecornu also pointed the finger at "yellow vest" protesters for the latest offences. "Conspiracy theorists are very present among their ranks," he said, before referring to a survey released on Monday. The Ifop poll said nearly half of "yellow vests" believed in a worldwide "Zionist plot," as well as the "Great Replacement" theory, which posits that immigration is being organized deliberately "to replace Europe’s native populations." Interesting conflation of a false thing with a true one. I wonder how the responses break out for each... La Belle France is home to the largest Jewish population in Europe ...also known as Moslem Lebensraum... and the community has been targeted by jihadists in recent years. Dutch textbook omits Jewish connection to Jerusalem [IsrqelTimes] Book by Nordhoff Publishers also omits ill treatment of Jews at hands of Arab rulers throughout history. A Dutch publisher that previously created school textbooks accusing Israelis of ethnic cleansing has released a new volume omitting Jerusalem’s significance to Jews. The omission occurred in a textbook about social issues titled "Plein M" by Nordhoff Publishers for preparatory middle-level applied education level schools, including public schools. It states Jerusalem is holy to Moslems and Christians, but does not mention its holiness to Jews. It also states that Jews and Christians were "mostly treated well" by Arabs throughout history. It does not mention capital taxes and many pogroms perpetrated against Jews in Arab countries before and during the flight of at least 800,000 Jews from those countries in the 20th century. Today, there are fewer than 7,000 Jews living in Arab countries. Likoed Nederland, a pro-Israel group, called the book a form of "historical falsification" in a statement Sunday, adding it "reads like Paleostinian propaganda." Nordhoff did not reply to JTA’s request for reaction. In 2015, the same publisher defended a history book that states that David Ben Gurion, Israel’s first prime minister, declared statehood after "Jewish militias carried out murders in Arab villages, and hundreds of thousands of Paleostinians fled and settled in refugee camp across the border." That book does not mention Arab atrocities during the same conflict. The Dutch education ministry has a relatively liberal policy as to which textbooks may be used as teaching materials, placing such choices at the discretion of schools and, at times, individual teachers. Update from Ay Pee at 8:15 a.m. ET courtesy of Besoeker: A judicial official told The Associated Press that Paris prosecutors have opened four investigations following incidents in the French capital last weekend. The official was not authorized to be publicly named because the investigations are ongoing.

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Europe

Jewish family beaten, robbed in ‘anti-Semitic’ home invasion near Paris

2017-09-11

[IsraelTimes] Assailants said to tell victims, 'You are Jewish, you have money,' before brutally attacking them, threatening to kill them Three members of a prominent French Jewish family were kidnapped, tied up, brutally beaten and robbed on Thursday night in their home in the suburb of Livry-Gargan northeast of Gay Paree, French authorities said Sunday. According to the National Bureau for Vigilance against Anti-Semitism (BNVCA), three individuals broke into the house Roger Pinto, the president of the Siona group representing Sephardic Jews, by cutting through the home’s window bars. They then cut off the electricity in the house, tied up Pinto’s son, and held and beat his wife. It was only on Friday morning, several hours later, that Pinto managed to discretely contact police, causing the intruders to flee. According to the BNVCA report, the unidentified attackers told their victims, "You are Jewish, you have money." The assailants, black men in their 20s or 30s, according to the victims’ description, took jewelry, cash and credit cards. The Pintos were taken to hospital for treatment. They suffered some minor injuries but were deeply traumatized, the report said. The BNVCA called the attack "manifestly anti-Semitic" and "premeditated," and said the family was "threatened with death" and "violently beaten." In a statement on Sunday, CRIF, the umbrella body of French Jewish organizations, said it "powerfully condemns the very violent and anti-Semitic aggression." "This odious act is proof, if we needed any, that the Jews of La Belle France are especially threatened in the street, and even more disturbingly, within their very homes," CRIF President Francis Kalifat said. "After the atrocious murder of Sarah Halimi in her home, this new attack must bring the authorities in our country to a heightened vigilance and deterrence-inducing steps," he added. Halimi, a 65-year-old Orthodox Jew, was killed by her Moslem neighbor in April in Gay Paree. Prosecutors dropped the anti-Semitic accusation from his indictment, drawing fierce condemnation from the Jewish community. The Union of Jewish Students of La Belle France also condemned Thursday’s attack, lamenting "the insecurity of French Jews." Israel’s ambassador to La Belle France, Aliza Bin Noun, offered her own "support to the Jewish family in Livry-Gargan" and "strongly condemn[ed] this anti-Semitic attack" in a tweet Sunday. The incident is one of several cases in La Belle France in recent years in which criminals singled out Jews out of the apparent belief that they have money. In 2014, three men broke into the home of a Jewish family in Creteil near Gay Paree. One of them raped a young woman there while another guarded her boyfriend, whom they took prisoner, and a third went with the couple’s credit card to extract cash from an ATM machine. They too allegedly said they targeted the couple because the victims are Jewish. Occurring amid a major increase in anti-Semitic violence in La Belle France accompanying Israel’s war with Hamas, always the voice of sweet reason, in Gazoo that year, the Creteil incident echoed for many the traumatic murder and torture in 2006 of Ilan Halimi, a Jewish phone salesman who was kidnapped by a gang led by a career criminal with a history of targeting mostly Jewish victims. Some French Jews regard the 2006 Halimi murder as the turning point in the emergence of a wave of violence against Jews in La Belle France and Belgium, in which more than 12 people have died since 2012 in at least three jihadist attacks on Jewish targets.

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Europe

Jewish Leader Indicted For Calling Dieudonne An Anti-Semite

2014-10-28

[Ynet] Holocaust survivor Roger Cukierman, president of La Belle France's largest Jewish group, indicted for denouncing comedian who created 'quenelle' gesture and mocked Holocaust. A Jewish leader in La Belle France has been indicted for referring to French comedian Dieudonne M'bala M'bala as a "professional anti-Semite." Over the course of the last few years, Dieudonne has been convicted in his country 10 times for inciting anti-Semitism. The antisemitism is part of his comedy act, hence the sobriquet "professional antisemite." The comedian essentially created and glorified the "quenelle," a reverse Nazi salute which became popularized in 2013 as scores of fans mimicked the gesture, including at historical Israeli sites like Yad Vashem. He also coined the term "shoananas," a mashup of the word Shoah (Hebrew for Holocaust) and the French word for pineapple, which many experts argue implies that the Holocaust never took place, without violating La Belle France's hate laws. Throughout his shows, he's mocked the Holocaust, Jewish people, and most recently, Ilan Halimi, a young Gay Pareeian Jewish phone salesman who was tortured and murdered in 2006 by a group of kidnappers. Though Dieudonne refers to himself as anti-establishment, his latest comedy show is reportedly called "The Anti-Semite." On the heels of his popularity, French Prime Minister Manuel Valls called the "quenelle" gesture "a gesture of hatred, an anti-Semitic gesture," adding that "all those who perform it should know ‐ they can't deny the knowledge ‐ that they are performing an anti-Semitic gesture." Now, JTA reports, Roger Cukierman, a Holocaust survivor and president of La Belle France's largest Jewish group, the CRIF umbrella of French Jewish communities, who has followed in line with Valls' sentiments and called Dieudonne a "professional anti-Semite," has been indicted for his statement. "So I am being indicted for having stated on Europe 1 that Dieudonne is a professional anti-Semite," Cukierman said in a video posted on the CRIF website. "Isn't that funny? For once, Dieudonne is actually comical." The National Bureau for Vigilance Against Vigilance (BNVCA) has since spoken out about the indictment, voicing its support for Cukierman. "No one in La Belle France knows anti-Semitism better than Roger Cukierman, who survived the Holocaust at the age of nine because nuns hid him while his family was deported to Auschwitz and gassed there," the watchdog said in a statement. The incident took place a week after Dieudonne himself was charged with money laundering and abusing public funds.

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Europe

Slain Jewish man's family leaves trial

2009-05-02

IIUC, the inital motive for the crime was to get money, and was not terror-related, but random Youth crilmes with an antisemite background... BUT, this trial is being turned into a political/agitprop platform, and youssouf is trying to make himself into a djihadist (in addition to being a racist borderline nutcase)... a noteworthy point, his advocate is a radical she-leftist who actually married carlos the jackal in jail a few years ago (carlos, you might recall, has converted and wrote a book called "revolutionary islam", on how this new force was going to defeat the capitalist West). The family of a man allegedly tortured and killed for being Jewish left a Paris courtroom Thursday to protest the judge's handling of the trial, a lawyer said. Ilan Halimi's family walked out after Youssouf Fofana, the suspected ringleader of 27 young people on trial for killing Halimi, 23, made intimidating comments, saying he had friends in the courtroom who would "take pictures to identify people," Halimi family lawyer Francis Szpiner said to The Times of London. When the judge refused to silence Fofana, the family and their lawyers walked out, Szpiner said. The trial, closed to the public because two suspects were minors at the time of the killing, is expected to last 2 1/2 months. Fofana, 28, admits to kidnapping Halimi but denies stabbing him to death, The Times reported. Kidnapping that leads to a murder? That gets the death penalty right there. Halimi was kidnapped Jan. 20, 2006, tied up in a cellar and tortured for 24 days in the suburb of Bagneux, the newspaper said. His kidnappers tried unsuccessfully to extort a $600,000 ransom from his family. Halimi was found naked, handcuffed and covered with burn marks near railroad tracks south of Paris Feb. 13, 2006. He died en route to a hospital. Fofana faces life in prison because charges against him include anti-Semitism, an "aggravating circumstance" requiring the stiffest sentences under French law. Several members of his "gang of barbarians" testified Halimi was targeted because he was Jewish, which they felt meant he had money and his community would pay to get him back, The Times said.

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Europe

27 suspected in death of French Jew go on trial

2009-04-30

The presumed leader of a group of 27 young people charged with participating in the torture and killing of a young French Jew took his seat in juvenile court Wednesday with the defiant declaration, "Allah will be victorious." The 23-year-old victim, Ilan Halimi, was found naked, handcuffed and covered with burn marks near railroad tracks in the Essonne region south of Paris on Feb. 13, 2006. He died on the way to the hospital after being held captive for more than three weeks. Youssouf Fofana, 28-year-old presumed leader of a group of 10 young women and 17 young men, stands accused of a crime that shocked the nation. He is charged with premeditated murder, demanding ransom, and acts of torture and barbarism, and faces a possible maximum sentence of life imprisonment. He smiled as he took his seat in the Paris court and said, "Allah will be victorious." Asked his last name, he said, "African barbarian army revolt Salafist." Asked his birth date, he replied, "February 13, 2006" -- the day Halimi was killed.

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Europe

Trial in Halimi killing to be closed

2009-04-30

PARIS (JTA) -- A French court rejected pleas for a public trial of the gang members accused of kidnapping and murdering Ilan Halimi because he was Jewish. Wednesday's decision, on the first day of a nationally anticipated case, was a blow to the Halimi family and Jewish institutions. They have argued in favor of a public trial because they say it would reveal the xenophobia behind the killing and its national significance. Outside the courtroom, a crowd of about 100 Jewish youth, mostly members of the Jewish Defense League, and adults wearing Jewish symbols protested the day's anticipated closed-door ruling. A closed trial “will take the tone of a family drama, whereas we needed a trial about prejudices capable of killing and about 21st century anti-Semitism,” said Raphael Haddad, head of the French Jewish Student Union in an interview with the French daily Le Monde. French law forbids the trial be made public because two of the 27 suspects were minors when the crime took place. Defense lawyers told JTA that their clients did not necessarily object to a public trial because it might have helped influence opinion in their favor. On July 10, judges will ultimately rule whether anti-Semitism is to blame for the fate of Halimi, 23, who was held for ransom and savagely tortured to death in 2006. Though suspects told police the kidnapping was planned under the pretense that Jews were rich and worth a larger ransom, some police investigators and opinions expressed in the media have maintained that the accused did not act out of hatred for Jews. During Halimi’s capture, police also denied anti-Semitism was a motive for the crime. The leader of the gang, known as the Barbarians, is expected to reassert in the coming weeks that he is not anti-Semitic. Upon entering court, a smiling Youssouf Fofana, 28, told the packed room that his last name was newly changed to ARABS, to stand for “African Revolt Armed Barbarian Salafist.”

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Europe

Mother of slain French Jew Ilan Halimi calls for public trial

2009-03-26

The mother of slain Parisian Jew Ilan Halimi has called for a public trial so that her son's death "will not have been in vain", French newspaper Le Figaro reported Tuesday. The trial, which will open in Paris on April 29, is scheduled to be held behind closed doors at a juvenile court, because two of the 30 gang members allegedly behind Halimi's murder were minors at the time of the act. French law allows for a public trial to be held in certain cases where juveniles are involved. Halimi, 23, was found naked, tortured and covered in burns near Paris on February 13, 2006, after being held captive by a gang calling itself "The Barbarians" for three weeks in a crime that shocked France and raised fears of surging anti-Semitism among French Muslims. He died of his injuries soon afterward. He was reburied at the Givat Shaul cemetery in Jerusalem in February 2007. Halimi's mother, Ruth, made the decision to reinter his body in Israel after speaking with Jewish Agency Chairman Ze'ev Bielsky.

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Israel-Palestine-Jordan

Record 450 French Jews headed for Israel

2008-07-23

A record 450 French olim were to arrive at Ben Gurion International Airport Wednesday, on three special flights sponsored by the Jewish Agency and the AMI immigration association. The immigrants were to be welcomed in an official ceremony, where they were to be addressed by Jewish Agency Chairman Zeev Bielski, Immigration and Absorptiion Minister Eli Aflalo and AMI founder Pierre Besnainou. France has one of the largest Jewish communities outside of Israel, totaling nearly half a million people. Its population is second only to America's Jewish population, which has now exceeded 5 million. Since 2000, there has been a marked increase in the number of French citizens immigrating to Israel, arguably due to the waves of growing anti-Semitism in the European state. Many French Jews say that they no longer feel comfortable or welcome in France, particularly within the working-class suburbs of Paris, where much of the tension has been focused. Last month, a Jewish teenager was brutally attacked in the 19th Arrondissement of Paris. That neighborhood, which has been the site of ongoing scuffles between North African Jews and Muslims living in Paris, was the same suburb in which 23-year-old Ilan Halimi was beaten and left to die a year before.

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Home Front: WoT

French Jews flock to South Florida

2007-03-13

Rod Kukurudz and his family - from left, Noa, 4, wife Sandrine and Salome, 9 - walk along the beach in Surfside. Kukurudz cites 'the general hostility of Muslims in France toward Jews as his reason for relocating to Florida. Rod Kukurudz decided to uproot his family from a comfortable life in France to Surfside when his then 16-year-old daughter, Audrey, came home one night in 2005 -- upset and fearful. ''Dad,'' she told him, ''now even if it's hot I have to wear a scarf to hide my Star of David,'' while riding the Paris Metro. French Jews living in South Florida told The Miami Herald that hostility from Islamic militants in France after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks in the United States spurred them to leave. Departures surged after last year's abduction and death of Ilan Halimi in France. The 23-year-old Halimi, a French Jew of Moroccan parents, was kidnapped Jan. 21, 2006, by a gang of youths calling themselves the ``Barbarians.'' ''The atmosphere created by that episode, plus other incidents and the general hostility of Muslims in France toward Jews, is what's behind my decision to leave,'' said Kukurudz, who now lives with his wife and their three daughters, including Audrey, in Surfside.

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Europe

Far-right party calls for Jews to join war on Islam

2006-10-05

Not really surprizing; here, IIRC, the rather antisemite (I think) pépé Le Pen got 20% of the jewish vote in 2002, more than its national result; Philippe De Villiers, conservative catholic claiming to be anti-system got a warm reception when he came to pay regards for Ilan Halimi, and he's quite popular among jews; Bruno Mégret, perhaps the french pol I feel closest to, is not antisemite at all; even the "blood & soil" pagans like Pierre vial or Guillaume Faye profess "judeo-indifference" (IE finally getting France out of its obsession with joooos, the beloved-dead-WWII-jews-killed-by-nazis-vote-for-the-System-or-the-nazis-will-return, and today's racist-evil-USzionist-who-kill-innocent-arabs); the various identity groups are certainly not zionists, but only the national-bolcheviks or similar red-brown are openly antisemite. And the neo-nazis are a few hundred at most according to the Rg police intelligence, for a pop of 62 millions. And the "islamophobic" orgs like Occidentalis or France-Echos, classified (wrongly) as right-wing, are quite pro-zionist and even rather pro-US. One of Europe's most successful far-right leaders has appealed to Jewish voters to join forces against radical Islam and back a party denounced as xenophobic. Filip Dewinter, leader of Belgium's Vlaams Belang, described Antwerp's large Jewish community as natural partners "against the main enemy of the moment, the radical Islam, fundamentalism". Vlaams Belang is expected to win at least a third of the votes in local elections on Sunday and emerge as the largest party in Antwerp, a city with tense race relations and one which has suffered racial murders this year. Mr Dewinter has come to the threshold of political power by advocating strict limits on immigration, including the return of economic migrants who fail to integrate, as well as independence for Flanders, the northern, Dutch-speaking half of Belgium. He called for radical Islam to be denied official recognition and its supporters, and those who fail to integrate, denied Belgian nationality and possibly social security payments. So far the Vlaams Belang, or Flemish Interest, now the biggest political force in Flanders, has been kept out of any part of government in Belgium by a coalition of mainstream parties. But this so-called cordon sanitaire may crack if the grouping makes widely-anticipated gains on Sunday. In a series of interviews yesterday Mr Dewinter raised the temperature in Antwerp, which has a large Jewish community living alongside thousands of Muslim immigrants. "In the Jewish community we have about 30 to 35 per cent of the vote," said Mr Dewinter. "That's official because we know our score over there in the Jewish neighbourhood." Mr Dewinter denied any responsibility for inciting racial attacks and said that his opponents had found that "demonisation is necessary to maintain the cordon sanitaire against us". The office of the 44-year-old former journalist boasts a Rubens portrait of a 17th-century mayor of Antwerp - a post which the Vlaams Belang leader covets. He spelled out clearly the tougher regime that immigrants, especially Muslim ones, would face were he to be elected. Mr Dewinter said: "If they won't accept our way of life, if they won't accept those principles which are very clear and very necessary for Western democracy, I don't think we have to recognise Islam as an official religion in our country." Six years ago the Vlaams Blok, which was the forerunner of the Vlaams Belang, won a third of the vote in Antwerp. The Blok was disbanded after a court ruled that it incited racial hatred. In regional elections two years ago the Vlaams Belang, which has most of the same personalities, polled 24 per cent. About 40,000 people attended pop concerts in Antwerp over the weekend called to rally voters against racism and intolerance. But on the streets yesterday views were mixed about the Vlaams Belang agenda. Ludo Bons, an engineer, said: "There is some good and some bad. It's not just immigration. The French [speakers in Belgium] take money from the Flemish. Everybody thinks it is racist but not everyone who votes for Vlaams Belang is racist - some vote because of the French situation." Iskender Zambur, whose parents came from Turkey, said: "The Vlaams Belang is racist and what they want is no solution. It's OK to live here but dangerous."

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Europe

The Wrath of Ka

2006-06-08

Black anti-Semites storm Paris’s old Jewish quarter. On the last Sunday of May, 30 angry black men stormed into the heart of the old Jewish quarter, terrorizing residents, shopkeepers, and Sunday strollers. The self-styled militia of the Ka Tribe, a black separatist group originally connected to the no-longer funny black comic Dieudonné M’Bala M’Bala, embodied the worst fears of a Jewish community exposed, since January 2006, to a new rise in anti-Semitic attacks. Three months after the torture-murder of Ilan Halimi, the intimidating incursion of the Ka militia into the narrow “Jewish” street of the Marais looks like an ominous sign of worse to come. The Ka Tribe is the lunatic fringe of a broad anti-Semitic movement originally inspired by Dieudonné, who has become a hero to a segment of black French society by focusing resentment on Jews. But Dieudonné, with a French mother and Cameroonian father, was not black enough for Stellio Capochichi, the Tribe’s leader, whose origins are Haitian and Ivoirian.

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