DUMBEST CARTOON ON THE WEB THIS WEEK // JE NE SUIS PAS CHARLIE!

August 31, 2017 at 16:13 (Cartoons, France, Insanity)

Charlie Hebdo published an inflammatory cover this week praising God for having “drowned all the neo-Nazis of Texas” with the onset of Hurricane Harvey.

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Charlie Hebdo cartoon praises hurricane Harvey for drowning neo-nazis of Texas

By Daniel J. Solomon

The headline, posted on Facebook ahead of Wednesday publication, read: “God exists, he drowned all the neo-Nazis of Texas.” The cartoon on the front shows people drowning amid Nazi flags.

The French satirical publication, which came to prominence internationally when it was the target of an Islamist terror attack two years ago, has a record of ruffling feathers with tendentious headlines. Those have included Mohammad cartoons, as well as crude drawings of major public figures in the country.

Houston, America’s fourth-largest metropolitan area, voted solidly for Hillary Clinton in last year’s presidential election, and is known as one of the country’s most diverse cities.

It is also home to a sizable Jewish community, suffering along with the general population from the devastation of record rainfall and flooding.

3 Comments

FRANCE’S NEW DEMOCRACY ~~ #BurkiniBan

August 24, 2016 at 15:33 (Canada, Civil Liberties, France, Intolerance, Islamophobia)

If it is OK for a man to wear it, why is it illegal for a woman to wear it?

This is what it used to be like …

This is what it is like today … (By Latuff)

Related (Click on link)

#BurkiniBan

Meanwhile in Canada ….

Justin Trudeau rules out burkini ban in Canada

Canadian PM defends individual freedoms and says Canadians value ‘acceptance, openness, friendship, understanding’

Justin Trudeau bemoaned instances where governments preach tolerance but act to undermine individual rights. Photograph: Canadian Press/REX/Shutterstock

Justin Trudeau, the Canadian prime minister, has defended individual rights and freedoms when asked about a controversy in France over a burkini ban.

“We should be past tolerance in Canada,” Trudeau said after meeting with his ministers to plan the government’s legislative agenda.

The prime minister dismissed the idea of a burkini ban in Canada.

“In Canada, can we speak of acceptance, openness, friendship, understanding? It is about where we are going and what we are going through every day in our diverse and rich communities,” he said.

Some lawmakers in Canada’s Quebec province have called for outlawing “burkinis” – body-concealing Islamic swimsuits – following bans in at least 15 towns in France’s southeast.

They include the French Riviera resort town of Nice, the target of a jihadist attack on July 14, with the proponents citing the need to prevent public disorder.

Trudeau called for “the respect of individual rights and choices.”

This, he said, should be “at the top of public discourse and debate”.

Trudeau bemoaned instances where governments preached tolerance but acted to undermine individual rights, saying with irony: “Tolerating someone means accepting their right to exist on the condition that they don’t disturb us too, too much.”

FROM

1 Comment

NEW DRESS CODE IN FRANCE ~~ IF YOUR T-SHIRT CRITICIZES ISRAEL, IT’S ILLEGAL

March 12, 2016 at 18:01 (Activism, Boycott Israel, Corrupt Politics, France, International Solidarity, Israel, Palestine)

European ‘Democracy in action …

The activist was taking part in a march for International Women’s Day in Paris last Sunday when undercover police swooped in and detained her for wearing a piece of clothing with the words “Boycott Apartheid Israel” printed on it.

Undeterred by arrest of an activist days earlier, members of BDS France wear “illegal” t-shirts calling for the boycott of Israel, during a protest outside Airbnb’s office in Paris on 10 March. (Courtesy of BDS France)

Woman arrested in France for T-shirt critical of Israel

Ali Abunimah

France has ratcheted up its draconian repression of free speech about Palestine with the arrest of a woman for wearing a T-shirt supporting the boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS) movement.

According to the newspaper L’Humanité, officers from the Renseignements Généraux, the intelligence service of the French police, were involved in monitoring the demonstration in which numerous social justice and leftist groups took part.

France remains under the state of emergency severely limiting public freedoms that was declared after last November’s atrocities by suspected Islamic State extremists who killed 130 people in Paris.

The young woman was taken to Paris’ 3rd district police station for questioning.

Hundreds of marchers halted their procession and demonstrated loudly outside the police station for an hour until she was released, as a video posted on Facebook.

Political repression

The woman has been summoned back to the police station for questioning at 2pm on Monday on suspicion of “inciting hatred by reason of [national] origin, through writing,” according to L’Humanité.

Supporters are planning to demonstrate outside the police station at that time.

The feminist collective 8 Mars Pour TouTEs denounced the arrest and pledged support for the activist and for the BDS movement.

The arrest was evidence of the “criminalization of political struggles,” the group said, vowing to mount strong solidarity in response to “the police state and political and racist repression.”

The left-wing grouping Ensemble has condemned the arrest, describing it as a consequence of the “security climate” in France.

The Palestine solidarity group BDS France noted that the day after the arrest, Prime Minister Manuel Valls tolda dinner hosted by the Israel lobby group CRIF that “anti-Zionism is nothing more than a synonym for anti-Semitism and the hatred of Israel.”

“Today, politicians who support the Israeli apartheid regime are out of arguments,” BDS France said in a statement.

“They conflate anti-Zionism with anti-Semitism and terrorism, and take all the Jews of the world hostage, stubbornly insisting that they become accomplices of the war crimes and apartheid of a state which is foreign to them,” BDS France added.

The campaign group said that with the growing global success of BDS, “a nonviolent, anti-racist citizen movement for the fundamental rights of the Palestinian people,” Israel and its allies in the French government had no recourse but to try to smear it as anti-Semitic.

Court rulings and government decrees have outlawed calls to boycott Israeli goods, prompting defiance from French civil society.

Undeterred

BDS France is also vowing not to fold under government repression.

On Thursday, dozens of activists handed in an international petition at the Paris offices of Airbnb to protest the company’s profiting from the renting out of vacation homes in Israeli settlements in the occupied West Bank.

As the photos published by BDS France show, the activists were proudly wearing their “Boycott Israeli Apartheid” T-shirts.

On Saturday, activists will hold rallies all over France against the state of emergency. An action alert from BDS France urges supporters to wear their T-shirts at those marches too.

9 Comments

PALESTINIAN VIEWS ON THE PARIS ATROCITIES

November 19, 2015 at 12:38 (Associate Post, Cover Up, France)

Darkness Falls Across Paris
Image by Carlos Latuff

Prepared by Mazin Qumsiyeh, PhD

The manufactured hysteria about the bombing in Paris will expand weapons
manufacturing and sales around western countries. Arms manufacturer stocks
are already booming and the Zionists and neoconservatives who own and run
these companies will get even richer. Liberty and democracy will suffer as
new freedom-restricting laws are passed using manufactured fear (like in
the US after September 11, 2001). Politicians like Netanyahu and Holland
enjoy this and consolidate their grip on power. Common people pay the
price. Israeli authorities took the opportunity of this manufactured mass
hysteria to ban the moderate Islamic movement and to jail its popular
leader Raed Salah (a most kind and gentle person). Seventeen civil society
organizations working on areas ranging from health to empowerment to
education were closed by the apartheid regime. Civil society organizations
and political movements of various political and religious affiliations in
1948 areas (including leadership of the Arab communities inside “Israel”)
were furious and declared a strike Thursday. The cynical racist Israeli
policies times to take advantage of tragedies elsewhere indeed promote
extremism and fundamentalism and if there is not enough extremist or
fundamentalist groups, the Western and Israeli spy agencies create them
(false flag operations are very common). Only a highly educated public can
challenge this new globalized system of terror-racism-militarization
leading to more of the same.

The best way for Americans to defeat the Islamic state is to end support
for Jewish nationalism  SEE


Outlawing the northern branch of the Islamic Movement is yet another
McCarthyist step by the Israeli state. But if anyone thinks this will bring
an end to the movement, they are dead wrong. SEE


Quotable Quotes

'Today, in a world convulsed by violence and unbelievable brutality the
lines between 'us' and 'the terrorists' have been completely blurred… We
don't have to choose between Imperialism and Terrorism, we have to choose
what form of resistance will rid us of both. What shall we choose? Violence
or non violence? …We have to choose knowing that when we are violent to our
enemies, we do violence to ourselves. When we brutalize others, we
brutalize ourselves. And eventually we run the risk of becoming our
oppressors'. Arundhati Roy

"To solve our problems, then, we certainly need to learn, but what we need
to learn is not so much new knowledge as new actions- new, more
cooperative, wiser ways of living.  Above all we need to learn how to
resolve our conflicts in more just, humane, and nationally cooperative
ways." Nicholas Maxwell, Wanted: a new way of thinking, in New Scientist 14
May 1987 (author of "From knowledge to Wisdom")

"Most of my family came from Poland and many of my relatives were killed in
the death camps during the Holocaust. When I walk in what was left from the
Warsaw Ghetto I can’t stop thinking about the people of Gaza who are not
only locked in an open air prison but are also being bombarded by fighter
jets, attack helicopters and drones, flown by people whom I used to serve
with. I am also thinking about the delegations of young Israelis that are
coming to see the history of our people but also are subjected to
militaristic and nationalistic brainwashing on a daily basis ". Yonatan
Shapira former Israeli Air Force captain and now refusnik and BDS activist
"All oppression creates a state of war.” ~Simone de Beauvoir

"Is there any man, is there any woman, let me say any child here, that does
not know that the seed of war in the modern world is industrial and
commercial rivalry?" Former US President Woodrow Wilson, 1919

"Individuals have international duties which transcend the national
obligations of obedience, therefore [individual citizens] have the duty to
violate domestic laws to prevent crimes against peace and humanity from
occurring." Nuremberg War Crime Tribunal, 1950

"The efficiency of the truly national leader consists mainly of preventing
the people's attention from becoming divided, and of always concentrating
it on a single enemy." Adolp Hitler, 'Mein Kampf' 1924

"First, they came for the Communists, and I did not speak out because I was
not a Communist. Then they came for the trade unionists, and I did not
speak out because I was not a trade unionist. Then they came for the Jews,
and I did not speak out because I was not a Jew. Then they came for me, and
there was no one left to speak for me." Pastor Martin Niemoller, who was
arrested by the Nazis in 1937

"I came to America because of the great, great freedom which I heard
existed in this country. I made a mistake in selecting America as a land of
freedom, a mistake I cannot repair in the balance of my lifetime." Albert
Einstein, 1947

"One hundred nations in the UN have not agreed with us on just about
everything that's come before them, where we're involved, and it didn't
upset my breakfast at all." Ronald Reagan, former US President, basking in
the triumph that was the US invasion of Grenada, 1983

"Britain has been a major force in world affairs for several centuries. No
British Patriot should be willing to give up that status." Tony Blair,
British Prime Minister, 1997

"If you are neutral in situations of injustice, you have chosen the side of
the oppressor." Archbishop Desmond Tutu

"In times of universal deceit, telling the truth is a revolutionary act."-
Gerorge Orwell

"Action is the antidote to despair." Joan Baez

"The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good people to do
nothing." Edmund Burke

"I hear and I forget, I see and I remember, I do and I understand" Chinese
Proverb

"What lies behind us and what lies before us are tiny matters compared to
what lies within us." Oliver Wendell Holmes

"It is innocence that is full and experience that is empty. It is innocence
that wins and experience that loses." -Charles Peguy

"This above all: to thine own self be true, And it must follow, as the
night the day, Thou canst not then be false to any man." –Shakespeare


And by Khalid Amayreh

Israel is world’s premier producer and generator of terror

By Khalid Amayreh in occupied Palestine

“Germany needs to respond to terror like Israel does,” the head of Germany’s internal intelligence service (BfV), Hans-Georg Maassen, reportedly said this week.

With all due respect, the German official is wrong for the following reasons.

Israel, itself a gigantic crime against humanity by any moral standard imaginable, can never be considered part of the solution for the terror epidemic now hitting many countries. The naked facts on the ground lead to the ultimate and inevitable conclusion that Israel is one of the major root causes of terror and violence in our world today.

In 1948, Jewish-Zionist gangs coming from Eastern Europe ganged up on the peaceable people of Palestine, arrogating their homeland, slaughtering their children, destroying their homes, bulldozing their villages and dispersing the bulk of Palestinians all over the world.

This gigantic crime against humanity occurred thanks to concrete military and political support by the West.

The Palestinian people, a largely pastoral people lacking the advantage of powerful international connections, have been crying out for justice ever since, but to no avail.

In 1967, Israel completed the occupation of the Palestinian homeland, claiming that some Jews had been living in the country several thousand years ago.

Israel has had nearly 50 years to accommodate the Palestinians like Germany accommodates the millions of refugees arriving in Germany, fleeing death and persecution in countries like Syria and Iraq…and also Palestine.!

But Israel chose the racist way, viewing the Palestinians as sub-humans with utterly no rights, even no humanity.

Again, the Palestinians tried every possible avenue to free themselves from the diabolical clutches of Jewish oppression but to no avail.

And when they resorted to armed struggle, because every other door was slammed against their faces, they were called “terrorists and criminals.”!

Her Maassen, what are we supposed to do to liberate our country and free our people from this evil, called Zionism, which is based on the same elements that gave Nazism its evil essence?

Nazism was based on criminal racism (the master race), Zionism is based on criminal racism as well, namely the concept of the Chosen people. This is not an abstract idea which we can dismiss as a form of philosophical illusionism.

It is rather practiced every hour and every day on the hills of the West Bank as Palestinians are assaulted, humiliated and even killed (even burned alive) because they are not members of “the holy tribe” and don’t worship the specific deity of that tribe.

It is this sick ideology that prompted the late mentor of Shas Rabbi Ovadia Yosef to declare that non-Jews, people like me and you, were donkeys or like donkeys, whom the Almighty created in a human shape in deference to Jews in order to serve Jews.

Needless to say, this poisonous racism was by no means an unrepresentative feature of the religious Zionist mindset. The opposite is actually true.

Herr Maassen: I want to remind you of the feelings permeating throughout Germany following the Versailles Treaty following the First World War.

Though Germany was widely perceived as the aggressor, many Germans felt German honor was deeply injured by the draconian sanctions and punishments imposed by the victorious powers.

We all know the rest of the story.

Herr Maassen: Israel, ever since the first day of its establishment, has committed every conceivable crime against our people. I myself lost three uncles to Zionist barbarianism even before I was born.

In fact, terror has always been and continues to be the official or unofficial modus operandi of Israel’s policies.

This is why you can’t understand the Palestinian question in the absence of this context. The Palestinian grievances are too real and too legitimate to be swept under the carpet.

I say this because Israel continues to be the main producer and manufacturer of terror in our region and in the world at large.

Remember, Herr Maassen, those to whom evil is done, do evil in return.

Maybe doing evil, even in return is not the ideal behavior, but it is often inevitable.

Wishing you good luck in fighting and defeating terror.

5 Comments

#ScrewTheTerrorists ~~ ANONYMOUS AND CHARLIE UNITE TO FIGHT ISIS

November 18, 2015 at 11:31 (Cover Up, France, Terrorism)

The hacker collective Anonymous declared war on ISIS in a video. They threaten to track down ISIS members and to launch cyber attacks.

Meanwhile, at the offices of Charlie Hebdo, the following is to be published …

Charlie Hebdo: Screw the terrorists

The irreverent French satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo, whose offices were the site in January of a deadly terrorist shooting, is to publish on the cover of its new issue a cartoon referencing the coordinated terror attacks in Paris that killed at least 129 on Friday.

The cartoon shows a man merrily celebrating with champagne – which pours out of the bullet holes with which his body is riddled. “They have the weapons,” reads the caption. “Screw them. We have the champagne! (The message may deliberately echo a phrase frequently attributed to the Taliban: “You have the watches, we have the time.”)

Photo: AFP

Full report HERE

Surely these are not the ways to wage war on terror…

First, one must know who the terrorists really are

Believe it or don’t!

2 Comments

ISRAEL’S PROPAGANDA BENEFITS FROM THE PARIS BOMBINGS

November 16, 2015 at 09:54 (Associate Post, Corrupt Politics, France, Israel, Palestine)

Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu has been quoted as saying that the Paris bombings should make France and other countries understand Israel’s war on Palestinian terror.

Israel tries to reap propaganda benefits from Paris bombings

Jerusalem’s city walls illuminated with colors of French flag

From Khalid Amayreh in Occupied Palestine

As usual in these circumstances, Israel is trying to exploit the Paris bombings for its propaganda purposes.

Israeli and Zionist officials have been insinuating that the widely condemned terrorist bombings in Paris, for which the ISIS took responsibility, justified Israel’s crackdown on Palestinian resistance against Jewish colonialism, especially Israel’s lebensraum policies in the West Bank.

Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu has been quoted as saying that the Paris bombings should make France and other countries understand Israel’s war on Palestinian terror.

Netanyahu’s opportunistic remarks seem to have been motivated by two main considerations.

First, is the desire to alleviate international pressure on Israel to terminate the decades-old occupation of the Palestinian homeland and allow for the establishment of a viable Palestinian state.

And, second, Israel is always eager to see as many French Jews as possible immigrate to Occupied Palestine in order to augment the ranks of a dwindling Jewish population due to comparatively higher demographic growth among Palestinians.

As a pathological liar, Netanyahu understands the Palestinian cause as a matter of propaganda and public relations quagmire, not as real problems requiring real political solutions.

This is one of the main reasons that the conflict in Palestine has remained unresolved and blood on both sides continues to be spilled on a daily basis.

Indeed, hasbara, media lies, carefully produced sound-bites may help the Zionist state reap some short-term political capital in the capitals of the West. But it will never succeed in bringing the conflict even one centimeter closer to a historic solution.

I am quite sure that many wise people on the Jewish side of the isle realize this equation.

However, it seems that Netanyahu and cohorts are too insolent and too arrogant to listen to the voices of wisdom.

He thinks that brute military power alone guarantees Israel’s future, forgetting the fact that entire empires collapsed for reasons, not including military weakness.

Netanyahu, in a cynical way, always tries to lump Israel in the company of civilized countries.

But the peoples of the world do know too well Israel’s criminal credentials and that this state is actually a crime against humanity.

Have the peoples of the world forgotten Israel’s genocidal crimes against the people of Gaza in 2008-9, 2012, and 2014?

Does the world need to be reminded that the number of Palestinian children murdered by Israel in one month exceeds the number of civilians killed by ISIS ever since its appearance a few years ago?

Do we have to remind the world that unlike terrorist entities, Israel dropped heavy bombs on apartment towers packed with terrified women and children in Gaza, causing hundreds of civilian casualties.

In fact, in 3 hours, the Israeli army killed and maimed more innocent civilians at the Shujaiyya in Gaza than the victims of the Paris bombings last night.

My point here is not to belittle the criminal nature of the Paris bombings.

My point is rather to caution the world against hard criminal states such as Israel which is routinely perpetrating ethnic cleansing and other genocidal crimes against the Palestinian people and then plays the self-righteous card of identifying with the victims of the terrorist bombings in Paris.

In fact, Israel is behaving very much like the little Hitler of Damascus who has murdered and maimed a million Syrians while forcing more than 15 million others out of their homes, forcing them to flee death and seek safety all over the world.

Still, Assad has the audacity to shed crocodile “tears of sympathy” with the victims of terror in Paris, ignoring the fact that his genocidal terror against the innocent civilians of Syria made the terrorist bombings in Paris inevitable.

Likewise, Netanyahu and his “shitty state”, as a French diplomat referred to Israel a few years ago, goes on murdering Palestinians, murdering their children, destroying their homes, stealing their land, bulldozing their fields and narrowing their horizons. Netanyahu is raising his eyebrows every time he watches a Palestinian child throws a stone on Israeli military vehicle patrolling the West Bank.

And instead of honestly trying to find out what makes that child behave as such, the Israeli premier closes his mind and opens his big mouth, complaining about “Arab terror” and concocting corrupt analogies between the Nazis and Zionism’s victims.

But the world, including France, yes France, the US, Britain and Russia, is hypocritical par excellence.

Otherwise, Israel the perpetual crime against humanity should have been declared as such from the first moment it was created.

Indeed, had the world behaved moralistically then, the world would have been spared the terror of ISIS and other similar groups, whose violence, however despicable it might look, is an ultimate product or by-product of the much greater terror and violence committed by criminal players such as Israel, the US, France, the UK and now Russia.

Can there be a scandal more scandalous than the seizure and usurpation of Palestine by Zionism?

So to the West in general I say, please, don’t pretend to be innocent because you are not innocent.

10 Comments

THE ANSWERS WE WERE WAITING FOR ~~ THE REAL REASONS BEHIND THE PARIS ATTACKS (NOT)

November 16, 2015 at 07:26 (Believe it or not, France, Holocaust, Israel, Sublime to Ridiculous)

Sometimes these idiots just don’t know when to rest their gums ….

The attacks in Paris were punishment for what Europe did to Jews in the Holocaust.

Pardon my French, but here’s what Jesus would say to this ‘rabbi’ …

Ex-West Bank Rabbi Calls Paris Attacks Punishment for Holocaust

JTA

A controversial West Bank rabbi now living in eastern Jerusalem reportedly said the attacks in Paris were punishment for what Europe did to Jews in the Holocaust.

Rabbi Dov Lior, the former chief rabbi of the Kiryat Arba settlement, made his remarks during a eulogy on Sunday at the Jerusalem funeral for a father and son killed in a West Bank terror attack, according to the Hebrew-language news website Srugim and The Jerusalem Post, which cited the Hebrew-language Walla! news website.

“The wicked ones in blood-soaked Europe deserve it for what they did to our people 70 years ago,” Lior said, according to The Jerusalem Post.

Lior moved from Kiryat Arba to the Mount of Olives in eastern Jerusalem several months ago.

In 2011, police questioned the rabbi over his support for the scholarly book “The King’s Torah,” which reportedly discusses situations in which it is permissible for Jews to kill non-Jews.

Lior is also known for saying that Jews should not rent homes to Arabs in Israel and for a proposal calling on Israeli soldiers to refuse orders to remove Jews from West Bank settlements.

In the terror attack, Rabbi Yaakov Litman, 40, and his son Netanel, 18, were killed on Friday afternoon as seven members of the family drove to a Shabbat pre-wedding celebration of their daughter and sister. Litman’s wife and 16-year-old son also were injured. Three daughters — ages 5, 9, and 11 — were treated for shock.

Here’s the REAL Reason for the terror as seen by Latuff

It’s not DAESH. It’s, in fact, DAE$H!

If You Hear President Obama and John Kerry Call ISIS “Daesh,” Here’s Why

Daesh is technically an acronym for the Islamic State’s proper Arabic name, al-Dawla

4 Comments

TOON OF THE HOUR ~~ WHO’S TO BLAME FOR THE PARIS ATTACKS

November 15, 2015 at 11:48 (Associate Post, Cartoons, France)

#WeAreAllParis

#TodosSomosParis (From)

Image by Carlos Latuff

Blaming Muslims/refugees/Russia/Iran for Paris attacks, EXCEPT Hollande’s policy on Syria

Don’t tell me we gonna have another “peace” march with Hollande, Netanyahu, Merkel and stuff?

2 Comments

CARTOONS OF THE DAY ~~ FRANCE’S EXPLOSIVE FOREIGN POLICY

November 14, 2015 at 17:56 (Associate Post, Cartoons, France)

Images by Carlos Latuff

Explosive Foreign Policy of Hollande

Darkness Falls Across Paris

Paris Mourns Its Dead

4 Comments

#JeSuisUnAntiSémite ~~ VIVE LA FRANCE

November 1, 2015 at 11:35 (Associate Post, Boycott Israel, Cartoons, France)

Image by Carlos Latuff

Related Post

Anti-Israel Activism Criminalized in the Land of Charlie Hebdo and “Free Speech”

By Glenn Greenwald

The post-Charlie Hebdo “free speech” march in Paris was a fraud for multiple reasons, as I wrote at the time. It was led by dozens of world leaders, many of whom imprison or even kill people for expressing prohibited views. It was cheered by many Westerners who feign upset only when free speech abridgments are perpetrated by Muslims, but not — as is far more common — by their own governments against Muslims.

Worst of all, the march took place in a country that is one of the most hostile to free speech rights in the West, as France quickly demonstrated in the days after the march by rounding up and prosecuting Muslims and other anti-Israel activists for the political views they expressed. A great, best-selling book by French philosopher Emmanuel Todd released this year argues that these “free speech” marches were a “sham,” driven by many political sentiments — nativism, nationalism, anti-Muslim bigotry — that had nothing to do with free speech.

The absurdity of France’s celebrating itself for free expression was vividly highlighted by this week’s decision from that nation’s highest court, one that is a direct assault on basic free speech rights. The French high court upheld the criminal conviction of 12 political activists for the “crime” of advocating sanctions and a boycott against Israel as a means of ending the decades-long military occupation of Palestine. What did these French criminals do? This:

The individuals arrived at the supermarket wearing shirts emblazoned with the words: “Long live Palestine, boycott Israel.” They also handed out fliers that said that “buying Israeli products means legitimizing crimes in Gaza.”

In France — self-proclaimed Land of Liberté — doingthat makes you a criminal. As The Forward reported, the court “cited the French republic’s law on Freedom of the Press, which prescribes imprisonment or a fine of up to $50,000 for parties that ‘provoke discrimination, hatred or violence toward a person or group of people on grounds of their origin, their belonging or their not belonging to an ethnic group, a nation, a race or a certain religion.’” Because BDS is inherently “discriminatory,” said the court, it is a crime to advocate it.

The French court ruling is part of a worldwide trend. As more and more people around the world recognize the criminal and brutal nature of the Israeli government, its loyalists have been increasingly trying literally to criminalize activism against the Israeli occupation. For that reason, “pro-Israel” activists this week celebrated this French assault on basic free speech rights.

Pascal Markowicz, chief lawyer of the CRIF umbrella organization of French Jewish communities, published this celebratory decree (emphasis in original): “BDS is ILLEGAL in France.” Statements advocating a boycott or sanctions, he added, “are completely illegal. If [BDS activists] say their freedom of expression has been violated, now France’s highest legal instance ruled otherwise.”

Joel Rubinfeld, co-chair of the European Jewish Parliament and president of the Belgian League Against Anti-Semitism, told Haaretz last February that he wanted other countries to follow the French model of criminalizing anti-Israeli-occupation activism. After a French lower court convicted the BDS activists, Rubinfeld gushed: “The French government and judiciary’s determination in fighting discrimination, and the Lellouche law especially, are exemplary for Belgium and other nations where discriminatory BDS is happening.”

As Haaretz detailed in that February article, the “Lellouche law” held up by Rubinfeld is “named for the Jewish parliamentarian [in France] who introduced it in 2003,” and “the law is among the world’s most potent legislative tools to fight the growing Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement, or BDS, and has catapulted France to the forefront of efforts to counter the movement through legal means.” Prior to this latest criminal case, there have been “approximately 20 anti-Israel activists who have been convicted under France’s so-called Lellouche law.”

The odious campaign to outlaw activism against the Israeli occupation extends well beyond France. In May, CBC reported that Canadian officialsthreatened to prosecute BDS activists there under “hate speech” laws, and after those officials denied doing so, we obtained and published the emailsproving they did just that. The February Haaretz article described this troubling event in the U.K.: “In 2007, the British University and College Union said it would drop plans to boycott Israeli institutions after legal advisers said doing so would violate anti-discrimination laws.” In 2013, New York City officials joined an (ultimately failed) Alan Dershowitz-led campaign to threaten the funding of Brooklyn College for the crime of hosting pro-BDS speakers.

Indeed, an outstanding Washington Post op-ed this week by a former IDF soldier, Assaf Gavron, documents how such attacks on Israel critics now extend to Israeli citizens themselves. Gavron describes how “the internal discussion in Israel is more militant, threatening and intolerant than it has ever been,” and “those few dissenters who attempt to contradict it — to ask questions, to protest, to represent a different color from this artificial consensus — are ridiculed and patronized at best, threatened, vilified and physically attacked at worst.”

Israel defenders love to equate “criticism of Israel” with “anti-Semitism” and then sanctimoniously deny that anyone does that. But criminalizing BDS advocacy — threatening people with large fines and prison terms for protesting the polices of the Israel government — is as clear of a case as it gets. As Haaretz put it, “The dragnet has also swept up BDS protesters whose actions have targeted Israel, not Jews.”

Ponder how pernicious this is. It is perfectly legal to advocate sanctions against Iran, or Russia, or Sudan, or virtually any other country. Indeed, sanctions and boycotts against those countries are not only frequently advocated in the West but are official policy. But it is illegal — criminal — to advocate boycotts and sanctions against one country: Israel. It requires sky-high levels of authoritarianism, even fascism, to abuse the criminal law to outlaw advocacy of policies and activism when it involves one country, and one country only. In response to the celebrations over this ruling from one popular-on-Twitter Israeli extremist, Avi Mayer, I repeatedly asked this question but never received an answer:

(See SOURCE to see Twitter posts)

It should go without saying that one’s opinions on the desirability or validity of BDS as a policy are totally irrelevant to this discussion. It’s self-evident that a belief in “free speech” compels one to defend with equal vigor the right to express views with which one agrees and those with which one vehemently disagrees. The issue here, obviously, is not whether BDS is a persuasive policy but whether people should be criminalized for advocating it. As extremist and oppressive as it is, the criminalization of BDS activism is increasing in multiple places around the world.

Where are all the newfound free speech activists who insisted after the Charlie Hebdo murders that a defense of free expression was so vital to all that is good and just in the Western world? Why isn’t the #JeSuisBDS hashtag trending in defense of these activists who have been persecuted — prosecuted — by France for their political views? The answer is clear: Many who reveled in wrapping themselves in the “free speech” banner earlier this year — beginning with France itself and extending throughout the West — have no genuine belief in that right. That’s why these countries not only stand silent in the face of such a fundamental assault on free speech, but aggressively perpetrate those abuses.

4 Comments

BEX ALERT EXTRAORDINAIRE ~~ A ZIONIST PROVOKED POGROM IN PARIS

August 25, 2015 at 13:35 (BEX Alert, False Flags, France, Israel, zionist created anti_Semitism)

Terrorist organization Jewish Defense League on the streets of Paris July 13. 2014 -Screenshot Khalid Ibn Walid/Daily Mail

‘Vanity Fair’ story about anti-Semitic pogrom in Paris is falling apart

‘Vanity Fair’ says it may be time for French Jews to leave Paris because of a supposed attack on a synagogue a year ago. The event in fact involved a “rampage” by the Jewish Defense League in response to pro-Palestinian demonstrators during the attack on Gaza.

Here is the Jewish Defense League waiting for the police to arrive and chanting racist slogans.

Full report from Mondoweiss HERE

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#JeSuisAnti-Apartheid

March 9, 2015 at 12:45 (Academic Freedom, Apartheid, France, Free Speech, zionist harassment)

Paris university shuts down Israeli apartheid event featuring Max Blumenthal

Author Max Blumenthal banned by zion

In the current context, to ban such a conference amounts to aligning with the policy of exploiting the reaction to the attacks of last January 7 and January 9 in order to install permanently a version of freedom of expression with variable rules. We can still read “We are Charlie” on huge posters on the walls of the university. Doesn’t this mean the university is showing support for a controversial newspaper ? Should we understand that controversy is not legitimate unless it is consistent with the dominant ideology ?

The following news statements about an event set for tomorrow night in Paris at a university founded in 1969 as an experimental center on social issues were issued today by the French Palestinian solidarity organization AURDIP (Association des Universitaires pour le Respect du Droit International en Palestine) and the Collectif Palestine at the university.

AURDIP COMMUNIQUÉ – We have just learned that, once again, the presidency of the University Paris 8/Saint-Denis decided, at the last moment, to ban a conference, this one entitled Israel apartheid is real [featuring Max Blumenthal and Bilal Afandi]. The conference intended to shed light on Israel’s apartheid policy toward the Palestinian people, a policy that AURDIP itself has constantly condemned. As a collective of academics, we are outraged by this attack on academic freedom, the freedom of expression, and the freedom of open debate. As defenders of human rights and the respect of international law, we wish to express our deep dismay at the complicit silence that the administration of the University Paris 8 aims to force upon its students and faculty. We demand that the president of this university reverse a decision that can only exacerbate tensions while pretending to calm them.

Press Release of the Collectif Palestine Paris 8
Stop censorship at the University !

Once again the president of Université Paris 8-Saint Denis has flouted the principle of freedom of expression, by banning a conference organized by the collective Palestine Paris 8, in partnership with other organizations supporting the Palestinian people, just two days before the intended date. The goal of the conference is to condemn the apartheid policies of the state of Israel toward Palestinians. Among the invited speakers are Bilal Afandi, a young Palestinian activist; Max Blumenthal, a journalist from the United States, and a speaker from the BDS campaign.

The presidency’s motivation in censoring this event have never been clear. Expressing itself by means of the Maison de l’étudiant [house of students], which it uses to control student initiative, the university presidency has alternatively pointed to the absence of an available auditorium, the presence of a “controversial” speaker (Max Blumenthal, whose writings are nevertheless published in numerous outlets in the United States), publicity that “doesn’t meet norms,” the risk of disorder… Apart from this bureaucratic censorship, the presidency has not hesitated to use more direct means of repression, including sending university personnel to tear down our posters announcing the event.

Thus, according to the presidency, freedom of expression ends where there is the slightest risk of undermining the politics of the state of Israel at the level of the university. Still worse, this conference had the audacity to be listed as an activity of Israeli Apartheid Week — an international week of struggle and reflection against the apartheid policies of Israel, which is organized in numerous other universities in the world, notably in England, the United States, Palestine, South Africa, and several Latin American countries. Since 2012 (when the president decided to close the university in order to ban a meeting), pressure and censorship have become systematic when apartheid in Palestine is in question.

But we will not allow ourselves to be tamed by the presidency of the University of Saint-Denis, wallowing in its goals of normalization (whether they be in the domains of security, austerity, bureaucracy, or ideology) And since it prefers to yield to pressure and to accept the arguments of the defenders of Israeli policies, we will take responsibility on our side. We therefore intend to go ahead with this conference and we are calling for massive participation in a rally in front of Building D of the university, starting at 6 PM, to assert our right to speak about “controversial” subjects, our right to express our solidarity toward the Palestinian people, our right to self-organization and to independence of the student movement.

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#JeSuisIslamophobe ~~ ISLAMOPHOBIA NOT INCLUDED IN NEW FRENCH ANTI HATE LEGISLATION

February 26, 2015 at 08:55 (anti-Semitism, Extremism, France, Irony, Islamophobia, Israel)

French president François Hollande has said his government will soon announce a raft of tough criminal laws to crack down on anti-Semitism, racism, homophobia and Holocaust denial.

That’s fine, but what about Islamophobia?

Except in France?

France must treat online “anti-Semitism” like child pornography, president says

Ali Abunimah

French President François Hollande says modern “anti-Semitism” stems from “hatred of Israel.” (Presidency of France)

French president François Hollande has said his government will soon announce a raft of tough criminal laws to crack down on anti-Semitism, racism, homophobia and Holocaust denial.

He made the announcements in a speech to CRIF, France’s main Jewish communal body and Israel lobby group, on Monday.

Hollande said that the Internet needed to be “regulated” to suppress videos and even search results deemed “anti-Semitic.”

The president said that the appropriate model would be the laws used to prevent the dissemination of child pornography.

But the measures are likely only to make matters worse, among other things by criminalizing criticism of Israel and further conflating Zionism with Judaism.

Discipline and punish

The plans will worry civil libertarians already concerned about the crackdown on free speech since the January attacks by three French gunmen on the offices of Charlie Hebdoand a Jewish supermarket in Paris.

Hollande said that details of the draft law would be announced in coming days by his prime minister Manuel Valls.

Meanwhile, Valls recently indicated his direction of travel by declaring that his goal was to fight “Islamofascism” – a term used by the neoconservative, pro-Israel far right to demonize Muslims.

Hollande promised that the laws would become more punitive, so that “no anti-Semitic word or act goes without a response.”

He promised “faster” and “more effective” punishments for “words or writing that are anti-Semitic, racist or homophobic.”

Only in passing, toward the end of the half-hour speech, did Hollande mention that anti-Muslim hate attacks in France in January alone exceeded the entire number recorded in 2014.

He did not announce any specific measures to combat this alarming phenomenon.

The president observed that “Muslims are the first victims of Islamist or jihadist terrorism, whether in the Middle East or Africa,” and called for more international military intervention in those regions.

Hollande did not consider that it was “Western” interventions in Syria, Iraq, Libya and elsewhere that gave rise to the menace known as Islamic State (for an excellent account of that, see Patrick Cockburn’s new book The Rise of Islamic State).

Conflating anti-Semitism and criticism of Israel

Hollande’s speech also confirms the direction hinted at in earlier statements that France is likely to take more measures to suppress criticism of Israel in the name of combating anti-Semitism.

The president told CRIF that anti-Semitism has ancient roots, but asserted that “a more recent source is hatred of Israel.”

But if this is the case, who decides what is “anti-Semitic”? If all anti-Israel and anti-Zionist statements will be considered anti-Semitic then hundreds if not thousands of publications in tens of languages will have to be banned by France.

Hollande shared some disturbing statistics: in 2014 there were twice as many “anti-Semitic acts” recorded as in 2013 and ten times more than before the year 2000.

Lest I be accused of “justifying” these acts, let me be clear: nothing, including Israel’s crimes against Palestinians, justifies insulting or attacking Jews as Jews.

But can it be a mere coincidence that 2014 was the year of Israel’s latest horrific massacre of Palestinians in Gaza that was fully backed by the United States and most EU members, including France?

Can it also be a coincidence that 2000 was the year the second intifada began and Israel launched a brutal crackdown that has since killed more than eight thousand Palestinians, often with weapons provided by those same states?

What is the relationship between these facts?

While Hollande insists that “hatred” of Israel is a form of, or a “source” of “anti-Semitism,” he does not acknowledge the role of Israel in generating the intense hostility sometimes misdirected against Jews.

The Palestinian national movement has always correctly insisted that its enemies are not “the Jews,” but rather Israel and the Zionist colonial movement.

Yet it is Israel that continues to insist that it acts in the name of all Jews everywhere.

It is Benjamin Netanyahu who apparently considers himself not just prime minister of Israel but the leader of world Jewry.

It is Israel that has taken the symbols of the Jewish religion – including its most recognized one, the Star of David – and affixed it to uniforms and weapons of destruction and death that are used to carry out atrocities in Palestine and Lebanon.

It is Zionists who have taken holy scriptures and claimed that they provide a license for modern day Brooklynites and Parisians to violently steal land from Palestinian villagers.

It is Israel’s government-financed settlers who torch Palestinian mosques and daub their walls with “biblical phrases.”

It is Israel-government-backed religious fanatics who yearn – and plan – to destroy the al-Aqsa mosque in Jerusalem and replace it with a “Jewish temple.”

It is Israel that has used the Paris Grand Synagogue as a recruiting base for its army and it is Israeli army commanders who cite Hebrew scripture to justify laying waste to Gaza.

Violent radical Judaism?

If we can say that the horrific actions of Islamic State are a perversion of the beliefs of the vast majority of the world’s Muslims, can we also not say that Zionism is a perversion of Judaism?

CRIF insists that the Paris attacks be labeled “Islamist.” By the same logic, should we label Israel’s crimes acts of “violent radical Judaism?”

While anti-Zionist Jews, secular and religious, have always insisted that Israel and Zionism do not represent them or their religion or cultures, politicians like Hollande reinforce the false and dangerous association between Jews as Jews on the one hand and Israel’s violent racist colonialism against Palestinians on the other.

Some misguided youths, hearing these messages, may indeed believe Israel’s claim that “the Jews” are the enemies of the Palestinians and direct their anger or hatred towards Jewish targets.

They may hear the Islamophobic diatribes emanating from many right-wing and liberal supporters of Israel and also conclude – falsely – that “the Jews” are the enemies of “the Muslims.”

The message has to be clear always and is worth repeating: words or acts targeting Jews as Jews are never a form of solidarity with Palestinians.

We must be equally clear that opposing and resisting Zionism is not anti-Semitic, but a struggle for liberation for Palestinians and indeed for Israeli Jews.

Repeating history

In his address to CRIF, Hollande spoke about the “Israeli-Palestinian conflict” in the bland terms of the defunct “peace process.”

He reaffirmed France’s commitment to the fantasy of the “two-state solution,” offered to host a “peace conference” in Paris and said that no matter who won Israel’s elections next month, France would work with them “in friendship and trust.”

He offered not one single word of comfort or anger about the suffering of Palestinians in Gaza where there has been no reconstruction since Israel’s summer attack devastated much of the besieged and impoverished territory.

Hollande warned that those who do not learn from history are destined to relive it.

Yet there was not one word about accountability or justice for the Israeli war crimes that left more than 2,200 people, including more than 500 children, dead in Gaza.

Why are 1.8 million Palestinians, mostly refugees from present-day Israel, caged in Gaza under such abominable conditions in the first place?

The answer is simple: their mere existence, the fact that they live and breathe as non-Jews,is considered a threat to Israel’s self-declared identity as a “Jewish state.”

Palestinians are in a ghetto because of who they are and France’s president has nothing to say about that.

Moving right

While French leaders are doing their best to pander to the prejudices of their audience, it is doubtful it will be enough.

Richard Prasquier, the former president of CRIF, went on national television to say that Hollande and Valls had not gone far enough.

CRIF’s current president Roger Cukierman provoked anger from French Muslim community leaders by declaring that “all the violent attacks today are committed by young Muslims.”

Cukierman also praised Marine Le Pen, leader of the racist, anti-immigrant, anti-Muslim and traditionally deeply anti-Semitic National Front, as “irreproachable.”

Alas Hollande’s ardor to combat racism was nowhere in sight when it came to the fanatical anti-Arab racism of Israel’s leading political parties.

CRIF heard no rebuke from the supposedly anti-racist Hollande for Cukierman’s public embrace of Israeli ultra-nationalist politician Naftali Bennett, who boasts about how many Arabs he has killed and claims that Jewish settlements on occupied Palestinian land are “protecting London, Paris and Madrid.”

Education reform

In his speech, Hollande announced education reforms to reinforce the messages he gave to CRIF. But what France really needs to teach its Jewish and Muslim citizens is that contrary to Israeli claims, Israel does not represent Jews and that Israeli policies and Israeli crimes are not Jewish policies or Jewish crimes.

The irony is that it might prove more difficult to convince French Jews and French Christians of this than it is to convince French Muslims.

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‘WALKING LIKE A JEW IN PARIS’

February 17, 2015 at 10:35 (France, Irony, Israel, zionist created anti_Semitism)

Searching for anti-Semitism ….

creating it along the way

Perhaps on a ‘fact finding mission’ for

Charlie?

While his reception in tourist areas appear peaceful, it is in suburban areas with high Muslim populations where he claims to have received ‘hateful stares, belligerent remarks, and hostile body language’

‘Ten hours walking in Paris as a Jew’: Film by Israeli journalist shows anti-Semitic experiences

Entitled “Ten hours walking in Paris as a Jew”, the video sees Zvika Klein donning a kippah, or yarmulke, in front of the Eiffel Tower before wandering around the French capital.

While his reception in tourist areas appear peaceful, it is in suburban areas with high Muslim populations where he claims to have received “hateful stares, belligerent remarks, and hostile body language”.

In one filmed sequence, a group of suburban youths can be heard saying: “Arsehole. He’s gonna get f***** from the front and back.”

Walking past a school in one of Paris’ neighbourhoods, a boy can be heard saying: “Vive Palestine”. Others appear to spit as he walks past. The video was produced for NRG, an Israeli news website owned by Sheldon Adelson, a US-based billionaire who is a friend and supporter of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. It comes amid government concerns of an exodus by France’s Jewish citizens in wake of an increasing fears of anti-Semitism.

Some 7,000 French Jews left the country for Israel in 2014, more than double the number of a year before.

That trend had dismayed the French government well before last month’s attack on a kosher supermarket in Paris by gunman Amedy Coulibaly, which left four French Jews dead. That latest attack has caused many to question whether they remain safe in the country.

Mr Netanyahu last night appeared to irk French authorities on Monday by urging Jews in France and Europe to emigrate, saying: “Israel is waiting for you with open arms.”

Manuel Valls, the French prime minister, dismissed Mr Netanyahu’s comments as electoralism ahead of a vote on March 17, adding: “The place for French Jews is France.”

(see video below)

Source

Here is what the French Jewish community thinks of all the above …

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BIBI’S FALSE FLAGS AT HALF MAST

January 26, 2015 at 08:31 (anti-Semitism, Corrupt Politics, False Flags, France, Israel)

Slowly but surly the world is waking up to the lies of zionism

But we should not forget what France, the first European country to bestow full legal rights on Jews, still offers them: vibrant Jewish institutions and a government that sees their presence as integral to the French future. The French president and prime minister, along with the mayor of Paris, have been steadfast in their support of Jews on French soil.

Don’t Believe Hype of ‘Anti-Semitic’ France

By Richard H. Weisberg*

A woman holds a sign reading “I am Jewish from France” / Getty Images

(JTA) — Three weeks ago, my wife and I were shopping in a Parisian kosher butcher store several miles west of the supermarket where four Jews were murdered on Jan. 9. The shop in our neighborhood was well patronized, with lines stretching out to the sidewalk before Shabbat.

We were staying in an apartment in Paris’ 12th district while I promoted a new book about the treatment of Jews in France during World War II. During our stay, we spoke with dozens of our Parisian friends, including some who are Jewish, about whether the year 2015 evokes for them at least some of that dark anti-Semitic history. It was a time when a French government that became known as Vichy promulgated 200 anti-Semitic laws — with little German pressure — that eventually sent some 75,000 Jews “to the East” and almost certain death in the concentration camps.

In those weeks of what we now know was the “calm before the storm,” our friends confessed to some fears about a combined resurgence of both old and new forms of anti-Semitism in France. The far-right National Front party under Marine Le Pen barely hid its old-style anti-Semitism under the ugly mask of anti-Arab xenophobia. And the party was gaining strength in the polls.

Meanwhile, individual Jews were sporadically attacked, frequently by disaffected French Muslims. In some areas of Paris, one friend said, it might be unwise to wear a yarmulke outdoors. But in their own neighborhood, in the 15th district, they said they would have no such fears and did not counsel their nephew, an observant Jew in his 20s, against wearing a kippah.

In fact, a cross-section of my Parisian friends agreed that American talk of France having become anti-Semitic was grossly exaggerated. So in polite conversations back in the States, my wife (a French teacher in Manhattan) and I had already noted what we felt were overstatements, given our own experiences and observations during frequent visits in various parts of France. We chalked up some of the feverish American talk to the persistent Francophobia that too often marks political commentary about France in the United States. The French, after all, have long been targeted for American criticism.

We tried to curb this talk of French anti-Semitism, the supposed droves who were leaving for Israel — some 7,000 French Jews in a population of approximately 500,000 made the move last year, though some have since returned for economic and other reasons — and what we knew were exaggerated American images of French Jews living in constant fear. We did this, recognizing that Europe is perennially at some risk of returning to its traditional anti-Semitism — a risk I consider more fundamental even than Muslim extremism fueled by events in the Middle East.

My attitude about France has not changed even since the latest spate of deadly violence. There is nowhere in the world that is safe. But in many ways it is as safe for Jews in Paris as it is in Tel Aviv or Brooklyn, or Budapest.

Of course the prudent increase in security, as long as it does not turn France into a police state, will be necessary for a while, as it has been periodically for the past few decades. French schoolchildren need to be protected (and, truthfully, the same could be said for American kids). The kosher butcher shop we patronized now is on high alert. This makes sense.

During my recent trip, we saw a performance at a 100-seat theater of a French version of Shakespeare’s “The Merchant of Venice.” The audience, a broad cross-section of ordinary Parisians, seemed immensely sympathetic to the plight of Shylock the Jew as a representative of the persecuted European “other” through the centuries.

Attitudes toward Jews are changing for the better in France. There will be tragic eruptions to the contrary. But France is not an anti-Semitic country. It remains, as it finally comes to grips with its Vichy past, a bastion of equality and hope for its Jewish population.

*Richard H. Weisberg is Floersheimer Professor of Constitutional Law at the Cardozo Law School of Yeshiva University. For his work in righting some of Vichy’s wrongs, he won the Legion of Honor in 2009. His recent book, “In Praise of Intransigence,” and his “Vichy Law and the Holocaust in France” both discuss French anti-Semitism.

You can see here what French Jewry thinks of Bibi’s pathetic attempts to get them to immigrate to Israel…

Read THIS post where that video was published

Here you will find reports on recent lies made by Netanyahu publicly (Click on links)

Netanyahu’s AIPAC Speech: 5 Lies

A couple of Netanyahu’s not-so-white lies to Americans

Whether Lies or B.S., Netanyahu’s Interviews Pose Special Challenges for Journalists

What makes him think the US Congress or the French Jewish Community would believe him now? ‘The wolf is obviously out of the bag.’

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CHARLIE’S DOUBLE STANDARDS … #JeAiDoublesStandards

January 22, 2015 at 11:49 (anti-Semitism, Cartoons, France, Free Speech, Islamophobia)

Charlie Hebdo Fired ‘Anti-Semitic’ Cartoonist For Ridiculing Judaism In 2009

The cartoon world’s double standards on freedom of speech…

These are some of Latuff’s cartoons that speak a thousand words:

Charlie Hebdo mocks the prophet Muhammad through insulting cartoons and calls it satire. As a result, half of the magazine’s staff is wiped out by terrorists in the name of Allah. The massacre raises questions about “freedom of speech.” The cartoon world, media, governments and intellectuals all have double standards regarding the answer.

When the world was condemning the January 7th attack on the satirical magazine, Muslim heroes were being applauded and world leaders and dignitaries were walking in a march for unity, although it was not shoulder to shoulder:

Critics suggest images show dignitaries ‘didn’t lead march’ after all, but many still speak positively about display of global unity

Then came the breaking news – a reminder that 80-year-old Maurice Sinet, political cartoonist withCharlie Hebdo for 20 years, was fired in 2009 for his anti-Semitic cartoons mocking the relationship of former French President Sarkozy’s son with a wealthy Jewish woman.

Maurice Sinet, known to the world as Siné, faced charges of “inciting racial hatred” for a column he wrote in July 2009. “L’affaire Sine,” followed the engagement of Jean Sarkozy to Jessica Sebaoun-Darty, the Jewish heiress of a major consumer electronics company, the Darty Group. Commenting on rumours that Jean intended to convert from Catholicism to Judaism (Jessica’s religion) for social success, Siné quipped, “He’ll go a long way in life, that little lad.”

It didn’t take long for Claude Askolovitch, a high-profile political journalist, to accuse Siné of anti-Semitism. Charlie Hebdo‘s editor, Philippe Val, who re-published Jyllands-Posten’s controversial cartoons of the prophet Mohammed in the name of ‘freedom of press’ in 2006, agreed that the piece was offensive and asked Siné to apologize. Siné refused, saying, “I’d rather cut my balls off.” He was fired and taken to court by the Ligue Internationale Contre le Racisme et l’Antisémitisme (LICRA), an organization which works to promote racial tolerance. In December 2010, Siné won a €40,000 court judgment against his former publisher for wrongful termination.

Charlie Hebdo publishes cartoons insulting Islam and Muslims as well as Jesus and Christianity, and tags them as “freedom of speech.” However, in the case of Siné, it failed to stand firm on its provocative “freedom of speech” stance.

Carlos Latuff, a world renowned Brazilian cartoonist, told Daily Sabah, “It is an everlasting discussion, because what is freedom of speech and what is hate speech? Why are some subjects protected by freedom of speech and others not? Why can we mock some issues and cannot do so with others? Should Holocaust denial, for example, be included as freedom of speech, or racial hatred? See, for example, the treatment given by the Western mainstream media to Muhammad cartoons and the Holocaust cartoons.”

Latuff added that the motive behind the urge to mock Islam remains unknown. “Who knows? Hatred against Muslims, testing the limits of freedom of speech, mocking Muslims just for fun, who knows? However, the fact is that they [Charlie Hebdo editors] died not for a good cause, what could be seen as noble, but for provoking Muslims and feeding the hatred against Islam.”

Click HERE to read more …. includes offensive cartoons both to Jews and Muslims

RELATED …. Cartoonists united for Justice

We, cartoonists, illustrators, writers, editors, distributors, translators, critics and workers in the comic book industry, alongside people of conscience from countries all over the world, re-affirm our February 2014 call for the Angoulême International Comics Festival to drop all ties with the Israeli company Sodastream. Furthermore, we urge the Angoulême Festival, and all festivals, conventions, and celebrations of comics and cartooning art in which we participate, to reject any partnership, funding, or co-operation with any Israeli company or institution that does not explicitly promote freedom and justice for Palestinians, as well as equal rights and equality for Israeli Jews and Palestinians, including the Israeli government and its local consulates, so long as Israel continues to deny Palestinians their rights.

80+ Cartoonists And Comics Workers Tell Comics Industry: ‘No Business As Usual With Israel’

Mondoweiss Editors

(Image: Ethan Heitner)

The following press release was published today:

Lewis Trondheim (creator of the Angoulême mascot), Jacques Tardi, Jaime Hernandez, Alison Bechdel, Warren Ellis, Dylan Horrocks, Kate Beaton, Eleanor Davis, Ben Katchor, Jeet Heer, and Palestine Comics festival expand on 2014 letter to Angoulême Festival

More than 80 cartoonists and other workers in the comics industry, including colorists, writers, critics, and editors, from over 20 countries, signed an open letter released today addressed to Franck Bondoux, the head of the International Festival of Comics at Angoulême, which opens in France on January 29th.

The letter, a follow up to a 2014 letter, demands that he sever ties between the Festival and Sodastream, an Israeli manufacturing company complicit in the occupation of Palestinian land. The authors of the letter include 10 prize winners at Angoulême itself, two winners of the MacArthur “Genius Grant,” many Eisner and Ignatz awardees, and a Palestinian cartoonist previously imprisoned for his work by the Israeli military.

The organizers of the letter also released an accompanying statement, in the wake of the slaying of cartoonists Wolinski, Cabu, Honoré, Tignous and Charb, among many others in Paris this month. “These horrific acts of violence compel artists of the world to act urgently for a world where the dignity, freedom, and equality of all people are respected and promoted,” said cartoonist Ethan Heitner and writer Dror Warschawski, organizers of the open letter. “We affirm that the Palestinian boycott movement is one important step towards that vision, and we urge others to join us.”

The 2015 letter expands on its predecessor in several key ways. Its signatories include workers in the comics industry beyond cartoonists, including critics Jeet Heer and former heads of the Cité internationale de la bande dessinée Thierry Groensteen and Gilles Ciment, and organizers of the first-ever festival of comics held in Palestine, Palestine Comics, which opened in November of 2014.

The letter also addresses itself beyond Angoulême, to “all festivals, conventions, and celebrations of comics and cartooning art in which we participate.” Finally, the letter expands its target beyond Sodastream, to all “Israeli companies and institutions” complicit in ethnic cleansing, discrimination, and war crimes. Noting that Israel’s assault on Gaza in the summer 2014 alone killed over 2,100 Palestinians, the signatories urge, “No business as usual with Israel.”

*************

Open letter to:

Monsieur Franck Bondoux
Direction du Festival international de la bande dessinée
71 rue Hergé
16000 Angoulême

(Image: Ethan Heitner)

We cannot accept our art being used to whitewash these crimes, as the Israeli Ministry of Foreign affairs has explicitly stated it will attempt to do through its “Brand Israel” campaign. Angoulême, a center of appreciation for comics internationally, should not be used in this manner.

We again urge you to sever ties between the Festival and Sodastream, and we extend our call to directors and organizers, editors and associations of comics and illustration around the globe. No “business as usual” with lsrael!

Sincerely,

Leila Abdul Razaq (USA), Zainab Akhtar (UK), Khalid Albaih (Sudan/Qatar), Albertine (Switzerland), Hilary Allison (USA), Enzo Apicella (Italy), Alex Baladi (Switzerland), Edd Baldry (UK/France), Edmond Baudoin (France, 3 Angoulême prizes), Kate Beaton (Canada), Alison Bechdel (USA), Sofiane Belaskri (Algeria), Faiza Benaouda (Algeria), Peter Blegvad (USA/UK, Angoulême prize in 2014), David Brothers Paul Buhle (USA), Nicole Burton (Canada), Jennifer Camper (USA), Gilles Ciment (France, former director of the Cité internationale de la bande dessinée in Angoulême from 2007 to 2014), Rob Clough (USA), Sean T. Collins (USA), Gianluca Costantini (Italy), Jean-Luc Coudray (France, Angoulême prize in 1990), Philippe Coudray (France, Angoulême prize in 2011), Molly Crabapple (USA), Pino Creanza (Italy), Marguerite Dabaie (USA), Bira Dantas (Brazil), Eleanor Davis (USA), Marcel « Lidwine » De la Gare (France, Angoulême prize in 1999), Dror (France), Warren Ellis (UK), Magdy El Shafee (Egypt), elchicotriste (Spain), Brigitte Findakly (France), Ganzeer (Egypt/USA), Jenny Gonzalez-Blitz (USA), Graphic History Collective (Sam Bradd, Sean Carleton, Robin Folvik, Mark Leier, Trevor McKilligan, Julia Smith) (Canada), Dominique Grange (France), Thierry Groensteen (France, former director of the Cité internationale de la bande dessinée in Angoulême from 1993 to 2001), Jeet Heer (Canada), Ethan Heitner (USA), Delphine Hermans (Belgium), Anaële Hermans (Belgium), Jaime Hernandez (USA), Dylan Horrocks (nominated for 2 Angoulême prizes in 2002, New Zealand), Igort (Italy, nominated in Angoulême in 2003), Hatem Imam (Lebanon), Jiho (France), Monica Johnson (USA), Ben Katchor (USA), Mazen Kerbaj (Lebanon), Peter Kuper (USA), Carlos Latuff (Brazil), Wilfrid Lupano (France), Rodolphe « Ohazar » Lupano (France), Katie Miranda (USA), Anne Elizabeth Moore (USA), Mric (France), José Muñoz (Argentina, 3 Angoulême prizes and Grand Prix in 2007), Ernest Pignon-Ernest (France), Maël Rannou (France), Patricia Réaud (France), Barrack Rima (Lebanon/Belgium), Mohammad Sabaaneh (Palestine), Amitai Sandy (Israel), Gabby Schulz (USA), Siné (France), Jean Solé (France), Philippe Squarzoni (France, nominated in Angoulême in 2003), Sylvain-Moizie (France, Angoulême prize in 2000 and in residence at the Cité internationale de la bande dessinée in Angoulême in 2014-2015), Tardi (France, 5 Angoulême prizes and Grand Prix in 1985), Seth Tobocman (USA), Lewis Trondheim (France, 2 Angoulême prizes and Grand Prix in 2006, creator of the Angoulême mascot), Guillaume Trouillard (France), Willis From Tunis (Tunisia), Jordan Worley (USA), Wozniak (France/Poland), yAce (France), Germano Zullo (Switzerland)

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FROM TEL AVIV TO PARIS TO CASABLANCA … MY PEOPLE DON’T WANT TO GO!

January 22, 2015 at 10:14 (Corrupt Politics, DesertPeace Exclusive, France, Israel, zionist harassment)

This was not the first attempt to get the French to leave France …

Netanyahu finishes his speech proclaiming that Israel is the only home for Jews, and his supporters are chanting …

Netanyahu was asked by Hollande not to go to Paris. He went anyway and was placed in the second row behind the President of Mali. He maneuvered himself into the front row, deliberately attempting to displace the Mali President. Then he goes uninvited to the Paris Synagogue and tells the Jews of Paris that they should all emigrate to Israel . At the end of his speech exhorting French Jews to leave their homeland for Israel, his “people” start chanting, only to be over sung by the Marseillaise.

The speech was followed by singing of the French national anthem. The first video does not include this ... The zionists obviously do not want you to see this.

Hence, the flashback to Casablanca …

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ANYTHING DUMMIES CAN DO FEMINISTS CAN DO BETTER ~~ INCLUDING PHOTOSHOPPING

January 18, 2015 at 10:06 (Deceit, DesertPeace Editorial, France, Photography, Women, You Gotta Be Kidding)

Feminists prove that you don’t have to be a dummy to Photoshop

The extremists have a history of denying the existence of women as can be seen in the following photos … (as much as we might like to deny Hillary’s existence, there are better ways than cutting her out of a photo)

Hillary Before …

Hillary After …

6a00d83451b71f69e201543223a8d6970c-800wi

They even went as far as denying the role of women during the holocaust

The original …

Where are the two women in the photo? …

Two can play at the same game ….

Feminist Paper Photoshops Male Leaders from Paris March Pics

Feminist paper’s novel response to hareidi papers photoshopping ‘immodest’ pictures of female leaders from publication…

The original

The Feminist version

And finally, the extremist Hareidi version

Who ever said the camera does not lie?

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DEFENDING FREE SPEECH BY DENYING IT IN FRANCE

January 16, 2015 at 10:34 (Corrupt Politics, Dictatorship, France, Free Speech)

Who’s a Charlie? France cracks down on free speech in order to defend it

Ali Abunimah

An image posted on his official Facebook page shows the French comedian Dieudonné being arrested at his home this morning in connection with comments he made on Facebook.

In grim and supreme irony, French police have fanned out to suppress free speech in order to defend it.

“France ordered prosecutors around the country to crack down on hate speech, anti-Semitism and glorifying terrorism, announcing Wednesday that 54 people had been arrested for those offenses” since last week, the Associated Press reports.

The news of the arrests comes a week after the murders of 17 people at and near the offices of the magazine Charlie Hebdo and at a Jewish supermarket in Paris.

It also comes days after dozens of world leaders, led by French President François Hollande, gathered in Paris to demonstrate in support of free speech and in defiance of the killers who sought to silence it.

The most high-profile arrest is undoubtedly that of the comedian Dieudonné, allegedly on grounds of “justifying terrorism,” for a comment he made on Facebook.

I do not find Dieudonné funny and I find much of what he says offensive. In my reading, he and his supporters deliberately blur a line that must be kept sharp between criticizing Zionism and Israel, on the one hand, and attacking Jews as Jews on the other.

This is something I have always spoken against clearly and therefore I do not see Dieudonné as someone in solidarity with Palestinians.

I also do not find Dieudonné’s defense that his bigotry is just “humor” any more convincing from him than when it comes from Charlie Hebdo.

“Justifying terrorism”

But I do not think that the Facebook comment for which Dieudonné was reportedly arrested can by any stretch be described as “justifying terrorism.” Nor do I think that if the Charlie Hebdo cartoonists who were murdered were held to the same standards that much of their work would be considered any less offensive or racist than Dieudonné’s.

And of course the implications go far beyond the personal situation of Dieudonné.

The French daily Le Figaro reports that Dieudonné was arrested by judicial police at his home near Paris for investigation of “apologie de terrorisme” – justifying or making an apologia for terrorism.

Le Figaro published this screenshot of a posting on Dieudonné’s Facebook page that apparently precipitated the arrest. It is dated 11 January, the day of the Paris march.

It states:

After this historic march, what do I say… Legendary! A magic moment equal to the Big Bang that created the universe … or at least (more local) comparable to the crowning of [Gaulish king] Vercingétorix, I’m finally back home. Know that this evening, as far as I am concerned, I feel like Charlie Coulibaly.

Amedy Coulibaly was the gunman who killed a police officer and then took hostages and killed four people at a Jewish grocery store.

Who’s a “Charlie”?

By creating the term “Charlie Coulibaly,” Dieudonné is obviously mocking the slogan “Je suis Charlie” heard all over the world in recent days. His words might be objectionable, but are they grounds for arrest for justifying terrorism?

Dieudonné’s meaning becomes clear in a letter he sent to French interior minister Bernard Cazeneuve the day after the march.

It begins: “Yesterday we were all Charlie, marching and standing tall for liberties. So that we can all continue to laugh at everything.”

“After coming home from this march I felt quite alone,” Dieudonné writes.

“For a year I have been treated as public enemy number one, even though all I’ve done is try to make people laugh, and to die of laughter, since death is laughing at us, as Charlieknows all too well alas,” Dieudonné states.

He then refers to a “peace” proposal he sent to the government weeks ago to which, he says, he has received no response. And then he says:

“As soon as I speak, you do not try to understand me, you do not want to listen. You look for pretexts to ban me. You consider me to be an Amedy Coulibaly, even though I am no different from Charlie.”

Again, I don’t buy Dieudonné’s line that much of his racist bile is misunderstood satire and humor, but the valid point he is making is that his speech is treated as violence and terrorism and he is treated like a terrorist, while those whose speech is just as disgusting were and are treated like heroes of the republic.

Dieudonné’s arrest this morning ironically vindicates his claim that he is a “Coulibaly” in the eyes of the state.

French “war on terror”

Launching the French government’s newly declared (or re-declared) “war on terrorism,” and its crackdown on dissent, Prime Minister Manuel Valls said that “racism, anti-Semitism and justifying terrorism” were “not opinions.”

The arrest of Dieudonné shows that the government will decide what constitutes an “opinion.”

We can be sure that many others whose opinions the state does not like will also be treated as “Coulibaly.” And where France goes, Europe will follow.

France, Germany and other European countries already have “hate speech laws” and it has been much remarked upon how unevenly they are applied.

Why, for example, has a Germany so concerned about “extremism,” and whose leader Angela Merkel marched in Paris, not banned the growing anti-Muslim marches in its own cities?

Europe’s politicians and elites (along with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu) joined hands to celebrate the vile bigotry of Charlie Hebdo, while Dieudonné was taken away in a morning police raid.

Capitalizing on division, pandering to bigotry and fear

If the French state is looking for a way to increase the influence of and sympathy with Dieudonné, it could not have come up with a better strategy.

Meanwhile, former French president Nicolas Sarkozy has been tweeting comments in the wake of the attacks that can only be taken as a dog whistle to the bigots and ultra-nationalists he hopes will put him back in office at the next election: “The questions of immigration and Islam have been clearly posed. They must be asked calmy, involving everyone.”

Nicolas SarkozyVerified account‏@NicolasSarkozy

Les questions de l’immigration et de l’Islam sont clairement posées. Elles doivent être posées calmement en associant tout le monde.

Sarkozy has proposed a host of repressive measures from arming local police to “expelling any imam who holds views that do not respect the values of the republic.”

Could anyone imagine Sarkozy, or any politician, demanding “expulsion” of French Jewish or French Christian clerics if they espouse views that are antithetical to the republic likebelieving that Israel should be “Jewish” or that France should be “Muslim-free?”

Sarkozy’s clear implication – although he doesn’t say it – is that every Muslim cleric is always already foreign and has some other place outside France to which they more properly belong.

The government’s crackdown appears to be an effort to pander to this authoritarian sentiment and head off Sarkozy’s challenge.

Crackdown on Palestine solidarity

What will happen next? The French state will solidify its alliance with those who claim that criticism of Israel and solidarity with Palestinians is “anti-Semitism” and therefore “not an opinion.”

It was already on such bogus grounds that France banned rallies during the summer protesting Israel’s massacre in Gaza. And for years, France has been prosecuting activistsin the boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS) movement.

There will be many more people who are treated as Coulibalys instead of Charlies for what they say.

It now remains to be seen if those who adopted the slogan “Je suis Charlie” and insisted on republishing Charlie Hebdo’s racially denigrating and satirically worthless cartoons will rush to declare “Je suis Dieudonné” and repost his most vile and objectionable material.

Background on Dieudonné

French courts have banned Dieudonné from performing because the comedian “frequently sprinkles his act with diatribes against Holocaust remembrance,” as The New York Times’ Robert Mackey reported last year.

He has also been put on trial and fined dozens of times for things he has said.

Dieudonné “invented an obscene salute popular with anti-Semites” known as the “quenelle.” As Mackey reported, the comedian “insists” that the quenelle “was not inspired by the Nazis, but is a gesture of obscene disdain for the French establishment.”

However, Mackey adds, “anti-Semites who read his anti-Zionist rhetoric as a kind of code to skirt French laws against inciting racial hatred now frequently do it at Holocaust memorials and other Jewish sites.”

1 Comment

WHY THE PROPHET WOULD NOT/SHOULD NOT ASK FOR FORGIVENESS

January 15, 2015 at 11:43 (Cartoons, DesertPeace Editorial, France, Islamophobia)

‘All is forgiven’ states the latest cover toon at Charlie Hebdo, with yet another image of the Prophet Mohammed holding a ‘Je Suis Charlie’ sign. The edition was sold out hours after printing and went into a second one …. The Guardian reported that a record 3 million copies of the magazine, in 16 different languages, have been printed for the return to the newsstand on Wednesday. News sources claimed they were sold out within minutes.

FORGIVENESS?

FOR WHAT???

My censored version of the image

See here why the Prophet would not/should not have asked for forgiveness

Kudos to Sky News for refusing to show the image!

The ziopress referred to Sky’s actions as Moral Cowardice …. strange accusation coming from folks who have no morals whatsoever.

Read the linked post to see why Islam forbids images of the Prophet Mohammed

IS THERE A LESSON TO BE LEARNT FROM CHARLIE?

2 Comments

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Who’s a Charlie? France cracks down on free speech in order to defend it

“Justifying terrorism”

Who’s a “Charlie”?

French “war on terror”

Capitalizing on division, pandering to bigotry and fear

Crackdown on Palestine solidarity

Background on Dieudonné

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