Reading Charlie Hebdo requires a sense of irony and an ability not to take things literally (or at least it did until recently). The whole point of this paper is/was to deflate anyone or any community fuelled by hypocrisy or who think they know better than others. One-track minds and conformists will always be upset when reading it. Sine is an anti-conformist.

oliver

To answer this question, that (tasteless) Siné sentence about a Muslim woman in a chador and a shaved Jewish woman is from another article written some time back and is interpreted as meaning he would prefer a well-groomed Jewish woman to the chador lady.

Rabidly anti-religious Siné particularly dislikes veiled Muslim women and wrote last month that “whenever I see a veiled Muslim woman, I want to kick her in the ass”.

By the way “Siné the anti-semite”’s first wife and their daughter are Jewish and they both signed the petition defending him against these accusations of anti-semitism. Enough with the witch-hunting !

The article who got him into trouble was not about the Jewish people, it was about Jean Sarkozy, who, at 21, has already proven he is a very ambitious opportunist, like his father. So, when, after his recent engagement to one of the wealthiest French heiresses, who happens to be Jewish, and several publications stated, wrongly it is now said, that “Prince Jean”, who doesn’t give the impression of being much interested in religion, was converting to Judaism, Siné said something like “this boy will go far”, it is, the way most people read it, a sneer at the guy. But some saw in it something like “latent anti-semitism”. And there were long-standing disagreements between the magazine owner over political matters and pressure from the Sarkozy family. There has been many incidents since the last two years about Sarkozy, who is friendly with the owners of most of the French media, pressuring, threatening and insulting journalists. Not an happy state of affair.

Looks like the way there are recurring accusations of “French anti-semitism” seems to be backfiring and this silly incident is some kind of last straw.

A few evenings back, a guy walking in the street in France was asked by two louts “are you a Muslim ?”. The guy said yes and was savagely attacked. Police managed to arrest one of the perps and found a stash of neo-nazi publications and symbols in his appartment. This has barely been mentioned in the national press and not at all in the international one.

“Sine is not an antisemite: he is antireligion, antichrist, antimuslim and antijews…”

There’s an interesting slide there — I don’t know if it’s yours or his — from ‘antireligion, antichrist’ to ‘antimuslim, antijew’. Anti-Judaism and anti-Islam would be defensible positions, but anti-Jew means antisemite by definition, and anti-Muslim is racism by any name. Maybe English isn’t your native language and you meant to say ‘antijudaism’, but in fact that’s not what got Siné in trouble at Charlie Hebdo. He isn’t being criticised for saying anything about the Jewish religion, but for repeating one of the ancient slurs against the character of Jews as people and as a community. That, again, is antisemitic and Brian from Toronto is spot on about the way Siné, rather than withdraw his libel, slips his antisemitism back in his pocket and brings out his antizionism to wave as a distraction.

It’s become the standard justification for antisemitism: “But I hate Israel, surely I’m allowed…”