Elif Kayi, Z Word’s European press reviewer, reports on the continuing row in France over the sacking of Siné, a prominent satirist, after he published an article widely-judged to be antisemitic.

The furore around the Siné affair has split France’s opinion-formers into two groups. On one side, those who depict the case as being about freedom of speech. On the other, those who insist that the controversy - triggered by the veteran satirist being fired from the magazine Charlie Hebdo after he wrote that Jean Sarkozy, son of the French President, would “go far in this life” by converting to Judaism and marrying his wealthy Jewish girlfriend - raises deeply disturbing questions about antisemitism in France today.

Many of Siné’’s defenders hotly denied the antisemitism accusation, denouncing the ““pyromaniac firemen of antisemitism” ( “les pompiers pyromanes de l’antisémitisme” - an expression first used in a column by Dominique Vidal in Le Monde Diplomatique in May 2004.) Those rallying against him, among them Alexandre Adler, a historian, and Robert Badinter, a senator, launched a petition highlighting the antisemitic aspects of the Sarkozy article and defending the decision of Philippe Val, editor of Charlie Hebdo, to fire Siné.

The sponsors of the petition, as well as a number of other journalists, pointed to the statement made by Siné on the Carbone 14 radio station after the terrorist bombing of Jo Goldenberg’s restaurant on Paris’s Rue des Rosiers in 1982, which left six people dead. Siné is said to have declared: ““I am an antisemite and I am not afraid to say so. I will paint swastikas on all the walls. I want each Jew to live in fear except if he is pro-Palestinian”. They should all die!” Several journalists also recalled how the comedian Pierre Desproges had described Siné as ““the only leftist of the far right in France.””

Siné himself addressed several open letters to Philippe Val. In the weekly Le Nouvel Observateur, he underlined a distinction between the “”right corner of the ring”,” to which he said Val’’s defenders belong, and the “”left corner,” composed of himself and his supporters.

Some of Siné’s supporters portrayed the controversy as revolving around not an ethnic slur, but criticism of a religion - a major issue in Europe and in France especially, given that Val published the Danish caricatures of the Prophet Muhammed in Charlie Hebdo in 2006. Writing in the daily Libération, the attorney Christophe Bigot accused Val of breaking the law and engaging in “”intellectual terrorism”” by firing Siné. He continued: “This is a very extensive interpretation of antisemitism, which is not the interpretation of the law. And it is very dangerous. One has to be careful about infringements based on insulting a religion. If one starts to see it everywhere, it will not be possible to speak of religion at all any more.”” For his part, Siné engaged a similar point in his customary lewd style: in a piece attacking Christophe Barbier, the editor of L’Express, whom he regards as overly tough on Muslims while refraining from the faintest criticism of Jews, he quipped, “between a Muslim female wearing the chador and a shaved Jewish female, my choice is made.”

Some writers drew explicit parallels with the “Muhammed cartoons, accusing Val of hypocrisy”. In Le Monde, the author Jean-Marie Laclavetine expressed fear of the “massive invasion of religion in the public sphere” and the end of France’s much-vaunted secular system. The historian Esther Benbassa argued:”“Islam is not only a religion but also a culture. And Judaism is also a religion, not only a commitment to a people, a loyalty owed to one’s own”.” She cast doubt upon the accusation of antisemitism against Siné by diverting the debate to the Middle East: “”Today, it is becoming easier and easier to accuse of anti-Semitism those with whom one does not agree. Especially when it comes to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict”.”

On the Belgian website Le Vif, the author and economist Jacques Attali derived a more general warning from the controversy: “”At a time when the world is in a financial crisis, it is necessary to watch out: the search for scapegoats will start, they will denounced as ruling the world through money, as clever manipulators and as masked conspirators. Is this the new anti-Semitism, so old…””

Meanwhile, the journalist Alain Policar attacked the “demonizing” anti-Zionism which turned Israelis into Nazis, in order to assuage western guilt for the Holocaust. Indeed, it was perhaps inevitable that the images of the Holocaust would surface as the controversy raged on. One cartoon, in L’Express, portrayed Val as a Nazi, wearing an armband emblazoned with his own name, giving as fascist salute and kicking Siné off the page.