An oft heard complaint from practitioners of the new, cool, environmentally responsible, GMO free antisemitism is that participants in the great Zionist conspiracy use their influence in the media to stifle criticism of Israel. This leads them to make much use of such phrases as “speaking out”, “refusing to be silenced” and suchlike.
Continue reading ‘Stifling Criticism - The Case of Evelyn Hecht-Galinski’
The German newspaper Die Tageszeitung recently quipped that Belgium was the “most successful ‘failed’ state.” Hard to believe, but many citizens of one of the European Union’s most prosperous countries don’t believe that Belgium - qua Belgium - has a future. And their angst has important implications for current thinking about resolving the Israel-Palestinian conflict.
Now that Siné has been fired from his post at Charlie Hebdo (see Elif Kayi’s posts here and here), he’s become a cause celebre for those parts of the left which insist that antisemitism is a scurrilous tactic designed to divert attention from the Palestinians by suppressing free speech.
Where is the last place you’d expect to find an article showing Israel in a positive light, an article comparing Israel favourably with a developed, western European country that is often held up as some kind of model for others to follow? Well, Indymedia would have to be pretty high on your list. It’s normally willing to make excuses for every kind of dictator and religious fanatic imaginable, as long, of course, as they stick it to Israel and the United States.
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.
Continue reading ‘Siné: “The Only Leftist of the Far Right in France”’
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