Portraits of a Holocaust survivor stained with swastikas. A memorial in honor of a Jewish man vandalized. A bagel shop with the German word “Juden” sprayed on its front window. These are just a few of the hundreds of anti-Semitic acts that have been committed in France, which is home to the world’s largest Jewish …
Read the full post →“Anti-Semitic acts registered by police rose 74 percent in France last year”
Radio France and the news site Mediapart published on Wednesday excerpts of a memo from the DGSE – the French equivalent of MI6 and the CIA – which seems to refute the idea that they knew nothing of the Rwandan genocide as it began to unfold. The two news organisations published a note from the French exterior …
Speaking to the Armenian community at a dinner in Paris, Macron said: “France is, first and foremost, the country that knows how to look history in the face, which was among the first to denounce the killing of the Armenian people, which in 1915 named genocide for what it was, which in 2001 after a …
Read the full post →“France to have national day marking Armenian genocide”
The French sports store Decathlon has cancelled a plan to put a sports hijabon the market in France after several politicians, including one from Emmanuel Macron’s centrist party, called for a boycott. The retailer’s plain, lightweight running headscarf, which covers the hair but not the face, is already on sale in Morocco and was to be …
Read the full post →“Decathlon drops French sports hijab after politicians threaten boycott”
Swastikas and anti-Semitic tags were found daubed over 80 gravestones at a Jewish cemetery in eastern France on Tuesday on the day of nationwide marches against a rise in anti-Semitic attacks. The damage was discovered on Feb. 19 morning at a cemetery in the village of Quatzenheim, close to the border with Germany in the Alsace region, …
Read the full post →“80 graves vandalised at Jewish cemetery”
Workers building a mosque in southwestern France found a pig’s head and animal blood at the entrance of the site on Monday, the latest in a series of attacks on Muslim places of worship over the past decade. Construction of the mosque in the small town of Bergerac — known for its fine Bordeaux wines …
Read the full post →“Pig’s head discovered at site of mosque construction site in SW France”
The French state under Emmanuel Macron has been accused of “strengthening security and repression” not only to tackle terrorist threats but also to deal with anti-government gilets jaunes protesters and migrants. In his 2018 annual report released on Tuesday, Jacques Toubon, the official rights defender or national ombudsman, complained of an unprecedented number of preventive …
Read the full post →“France accused of “repression” policy to quell protests”
A French court has found top Catholic official Cardinal Philippe Barbarin guilty for failing to act on accusations against a paedophile priest. In a surprise decision on Thursday in France’s most important church sexual abuse trial, the Lyon court handed Barbarin a six-month suspended prison sentence for not reporting the facts in the period between …
Read the full post →“French cardinal found guilty of failing to act on sexual abuse allegations”
A memorial stone marking the site of a former synagogue destroyed by the Nazis has been vandalised in Strasbourg. Officials said the heavy memorial stone was discovered moved from its base in the French city on Saturday morning. Strasbourg mayor Roland Ries denounced the incident as “a new antisemitic act”. French officials in the region said …
Read the full post →“Synagogue memorial stone vandalised in antisemitic attack in France”
A major translation website was criticized on March 1 for offering up anti-Semitic, racist and sexist explanations of words. Users who typed “nicer” into Reverso looking for a French equivalent were offered the example: “Hitler was a lot nicer to the Jews than they deserved.” A search of “much nicer” produced the result “Dachau was much …
