FEATURED JOBS
Comments (0)Jews and Muslims marched through Paris to show outrage at the desecration of more than 500 Muslim and up to 20 Jewish graves.
The French Jewish-Muslim Friendship group organized Sunday’s march, which included local elected officials, imams and rabbis. About 100 people participated in the demonstration.
Between Dec. 7 and 8, on the eve of the Muslim holiday Id al-Adha, a suspected group of neo-Nazis sprayed racist slurs on military gravestones in a northern France cemetery. Muslim tombs were targeted twice in the same cemetery near Arras in the past two years.
The protest called for peace and underlined the links between Jews and Muslims.
“There are so many things uniting the Jewish and Muslim communities,” said Bernard Kanovitch, a leading member of the Jewish umbrella group CRIF, to a crowd at the Place de la Bastille.
“What shocks us isn’t just that this happened again, but also the number of tombs,” he added.
Investigators are still working to apprehend the vandals.
On Dec. 12, more than 2,000 people gathered at the Notre Dame de Lorette cemetery to hear community and political leaders condemn the crime.
Spanish Cops Tape Irving’s Speech
Spanish police recorded David Irving’s speech at a neo-Nazi bookstore in Barcelona with an eye toward charging him.
Irving, the revisionist historian known for statements denying the Holocaust, in Barcelona and Madrid over the weekend defended in public speeches his theories on the Nazi genocide. Spanish police recorded Saturday’s gathering in Barcelona under the orders of the local district attorney to determine whether his words “incite xenophobia or justify genocide,” a crime under the Spanish penal code that can carry a prison sentence of up to three years.
At Europa, an infamous bookstore and the scene of Irving’s visit last year, Irving said that while there was “no doubt 2 or 3 million Jews were killed,” there was “no proof” Adolf Hitler was aware of what was going on in Nazi Germany’s concentration camps, according to the Europa Press news agency. Security measures were heightened as traffic on Seneca Street, the location of the bookstore, was cut off.
Fewer than 20 people attended the speech, but about 100 protesters stood outside the bookstore, which was protected by a heavy police presence, the news agency reported.
Irving, 69, was sentenced in 2006 to three years in prison in Austria for a speech he gave in 1989 denying the Holocaust. Holocaust denial is considered a crime in Austria.
A 2007 ruling in Spain eliminated prison sentences for Holocaust denial from the country’s penal code, making only the justification of genocide punishable with prison. The high court ruling resulted in the suspension of a five-year prison sentence against the Europa bookshop owner, Pedro Valera, who had been accused of distributing neo-Nazi material.
Hezbollah Members to Speak in Belgian Parliament Hall
Representatives of Hezbollah are scheduled to speak in the conference hall of the Belgian Parliament.
The Hezbollah representatives and the manager of the terrorist organization’s Al Manar TV will address a symposium on Palestinian prisoners in Israeli jails.
The CCOJB, which represents Jewish secular organizations in Brussels, and the Forum of Jewish organizations in Antwerp are organizing a protest, sources told JTA.
The conference has nothing to do with the Belgian government, but is sponsored by the International Union of Parliamentarians for Palestine. It reportedly was organized by Fouad Lahssaini, a Belgian parliamentarian from the Ecolo Green Party who requested the use of the room last month and received approval on Dec. 9.
The articles of association of the International Union of Parliamentarians for Palestine refer to Israel as “the Zionist entity” and calls for its “expulsion ... from international institutions.”
The Belgian Parliament is not endorsing the event, sources told JTA.