Jewish Lobby and Jewish Media Pushing the "Clash of Civilization" Card
With scooter helmets in hand, a man called Yohan and six buddies
stroll around Paris’ 20th arrondissement. The seven look much like a
typical group of French students — until they locate a group of Arab men
they suspect of perpetrating an anti-Semitic attack the previous day.
Using their helmets as bludgeons, members of France’s Jewish Defense
League, or LDJ, set upon the Arabs and beat them. Several of the Arabs
attempt to escape in a blue sedan, but the LDJ members pursue the
vehicle, causing it to crash into a stone wall.
The attack last August, filmed by a television crew shooting a
documentary on LDJ, was one of at least 115 violent incidents that
critics attribute to the group since its registration in France in 2001 —
a year after the eruption of the second intifada in Israel and the
sevenfold increase in anti-Semitic incidents in the 12 years that
followed.
“Now they know the price of Jewish blood,” said Yohan, the nom de guerre of Joseph Ayache, one of LDJ’s young bosses.
An offshoot of the American Jewish Defense League, which was founded
in New York by the ultranationalist Rabbi Meir Kahane in 1968 and which
the FBI considers a domestic terrorist group, LDJ stages violent
reprisals to anti-Semitic attacks.
The group, which numbers about 300 members, is now on a collision
course with France’s Jewish establishment, which has condemned its
activities and threatened a lawsuit.
French authorities have ignored calls to ban LDJ, though in Israel the Kach movement, also founded by Kahane, has been outlawed.
The French government’s apparent acquiescence may have inspired LDJ
to ratchet up its deterrent potential by showcasing its activities
following the murder of four Jews in Toulouse last year by a Muslim
extremist.
LDJ traditionally had shied away from media attention. But in the
weeks after the killings, which was followed by a 58 percent increase in
attacks on Jews in France over the year before, LDJ for the first time
allowed a television crew to tag along on a number of guerrilla
operations.
In addition to the helmet assault, Ayache was filmed calling for
revenge killings in posters he and his group posted around central
Paris. When a police car neared, Ayache told officers that he and his
friends were working on an art project. The police officers wished him a
pleasant evening and drove away.
Ayache also was filmed attempting to storm a performance of the anti-Semitic comedian
Dieudonne.
“Since when is it illegal to run?” a brazen Ayache told the police after they detained him.
Another sequence shows Ayache firing a pistol at a shooting range.
“We’ve noticed the Muslim community believes LDJ is some vast machine
that operates with impunity and help from Mossad,” said an LDJ
spokesman who goes by the alias Amnon Cohen. “It’s not true, but it’s
not a bad thing if they are scared. It’ll make them think twice.”
LDJ’s growing assertiveness has further strained the group’s already
tense relationship with the CRIF, the umbrella body of French Jewish
communities.
In April, CRIF’s former president, Richard Prasquier, said he would
sue LDJ for defamation for posting a photograph on its website depicting
him with Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas. The caption
accuses Prasquier of “pardoning [a] killer.”
LDJ, meanwhile, has accused CRIF of being undemocratic, obsolete and ineffective.
“We operate outside and independently, and that creates opposition
within the establishment, which is run by men and women who mean well
but don’t know the painful reality of the Jewish rank and file in Paris’
suburbs and poor neighborhoods,” Cohen said.
“There are hundreds of French and Belgian Muslims fighting in the
Syrian civil war. When they return, do you think they will be scared of a
couple guards trained by the community?”
CRIF declined to comment.
Earlier this month, LDJ announced that its “soldiers” had put a young
Arab in the hospital with a coma, “a rapid and effective response” to
the man’s attack on Jews at Saint-Mande, just east of Paris.
The announcement drew calls to ban LDJ. As criticism mounted, LDJ
retracted the statement and denied any involvement in the violence.
Cohen told JTA the person who published the “false statement” had
been removed from the group and that the violence actually resulted from
a drug deal gone sour. A spokesperson for the Saint-Mande municipality
confirmed that account.
Still, the events at Saint-Mande resulted in a public row between LDJ
and CRIF, which on June 4 blamed LDJ for the violence at Saint Mande
and for subsequent calls “to take revenge against the Jews.”
Cohen said CRIF is looking for a “scapegoat” to distract from its
failure to prevent attacks on Jews through outreach and education. He
also denied the group engages in violence, despite ample evidence to the
contrary.
Besides the television footage, a French court last week sentenced
LDJ activist David Ben Aroch to six months in prison for an attack he
staged with another LDJ member at a Paris bookstore owned by a
pro-Palestinian activist.
Aroch’s accomplice, Jason Tibi, was sentenced to four months for the
attack at Librairie Resistance that sent the two victims to the hospital
for days.
It may have been a real-life demonstration of what one masked LDJ
boss recently called “treatment a la Israel” during a speech at a secret
training camp in France.
The filmed address was the introduction to a LDJ propaganda clip titled “Five cops for every Jew, 10 Arabs for each rabbi.”
http://www.jta.org/2013/06/25/news-opinion/world/frances-soaring-anti-semitism-lures-jewish-defense-league-vigilantes-out-of-shadows
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