French Muslim Rapper Hit by Anti-Semitic Rants
Graphic by Angelie Zaslavsky
Dozens of anti-Semitic messages were left on the Facebook page of the best-selling French rapper Booba, who vowed to “avenge the victims of the Holocaust.”
The pledge featured in a new song titled “Master Yoda” by Booba, the stage name of 36-year-old Eli Yaffa, born in France to a Muslim father from Senegal.
The song was posted on the Facebook page of Booba, who has sold over one million albums in France, on Feb. 2 under the title “We’ll avenge like victims of slavery and the Shoah,” a phrase taken from the lyrics.
Among the 4,340 comments left on his post were comments denying the Holocaust and calling for a new genocide against the Jewish people, in violation of French law on hate speech. Some comments used pejoratives against Booba for mentioning the Holocaust.
A user identified as John Ken’Nabii wrote: “Fk the Shoah, invented by Zionists to legitimize Israel.” Another user, Bassim Abir, wrote: “Fk your mother, you and the Shoah, we piss on all the Arabs that listen to you.”
JSS News, a French Jewish news site, termed the statements “cyber-lynching.”
Dozens of comments contained the phrase “shoananas,” a combination of the Hebrew name for the Holocaust with the French world for pineapple. Coined by the anti-Semitic comedian Dieudonne, it is used as a code word for denying the Holocaust seen to be too vague to violate France’s law forbidding it.
On Jan. 24, a French court ordered Twitter to divulge details of users who made similar comments.
The post containing the new song by Booba received 1,413 “likes” on Facebook.
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