French Students Sue YouTube Over ‘Year of Quenelle’
Image by getty images
A Jewish student union petitioned a French court to order the removal of a YouTube video in which an anti-Semitic comedian celebrates the quasi-Nazi salute he invented.
The petition filed this week with the Paris Court of Grands Instances by the Union of Jewish Students of France, or UEJF, concerns a video posted Dec. 31 by Dieudonne M’bala M’bala, a stand-up artist with seven convictions for inciting racial hatred against Jews, in which he declares that 2014 will be “the year of the quenelle.”
The quenelle is the name Dieudonne invented for folding an arm over one’s chest while pointing downward with the other arm. France’s interior minister, Manuel Valls, said on Dec. 31 that the gesture was an “salute of anti-Semitic hatred.” Some practitioners of the salute say its meaning is simply anti-establishment.
A preliminary ruling on the union’s petition against YouTube is scheduled to be handed down on Feb. 12, the French Liberation daily reported Wednesday. More than 3.5 million viewers have played the video, the paper wrote.
Last year, UEJF won a legal battle against Twitter, requiring that the American social network divulge details about users who violated France’s laws against hate speech with anti-Semitic statements.
Earlier this week, the Jewish community of Annecy in eastern France filed a complaint with police against unidentified individuals who painted a swastika on a memorial plaque commemorating Jewish children who were murdered in the Holocaust.
Members of the Jewish community found the graffiti at the entrance to the Quai Jules Philippe School in the town.
This is a moment of great uncertainty. Here’s what you can do about it.
We hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, we’d like to ask you to please support the Forward’s independent Jewish news this Passover. All donations are being matched by the Forward Board - up to $100,000.
This is a moment of great uncertainty for the news media, for the Jewish people, and for our sacred democracy. It is a time of confusion and declining trust in public institutions. An era in which we need humans to report facts, conduct investigations that hold power to account, tell stories that matter and share honest discourse on all that divides us.
With no paywall or subscriptions, the Forward is entirely supported by readers like you. Every dollar you give this Passover is invested in the future of the Forward — and telling the American Jewish story fully and fairly.
The Forward doesn’t rely on funding from institutions like governments or your local Jewish federation. There are thousands of readers like you who give us $18 or $36 or $100 each month or year.
Support our mission to tell the Jewish story fully and fairly.
