At March Against Anti-Semitism, Jewish Leader Told To ‘Get Lost’

A protest against anti-Semitism and controversial comedian Dieudonne M?bala M?bala turned anti-Jewish. Image by getty images

By JTA February 24, 2014

Participants in a march against anti-Semitism in Toulouse hurled anti-Zionist insults at a Jewish fellow demonstrator.

The insults were directed at Nicole Yardeni, who heads the local chapter of the CRIF umbrella group of Jewish communities, during a march by 2,000 people in Toulouse. The march was organized on Saturday by a gay group, Arc-en-Ciel, following the spraying of anti-Semitic and anti-gay slogans in several locales in Toulouse last week.

But a certain point, a group of demonstrators started chanting: “Yardeni, get lost” and: “CRIF, Fascists, Zionists, get lost.”

The Jewish participants were “absolutely unprepared for such a reception,” Yardeni told the news agency AFP. ”Jews are now being chased away from a demonstration against anti-Semitism,” she added.

The demonstration’s organizers said they regretted the chants.

“We are deeply disturbed by what happened,” Noemie Henry, a president of Arc-en-Ciel, said.

Also on Saturday, the anti-Semitic comedian Dieudonne M’bala M’bala performed at the Zennith Theater in Toulouse. Some 400 protesters showed up for a demonstration against Dieudonne, who has used his shows to air anti-Semitic views. The protest was organized by CRIF and the LICRA anti-racism watchdog, and was held a few kilometers away from the theater.

City officials did not permit the groups to demonstrate opposite the building and police officers helped check that everyone entering the theater had a ticket to prevent disturbances by anti-Dieudonne infiltrators, the France 3 television channel reported.

The report showed excited young men leaving the theater while performing the quenelle, a quasi-Nazi gesture which Dieudonne invented and labeled anti-establishment, but which many French Jews and politicians believe is anti-Semitic. Earlier this month, French police arrested a graphic designer they suspect of disseminating with intent to offend a photo of a man performing the quenelle in front of the Ohr Hatorah school in Toulouse, where an Islamist killed four Jews in 2012.

The Forward is free to read, but it isn’t free to produce

I hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, I’d like to ask you to please support the Forward.

Now more than ever, American Jews need independent news they can trust, with reporting driven by truth, not ideology. We serve you, not any ideological agenda.

At a time when other newsrooms are closing or cutting back, the Forward has removed its paywall and invested additional resources to report on the ground from Israel and around the U.S. on the impact of the war, rising antisemitism and polarized discourse.

Readers like you make it all possible. We’re near the end of our Passover Fundraising Drive, and we have a very ambitious goal of $127,000 by April 21.

This is a great time to support independent Jewish journalism you rely on. Make a Passover gift today!

— Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO