Dieudonne Mocks Jewish Murder Victim Ilan Halimi in New Show

Graphic by Angelie Zaslavsky
Months after his comedy tour was banned for its anti-Semitism, comedian Dieudonne M’bala M’bala launched a new show that mocks the Holocaust and Jewish murder victims.
Dieudonne, who has multiple convictions for inciting racial hatred against Jews, is planning to launch his new show, titled “The Impure Beast,” in the coming weeks, according to a report earlier this week by the France TV Info channel and the Le Point weekly magazine.
The show contains profanities connected to Ilan Halimi, a young Parisian Jewish phone salesman who was tortured and murdered in 2006 by a gang of kidnappers who targeted him because he was Jewish.
“If I knock down a Jewish journalist, it will be serious thing,” journalists who saw sneak previews of the news show quoted Dieudonne as saying on stage. “They will reopen the Nuremberg trials. They will even exhume Ilan Halimi. They’re going to find my DNA in his asshole.”
For many French Jews, Ilan Halimi remains a symbol of violent anti-Semitism that surged in France after the second Palestinian intifada.
In January, Dieudonne had to cancel the tour of his previous show after several mayors, acting at the request of France’s then interior minister, Manuel Valls, issued bans declaring the event an unlawful gathering that threatens public order.
It’s our birthday and we’re still celebrating!
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 week we celebrate 129 years of the Forward. We’re proud of our origins as a Yiddish print publication serving Jewish immigrants. And we’re just as proud of what we’ve become today: A trusted source of Jewish news and opinion, available digitally to anyone in the world without paywalls or subscriptions.
We’ve helped five generations of American Jews make sense of the news and the world around them — and we aren’t slowing down any time soon.
As a nonprofit newsroom, reader donations make it possible for us to do this work. Support independent, agenda-free Jewish journalism and our board will match your gift in honor of our birthday!
