French Muslim Rapper Hit by Anti-Semitic Rants

By JTA February 5, 2013

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.

A message from our CEO & publisher Rachel Fishman Feddersen

I hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, I’d like to ask you to please support the Forward’s award-winning, nonprofit journalism during this critical time.

The coming year promises to be filled with more complex and historic developments. We are entering an era where independent, fact-based Jewish journalism will be more important than ever. We need to be ready for whatever 2025 will bring, and with your help, we can be.

We’ve set a goal to raise $260,000 by December 31. That’s an ambitious goal, but one that will give us the resources we need to invest in the high quality news, opinion, analysis and cultural coverage that isn’t available anywhere else.

If you feel inspired to make an impact, now is the time to give something back. Join us as a member at your most generous level.

— Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO