Skip To Content
JEWISH. INDEPENDENT. NONPROFIT.
Breaking News

French Anti-Israel Boycotter Targets All Kosher Food

A French anti-Semitism watchdog called for a police probe against a former lawmaker who warned Muslim shoppers about locally produced kosher products.

“Ramadan soon: Watch out with your shopping,” Jean-Claude Lefort, a former lawmaker for France’s communist party and current president of the France Palestine Solidarity Association, or AFPS, wrote in a social media posting Tuesday.

Attached to the post, appearing on Lefort’s Facebook and Twitter accounts, was a picture of a package of leaf dough produced by the France-based firm Sofrabrick.

The package carried the firm’s name and address in Gonesse near Paris as well as a kosher seal with Hebrew letters. “We know this brand. This is Israeli leaf dough. Look closely at bottom, center,” Lefort said, apparently referring to the Hebrew.

The National Bureau for Vigilance Against Anti-Semitism, or BNVCA, on Tuesday denounced what it called “discrimination that shows once again, if anyone needed showing, how pro-Palestinian activists are calling for a blanket boycott of anything Jewish, though they pretend to target settlement goods.” The group said it was going to file a criminal complaint for discrimination against Lefort.

Lefort denied that he indeed had promoted a boycott, saying he merely “drew the attention of consumers to the product’s origins.”

Last year, Sofrabrick’s leaf dough, marketed under the brad JR, featured on the Twitter account of the French Islamic news site Al Kanz. The tweet’s author claimed that Sofrabrick changed its kosher label in 2000 to omit Hebrew letters for fear of a boycott.

A day after Lefort’s tweets, police raided his home, according to Humanite.fr. However, the raid may have been the result of a computer hacker who gave false information to the police about Lefort.

Republish This Story

Please read before republishing

We’re happy to make this story available to republish for free, unless it originated with JTA, Haaretz or another publication (as indicated on the article) and as long as you follow our guidelines. You must credit the Forward, retain our pixel and preserve our canonical link in Google search.  See our full guidelines for more information, and this guide for detail about canonical URLs.

To republish, copy the HTML by clicking on the yellow button to the right; it includes our tracking pixel, all paragraph styles and hyperlinks, the author byline and credit to the Forward. It does not include images; to avoid copyright violations, you must add them manually, following our guidelines. Please email us at [email protected], subject line “republish,” with any questions or to let us know what stories you’re picking up.

We don't support Internet Explorer

Please use Chrome, Safari, Firefox, or Edge to view this site.