Skip To Content
JEWISH. INDEPENDENT. NONPROFIT.
Breaking News

Kuwaiti’s Anti-Semitic Facebook Post, Punished in France

— A French court convicted a university student from Kuwait of incitement to hatred following her anti-Semitic rants in social media.

The High Court of Paris convicted Amira Jumaa, 21, on Wednesday, Le Monde Juif reported. The report did not say whether she was sentenced.

Last year, Junaa lost her internship at the French Consulate in New York and was suspended from the Sciences Po University in Paris for writing a racist Facebook post about Jews. She has since been readmitted pending an internal probe.

“You don’t belong anywhere in this world — that’s why you guys are scums and rats and discriminated against wherever you are. Do not blame it on the poor Palestinians,” she wrote.

In response to being accused of racism, Jumaa wrote: “First of all you dispersed rat, I am not an immigrant from France. I am from Kuwait so my country can buy you and your parents and put you in ovens.”

Separately, Jean Fréderic Poisson, a right-wing politician who said Hillary Clinton is a danger to France and Europe because of her “submission to Zionist lobbies,” as he put it, apologized for those offended by his statements. But he also reaffirmed that his statement reflects his view.

Still, he said during a radio interview for FranceInfo, “my remarks caused concern for many in the Jewish community. I’m sorry. I ask for their forgiveness because this was not my intention.”

But he insisted that Clinton carries “bias” because of an influence he said that AIPAC, the pro-Israel lobby in Washington, has on her.

Poisson is a National Assembly lawmaker whose Christian Democratic Party is a right-wing outlier of the Republicans’ center-right coalition in the 2017 presidential election.

In an article published last week by the Nice Matin newspaper, Poisson, who is one of seven candidates competing for the Republican leadership in the primaries, was quoted as saying about Clinton, the Democratic presidential candidate in the United States, that her “closeness to the super funders of Wall Street and her submission to Zionist lobbies are dangerous for Europe and for France.”

Francis Kalifat, the president of CRIF, the umbrella group of French Jewish communities, demanded Poisson be sanctioned by his party in a statement he made last week.

A message from our Publisher & CEO 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.

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

With your support, we’ll be ready for whatever 2025 brings.

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.