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Far Left French MP Hit With Complaint Over Tweet Suggesting Global Jewish Conspiracy
Protesters from the “Nous Vivrons” collective, which combats antisemitism, outside a meeting of the far left French LFI party carrying signs declaring that “Hamas thanks you.” Photo: Reuters/Nicolas Rongier
A far left member of the French parliament was on Wednesday the subject of a legal complaint submitted by a Jewish organization concerning a posting on social media that invoked a popular Japanese manga meme appropriated by antisemites.
David Guiraud — a parliamentarian from the far left La France Insoumise (“France Rising”) Party — posted a video on X/Twitter from the Japanese manga cartoon “One Piece” in which a character known as Doflamingo complains of being silenced in denouncing the crimes of the “Heavenly Dragons,” an ultra wealthy and secretive global elite that serves as a “world government.” The theme has been eagerly picked up by antisemitic agitators who regard it as a symbol of the world Jewish conspiracy imagined in antisemitic screeds such as the “Protocols of the Elders of Zion,” a fabrication of the Russian secret police first published in the early 20th century.
Some observers have argued that “One Piece” has deliberately promoted a toxic anti-Jewish stereotype through the “Heavenly Dragons,” pointing out that conspiratorial notions about Jewish power are visible in Japanese culture and politics, despite the absence of a sizable Jewish community in that country. “There is an ambiguity that is inherent in ‘One Piece’,” Rudy Reichstadt of the watchdog group Conspiracy Watch told the news outlet Le Point. “We can make the assumption that the author of this manga drew, with full knowledge of the facts, an anti-Jewish fantasy from which Japanese culture is unfortunately not immune.”
In response, the Jewish Observatory of France (OJF), an organization that combats antisemitism and Holocaust denial, filed a legal complaint against Guiraud that slated his post as an “apology of terrorism and provocation to discrimination, hatred or violence.”
Guiraud later deleted his tweet but offered an explanation that appeared to justify its original posting.
“The Heavenly Dragons are not a religion or a ‘race’ and if you think so, you have misread ‘One Piece,’” he wrote. “They are a military alliance of powerful people who crush others. They are not hated for what they are, but for what they do to others. But I don’t want to attack anyone, so I prefer to delete [my post].”
Guiraud’s outbursts were already viewed with concern by French Jews following his speech at a conference in Tunisia in November following the Oct. 7 Hamas pogrom in southern Israel.
In his remarks, Guiraud charged that Israel had already committed the atrocities which the Hamas terrorists were accused of executing. “Every accusation from Israel is a confession,” he claimed. “The baby [burned] in the oven, that was done by Israel, the mom who was disemboweled, that was done by Israel, during the massacre at Sabra and Shatila.” Two of the Palestinian refugee camps in Beirut, Sabra and Shatila, were the location of a gruesome massacre in 1982 that was carried out by Christian Phalange militiamen but widely blamed on Israeli forces.
Guiraud also attracted controversy when he refused to participate in last November’s national march in Paris against antisemitism, which drew nearly 200,000 people, slamming the event as an attempt to “normalize unconditional support for ethnic cleansing in Gaza.”
The post Far Left French MP Hit With Complaint Over Tweet Suggesting Global Jewish Conspiracy first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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Iran Says Eight Arrested for Suspected Links to Israel’s Mossad Spy Agency
The Mossad recruitment ad. Photo: Screenshot.
Iran’s Revolutionary Guards said on Saturday they had arrested eight people suspected of trying to transmit the coordinates of sensitive sites and details about senior military figures to Israel’s Mossad, Iranian state media reported.
They are accused of having provided the information to the Mossad spy agency during Israel’s air war on Iran in June, when it attacked Iranian nuclear facilities and killed top military commanders as well as civilians in the worst blow to the Islamic Republic since the 1980s war with Iraq.
Iran retaliated with barrages of missiles on Israeli military sites, infrastructure and cities. The United States entered the war on June 22 with strikes on Iranian nuclear facilities.
A Guards statement alleged that the suspects had received specialized training from Mossad via online platforms. It said they were apprehended in northeastern Iran before carrying out their plans, and that materials for making launchers, bombs, explosives and booby traps had been seized.
State media reported earlier this month that Iranian police had arrested as many as 21,000 “suspects” during the 12-day war with Israel, though they did not say what these people had been suspected of doing.
Security forces conducted a campaign of widespread arrests and also stepped up their street presence during the brief war that ended in a US-brokered ceasefire.
Iran has executed at least eight people in recent months, including nuclear scientist Rouzbeh Vadi, hanged on August 9 for passing information to Israel about another scientist killed in Israeli airstrikes.
Human rights groups say Iran uses espionage charges and fast-tracked executions as tools for broader political repression.
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Body of Idan Shtivi, Murdered on Oct. 7, Retrieved from Gaza in Special IDF Operation
Idan Shtivi. Photo: Courtesy of the family
i24 News – The body of Idan Shtivi, a 28-year-old murdered by Palestinian jihadists at the Nova music festival on October 7, 2023, was recovered in a joint operation by the IDF and Shin Bet in central Gaza, it was cleared for publication on Saturday.
Shtivi’s remains were returned to Israel alongside the body of Ilan Weiss, another hostage killed during the October 7 massacre.
“Idan Shtivi was abducted from the Tel Gama area and brutally murdered by Hamas terrorists after acting to rescue and evacuate others from the Nova music festival on October 7th, 2023. He was 28 years old at the time of his death,” read an IDF press release.
“Following an identification process conducted at the National Center for Forensic Medicine, along with the Israel Police and the Military Rabbinate, the Hostages and Missing Persons Headquarters notified his family.”
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Shviti “was a gifted student of sustainability and governance, and a courageous individual” who acted heroically on October 7, helping others flee.
“He was killed in the process and his body was abducted to Gaza by Hamas. My wife and I send our heartfelt condolences to the Shtivi family. So far, 207 hostages have been returned, 148 of them alive. We will continue to act tirelessly and decisively to bring back all our hostages—living and deceased.”
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Woman Stabbed at Ottawa Grocery Store in Latest Antisemitic Attack
A social media post by the alleged attacker, Joseph Rooke of Cornwall, Ontario. Photo: Screenshot via i24
i24 News – The stabbing of a Jewish woman at an Ottawa grocery by a man with a long history of antisemitic posts on social media, the latest antisemitic hate crime in Canada, sparked outrage and prompted condemnation from officials including the prime minister.
Both the victim and the attacker are in their 70s. The woman is reportedly in serious condition.
The suspect was identified as Joseph Rooke, who has authored a series of lengthy rambling screeds on social media, ranting against Israel and Jews.
“Judaism is the world’s oldest cult,” he writes in one post, going on to say “over time jews have become insidious in governments, businesses, media conglomerates, and educational institutions in order to do what they do better than anyone else. Jews are the world’s masters of propaganda, gaslighting, demonization, demagoguery, and outright lying. Using their collective wealth they have become masters of reprisal.”
“I am under no obligation whatsoever, legal, moral, or otherwise, to like jews and I do not. If that means I meet the jewish definition of an anti-semite, so be it.”
Canada has seen a steep spike in antisemitic attacks over the past two years, including a recent incident in Montreal where a Hasidic Jew was beaten in front on his children.
After Prime Minister Mark Carney condemned the incident, many, including former Israel’s ambassador the US Michael Oren, pointed out that Carney’s rhetoric and policies contribute to the increasing insecurity of Canada’s Jewish community through uncritical embrace of outrageous and easily disprovable allegations that Israel and its supporters were guilty of the worst crimes against humanity.