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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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Smotrich Says Defense Ministry to Spur Voluntary Emigration from Gaza

Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich attends an inauguration event for Israel’s new light rail line for the Tel Aviv metropolitan area, in Petah Tikva, Israel, Aug. 17, 2023. Photo: REUTERS/Amir Cohen

i24 NewsFinance Minister Bezalel Smotrich said on Sunday that the government would establish an administration to encourage the voluntary migration of Palestinians from the Gaza Strip.

“We are establishing a migration administration, we are preparing for this under the leadership of the Prime Minister [Benjamin Netanyahu] and Defense Minister [Israel Katz],” he said at a Land of Israel Caucus at the Knesset, Israel’s parliament. “The budget will not be an obstacle.”

Referring to the plan championed by US President Donald Trump, Smotrich noted the “profound and deep hatred towards Israel” in Gaza, adding that “sources in the American government” agreed “that it’s impossible for two million people with hatred towards Israel to remain at a stone’s throw from the border.”

The administration would be under the Defense Ministry, with the goal of facilitating Trump’s plan to build a “Riviera of the Middle East” and the relocation of hundreds of thousands of Gazans for rebuilding efforts.

“If we remove 5,000 a day, it will take a year,” Smotrich said. “The logistics are complex because you need to know who is going to which country. It’s a potential for historical change.”

The post Smotrich Says Defense Ministry to Spur Voluntary Emigration from Gaza first appeared on Algemeiner.com.

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Defense Ministry: 16,000 Wounded in War, About Half Under 30

A general view shows the plenum at the Knesset, Israel’s parliament, in Jerusalem. Photo: REUTERS/Ronen Zvulun

i24 NewsThe Knesset’s (Israeli parliament’s) Special Committee for Foreign Workers held a discussion on Sunday to examine the needs of wounded and disabled IDF soldiers and the response foreign caregivers could provide.

During the discussion, data from the Defense Minister revealed that the number of registered IDF wounded and disabled veterans rose from 62,000 to 78,000 since the war began on October 7, 2023. “Most of them are reservists and 51 percent of the wounded are up to 30 years old,” the ministry’s report said. The number will increase, the ministry assesses, as post-trauma cases emerge.

The committee chairwoman, Knesset member Etty Atiya (Likud), emphasized the need to reduce unnecessary bureaucracy for the wounded and to remove obstacles. “There is no dispute that the IDF disabled have sacrificed their bodies and souls for the people of Israel, for the state of Israel,” she said. Addressing the veterans, she continued: “And we, as public representatives and public servants alike, must do everything, but everything, to improve your lives in any way possible, to alleviate your pain and the distress of your family members who are no less affected than you.”

Currently, extensions are being given to the IDF veterans on a three-month basis, which Atiya said creates uncertainty and fear among the patients.

“The committee calls on the Interior Minister [Moshe Arbel] to approve as soon as possible the temporary order on our table, so that it will reach the approval of the Knesset,” she said, adding that she “intends to personally approach the Director General of the Population Authority [Shlomo Mor-Yosef] on the matter in order to promote a quick and stable solution.”

The post Defense Ministry: 16,000 Wounded in War, About Half Under 30 first appeared on Algemeiner.com.

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Over 1,300 Killed in Syria as New Regime Accused of Massacring Civilians

Syria’s President Bashar al-Assad speaks during an interview with Sky News Arabia in Damascus, Syria in this handout picture released by the Syrian Presidency on August 8, 2023. Syrian Presidency/Handout via REUTERS

i24 NewsOver 1,300 people were killed in two days of fighting in Syria between security forces under the new Syrian Islamist leaders and fighters from ousted president Bashar al-Assad’s Alawite sect on the other hand, according to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights on Sunday.

Since Thursday, 1,311 people had been killed, according to the Observatory, including 830 civilians, mainly Alawites, 231 Syrian government security personnel, and 250 Assad loyalists.

The intense fighting broke out late last week as the Alawite militias launched an offensive against the new government’s fighters in the coastal region of the country, prompting a massive deployment ordered by new leader Ahmed al-Sharaa.

“We must preserve national unity and civil peace as much as possible and… we will be able to live together in this country,” al-Sharaa said, as quoted in the BBC.

The death toll represents the most severe escalations since Assad was ousted late last year, and is one of the most costly in terms of human lives since the civil war began in 2011.

The counter-offensive launched by al-Sharaa’s forces was marked by reported revenge killings and atrocities in the Latakia region, a stronghold of the Alawite minority in the country.

The post Over 1,300 Killed in Syria as New Regime Accused of Massacring Civilians first appeared on Algemeiner.com.

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