RSS
French Soccer Icon Karim Benzema Sues Interior Minister Over Muslim Brotherhood Accusation
French soccer star Karim Benzema at the 2023 signing ceremony for hs move to Saudi club Al-Ittihad. Photo: Reuters/Handout
A leading French soccer star is suing the country’s interior minister for accusing him of retaining links to the Muslim Brotherhood — an international Islamist network created nearly a century ago that now includes the Palestinian terrorist organization Hamas.
Karim Benzema, 36, announced on Tuesday that he was bringing a defamation case against French Interior Minister Gerald Darmanin over a television interview last October in which the politician charged that the player’s links with the Muslim Brotherhood were common knowledge.
“Benzema is notoriously linked with the Muslim Brotherhood, we all know it,” Darmanin claimed during an interview with the conservative broadcaster C-News. In the same interview, he argued, “We are fighting the hydra that is the Muslim Brotherhood because it creates an atmosphere of jihadism.”
Darmanin’s remarks were triggered by a posting written by Benzema on X/Twitter in which he said, “Our prayers for the people of Gaza, victims once again of unjust bombardments that spare neither women nor children.” The interior minister pointed out that Benzema — a former Real Madrid striker who won the coveted Ballon d’Or in 2022 — had failed to condemn both the Oct. 7 Hamas massacre in southern Israel, in which more than 1,200 people were murdered and over 200 kidnapped amid atrocities including rape and mutilation, and the gruesome decapitation in Oct. 2020 of Samuel Paty, a high school teacher in Paris who was targeted by an Islamist student after he showed his class caricatures of the Prophet Muhammad in the course of a class on freedom of speech.
In a 92-page complaint, Benzema — a practicing Muslim who now plays soccer in Saudi Arabia, where he captains Pro-League side Al-Ittihad — said that he was “aware of the extent to which, because of my notoriety, I am being used in political games, which are all the more scandalous given that the dramatic events since Oct. 7 deserve something quite different from this type of statement.”
The complaint also noted Benzema’s alarm that he is seen as “a symbol of urban youth — immigrant, Muslim, hostile to France, and antisemitic.” It went on to insist that he “never had the slightest link with the Muslim Brotherhood organization, nor knowledge of anyone who claims to be a member of it.”
Benzema’s announcement comes just two weeks after the Algerian international Youcef Atal, who plays at right-back for Nice, was handed an eight-month suspended sentence and a $49,000 fine for posting a video the day after the Oct. 7 massacre that featured a Palestinian cleric calling for “a black day over the Jews.”
No stranger to controversies off the field, Benzema was ejected from the French national team over accusations that he had tried to blackmail a teammate, Mathieu Valbuena, over an amateur sex video. In 2021, he was fined $75,000 and handed a one-year suspended sentence for his part in the scandal. The following year, Benzema failed in a legal attempt to sue the far right activist Damien Rieu over a photo the latter posted on social media showing the soccer star delivering a middle-finger gesture alongside an image of jihadists doing the same.
The post French Soccer Icon Karim Benzema Sues Interior Minister Over Muslim Brotherhood Accusation first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
RSS
White House Withdraws Nomination for US Hostage Envoy
FILE PHOTO: Adam Boehler, the CEO of the US International Development Finance Corporation, addresses the daily coronavirus task force briefing in the Rose Garden at the White House in Washington, US, April 14, 2020. Photo: REUTERS/Leah Millis/File Photo
The Trump administration has withdrawn the nomination of Adam Boehler to serve as special presidential envoy for hostage affairs, the White House said on Saturday.
Boehler, who has been working to secure the release of hostages held by Hamas in Gaza, will continue hostage-related work as a so-called “special government employee,” a position that would not need Senate confirmation.
“Adam Boehler will continue to serve President Trump as a special government employee focused on hostage negotiations,” White House spokeswoman Karoline Leavitt said in a statement.
“Adam played a critical role in negotiating the return of Marc Fogel from Russia. He will continue this important work to bring wrongfully detained individuals around the world home.”
A White House official, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said Boehler withdrew his nomination to avoid divesting from his investment company. The move was unrelated to the controversy sparked by his discussions with the Palestinian terrorist group Hamas.
“He still has the utmost confidence of President Trump,” said the official.
“This gives me the best ability to help Americans held abroad as well as work across agencies to achieve President Trump’s objectives,” Boehler told Reuters in a brief statement.
Boehler recently held direct meetings with Hamas on the release of hostages in Gaza. The discussions broke with a decades-old policy by Washington against negotiating with groups that the US brands as terrorist organizations.
The talks angered some Senate Republicans and some Israeli leaders. According to Axios, Israeli Minister of Strategic Affairs Ron Dermer expressed his displeasure to Boehler in a tense phone call last week.
Boehler was given permission from the Trump administration to engage directly with Hamas, US Secretary of State Marco Rubio said earlier this week, calling the talks a “one-off situation” that had not borne fruit.
Boehler has been credited with helping secure the release of Fogel, a US schoolteacher who was freed by Russia in February after three and a half years in prison.
The post White House Withdraws Nomination for US Hostage Envoy first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
RSS
Bernard-Henri Lévy, German Officials Bow Out of Israeli Antisemitism Conference
French philosopher Bernard-Henri Lévy addressing the 38th Zionist Congress. Photo: Screenshot.
i24 News – A French intellectual superstar and a pair of German officials announced that they withdrew from a conference on antisemitism organized by the Israeli government, citing the participation of far-right figures in the Jerusalem event.
Iconic thinker Bernard-Henri Lévy, who was set to deliver the conference’s keynote address, opted out upon learning that Marion Marechal and Jordan Bardella from France’s far-right National Rally party were among the other speakers.
Felix Klein, the Federal Government Commissioner for Jewish Life in Germany and the Fight Against Antisemitism, “has decided not to attend,” his representatives told Haaretz.
“He was unaware of the other attendees when he accepted the invitation, and upon learning who the other speakers were, he decided to withdraw.”
Volker Beck, a former Green Party parliamentarian who chairs the Germany-Israel Friendship Society (DIG) also announced he was cancelling his attendance. “If we associate ourselves with extreme right-wing forces, we discredit our common cause; it also goes against my personal convictions and will have a negative impact on our fight against antisemitism within our societies.”
The post Bernard-Henri Lévy, German Officials Bow Out of Israeli Antisemitism Conference first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
RSS
US Kicks Out South Africa’s Hamas-Linked Ambassador
Marco Rubio speaks after he is sworn in as Secretary of State by US Vice President JD Vance at the Eisenhower Executive Office Building in Washington, DC, Jan. 21, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Kevin Lamarque
i24 News – US Secretary of State Marco Rubio on Friday designated the South African ambassador to Washington Ebrahim Rasool as a Persona Non Grata, branding Rasool a “race-bating politician.”
The decision comes after Rasool made the inflammatory allegation that Trump was “leading global white supremacist” movement.
A known supporter of the genocidal Palestinian group Hamas, Rasool even boasted that he owned a keffiyeh signed by late Hamas chief Ismail Haniyeh.
South Africa filed a claim with the International Court of Justice, alleging that Israel is committing genocide against Palestinians in Gaza during its ongoing war against Hamas, a charge both Israel and the US regard as slanderous and antisemitic.
The post US Kicks Out South Africa’s Hamas-Linked Ambassador first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
You must be logged in to post a comment Login