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Gabriel Attal, France’s new prime minister, says his Jewish ancestry has shaped him
(JTA) — France’s newest prime minister is getting attention for the two firsts he brings to the job: Gabriel Attal, at 34, is the country’s youngest ever prime minister, and its first to be openly gay.
He says another facet of his identity also shapes him: His late father’s Jewishness.
Attal’s mother raised him and his siblings in her Russian Orthodox Christian faith. But his father, the film producer Yves Attal, was Jewish, born in Paris to Tunisian Jewish and European Jewish parents.
“My father said to me, ‘Perhaps you’re Orthodox but you’ll feel Jewish all your life, mainly because you’ll suffer antisemitism because of your name,’” Attal told Liberation in 2019. Attal is a common North African Jewish name and would be recognized as such in France, where there are large populations of Tunisian and Algerian Jews.
Attal told Le Monde last year that he is “not a stranger to transcendence” and still celebrates Orthodox Easter, but he no longer considers himself a religious believer in part because his father, who had relatives deported during the Holocaust, would tell him, “God died at Auschwitz.”
Attal was named on an antisemitic poster displayed at a Paris protest during the pandemic. A government spokesperson at the time, he decried “absolutely abject comparisons” between Nazi persecution and public health measures, a theme of anti-vaccine protests.
A rising star in President Emmanuel Macron’s center-right Renaissance party, Attal was education minister until Tuesday morning, when Macron selected him to replace Elisabeth Borne as prime minister. Borne resigned over differences with Macron over immigration after Macron backed legislation that made it easier to deport foreigners in France.
Borne also derives a Jewish identity from her late father, a Holocaust survivor who died by suicide.
The previous youngest prime minister is Laurent Fabius, a Socialist who was 37 when he started his two-year stint in 1984. Fabius was born to Jewish parents who converted to Roman Catholicism and raised him in that religion.
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The post Gabriel Attal, France’s new prime minister, says his Jewish ancestry has shaped him appeared first on Jewish Telegraphic Agency.
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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.
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Palestinians Report 9 Dead as IDF Strikes Drone-Operating Terror Squad in Northern Gaza
Illustrative. A drone that Israeli troops recovered in southern Israel that the military said entered Israeli airspace from the Gaza Strip two days earlier, on August 13, 2021. Photo: Israel Defense Forces.
i24 News – An Israel Defense Forces spokesperson confirmed on Saturday a strike targeting a Gazan terror squad in Beit Lahiya; Palestinian sources claimed that at least nine people were killed.
The IDF’s statement says the incident started with the identification of “two terrorists operating a drone that posed a threat to IDF troops in the area.”
Following the elimination of the two jihadists in a targeted strike, “several other terrorists gathered up the drone operating equipment and entered a vehicle,” according to the IDF.
The remainder of the terror squad was then targeted by an additional strike.
The post Palestinians Report 9 Dead as IDF Strikes Drone-Operating Terror Squad in Northern Gaza first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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Syria: At Least 3 Dead in Blast, Cause Unclear
Illustrative. A man inspects a damaged car in Latakia, after hundreds were reportedly killed in some of the deadliest violence in 13 years of civil war, pitting loyalists of deposed President Bashar al-Assad against the country’s new Islamist rulers, Syria, March 9, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Haidar Mustafa
i24 News – A blast occurred in Syria’s coastal city of Latakia on Saturday, killing at least three people and leaving 12 others wounded, local media reported. The cause was unclear.
“The blast in the Al-Rimal neighborhood of Latakia city has so far resulted in three deaths and 12 injured,” state news agency SANA cited provincial authorities as saying, adding that “civil defense teams and residents are still searching for others injured and missing.”
While Latakia has been the target of Israeli strikes against Hezbollah and Iranian terrorists, there were no early indications that Saturday’s incident represented an IDF attack.
The post Syria: At Least 3 Dead in Blast, Cause Unclear first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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