BAD NEWS FROM FRANCE

Today I received an extremely disturbing e-mail about anti-Semitism in France.

This is what it says:

"I AM A JEW -- therefore I am forwarding this to everyone on all my e-mail lists.
I will not sit back and do nothing. Nowhere have the flames of anti-Semitism burned more furiously than in France. In Lyon , a car was rammed into a synagogue and set on fire. In Montpellier, the Jewish religious center was firebombed; so were synagogues in Strasbourg and Marseilles; so was a Jewish school in Creteil - all recently.. A Jewish sports club in Toulouse was attacked with Molotov cocktails and on the statue of Alfred Dreyfus in Paris, the words 'Dirty Jew' were painted. In Bondy, 15 men beat up members of a Jewish football team with sticks and metal bars. The bus that takes Jewish children to school in Aubervilliers has been attacked three times in the last 14 months. According to the Police, metropolitan Paris has seen 10 to 12 anti-Jewish incidents PER DAY in the past 30 days. Walls in Jewish neighborhoods have been defaced with slogans proclaiming 'Jews to the gas chambers' and 'Death to the Jews.' A gunman opened fire on a kosher butcher's shop (and, of course, the butcher) in Toulouse, France. A Jewish couple in their 20's were beaten up by five men in Villeurbanne, France (the woman was pregnant). A Jewish school was broken into and vandalized in Sarcelles, France. This was just in the past week."
"So I call on you, whether you are a fellow Jew, a friend, or merely a person with the capacity and desire to distinguish decency from depravity, to do - at least - these three simple things:

First, care enough to stay informed. Don't ever let yourself become deluded into thinking that this is not your fight. I remind you of what Pastor Neimoller said in World War II: 'First they came for the Communists, and I didn't speak up, because I wasn't a Communist. Then they came for the Jews, and I didn't speak up, because I wasn't a Jew. Then they came for the Catholics, and I didn't speak up, because I was a Protestant. Then they came for me, and by that time there was no one left to speak up for me.'

Second, boycott France and French products. Only the Arab countries are more toxically anti-Semitic and, unlike them, France exports more than just oil and hatred. So boycott their wines and their perfumes. Boycott their clothes and their foodstuffs. Boycott their movies. Definitely boycott their shores. If we are resolved, we can exert amazing pressure and, whatever else we may know about the French, we most certainly know that they are like a cobweb in a hurricane in the face of well-directed pressure.

Third, send this along to your family, your friends, and your co-workers. Think of all of the people of good conscience that you
know and let them know that you - and the people that you care - about need their help. The number one bestselling book in France is....'September 11: The Frightening Fraud' which argues that no plane ever hit the Pentagon! Please Pass This On, Let's not let history repeat itself, thank-you for your time and consideration."


Well, that is just awful , isn't it?

Problem is, it's an absolute crock. Total bushwa. Complete and utter nonsense.
Balderdash, claptrap, and fiddlesticks.



ELSEWHERE MENTIONS

I first saw that e-mail over a year ago. A quick search of the internet yielded several dozen mentions of the letter, many of them foreworded or afterworded in apocalyptic terms, many not dated or sourced in any way, spread out over the last seven years.

1. A posting on April 4, 2009:
http://listserv.tau.ac.il/cgi-bin/wa?A3=ind0904&L=iirs-asmi&P=7680&E=1&B=--Boundary_%28ID_tZ5L779zgrwJ2oR5N21JbQ%29&T=text%2Fhtml

2. An earlier appearance of the letter, on July 12, 2008:
http://www.2rbetter.org/archives/2008.07.12%20-%20French%20Jews

3. Another posting on March 7, 2007:
http://jewalaska.blogspot.com/2007/03/anti-semitism-in-france.html

4. A previous posting on October 21, 2006:
http://analogkid12.wordpress.com/2006/10/21/it-is-the-time-of-kristalnacht-again/

5. Oooooooooh, here's a good one! December 8, 2003:
http://www.jpfo.org/alerts/alert20031208.htm

6. This writer gives a date as early as April 4, 2002:
http://www.city-data.com/forum/politics-other-controversies/591082-more-countries-have-partisan-media-bad.html



HOAX! HOAX! HOAX! HOAX! HOAX! HOAX!

But, of course, the main place you need to go for the letter is here:
http://www.zionism-israel.com/log/archives/00000267.html

QUOTE:
"In fact, this quote is taken from an article by Jeff Jacoby in the Boston Globe, dated April 28, 2002!. The anonymous French Jew who supposedly sent an e-mail turns out to be an American Jew living in Boston. The period in question was the height of the Intifada in Israel, and the height of the hysteria about the supposed Jenin "massacre."
END QUOTE.

Ami Isseroff goes into detail about the letter, and brings up cogent points.

QUOTE:
Before circulating such letters please check and consider -

* Is there a stated author and a URL?

* Is the source reliable?

* Check a part of the text in a search engine to see if it was reported as a hoax (add the word "hoax" to the search query) and if there is a reliable source listed for it.

* Check in search engines and with friends to verify the news.

* If there is a policy recommendation or action item in the letter, does it make sense?

* If the item is a hoax, inform the people who mailed it to you.

END QUOTE.


I shall not question the sincerity of the people who forward such bogus letters. But I do question their brains, and their sanity. Despite being inundated with texts and newsletters about Israel, Palestine, Jews, and Jihadis, I can still remember reading that letter before. Over one year earlier.
And I knew at that time it was a load of horsepuckey.

Please stop forwarding lariekoek like this. You do not do your cause any favours by disseminating such treif.

Thank you.

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AFTERTHOUGHT

It seems appropriate to finish with La Marseillaise.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4K1q9Ntcr5g

Turn up the speakers, because the linked recording above is long, loud, and vibrant. And well worth it.

The French, on the whole, are not a bad lot.
Quite a lot of Jews think so too.

Feel free to forward the link to La Marseillaise to as many people as possible.

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UPDATE: As of this writing (January 4th 2012) the hoax e-mail is still circulating. Once these things are launched, there is no ending them.
And it is still as false as it ever was, not made any more reliable by further dissemination.
It was forwarded to me twice in the past several months, prefaced by outrage that the world was ignoring the situation, the media not reporting, the American government studiously obfuscating………..

http://atthebackofthehill.blogspot.com/2011/06/attention-bad-news-from-france-e-mail.html

A newsletter I regularly receive also cited the damned thing. This despite the editor being told two years ago (and three years ago) that it was nonsense.

Irritating me'od.


-----ATBOTH


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