Since the beginning of our legal issues, many have supported us and showed their solidarity. Thanks to you, we managed to face adversity with dignity and honour. Therefore it is natural that I keep you informed of the legal outcomes and political games around this case in order that each of you realizes to what great extent not only this website but more generally freedom of speech and particularly individual freedoms are under attack.
In addition to the two complaints filed by UEJF & J'Accuse, I've been called up one more time by the police because a second complaint was filed against me; this time owing to the apparent transgressions of Ginette Hess Skandrani, an old lady and sincere militant that we know only through her writings. Nevertheless her fight was honourable and we felt that she deserved to be heard through our website. However this second complaint is unlikely to lead to legal prosecutions, which is not the case with our detractors from UEJF & J'Accuse. It's as if their power goes beyond what the Law permits to such non-profit organisations, such that it seems like "human courts acquit the strong, and doom the weak, as therefore wrong."**
Of the various accusations of defamation I received, death threats have had less of an effect on me than the cases filed by l'UEJF & J'Accuse; apparently being threatened with death and slandered is less important than being accused of "hate incitement" and so-called "denial of crime against humanity." It's unfair that in a nation under the Rule of Law the strongest is always right. Yet "power is not revealed by striking hard or often, but by striking true."*
At the end of December 2007, we received a letter from Mr Lilti, attorney for the UEJF & J'Accuse organisations, formal notification asking for the removal of a translated article by Henry Makow entitled Capital Imperialism and published in September 2007. In this letter, Mr Lilti, among the usual clichés and predictable accusations of anti-Semitism, declared that even if we removed Ms Skandrani's article, he would nevertheless file a case against me for "hate incitement." What I find a little bit puzzling is that the Attorney General added a "crime against humanity" charge to the other insanities my detractors are accusing me of.
After the first provisional order, a second one was canceled thanks to the perspicacity of the President of the High Court: I had sent a letter to the President of the Paris court and tried to show good faith by removing the offending article before a second provisional order could be issued. I told him about the nefarious plot of our detractors and the fallacious reasons brought up just to harm us financially and shut us up. For reasons unknown to me, the Attorney General of Mulhouse proceeded nonetheless to quote from the second provisional order in order to accuse me of "denial of crime against humanity." Despite the lucid decision of the President of the Paris court, UEJF & J'accuse intend to use the second provisional order as a new tool of censorship and coercion. Having failed miserably in their provisional order attempt, they still managed to coerce the Mulhouse Attorney General to hear their complaint.
The provisional order requires us to remove the article and pay damages to the two plaintiffs. It galls me to submit to this insidious blackmailing, especially as we had taken precautions before publishing the article. We included a preamble forewarning the reader of the article's tendentious words. I naively thought that the Court of Appeals would analyze the substance rather than the form of the case - normal procedure during provisional orders - so we decided to appeal its decision. We were amazed that despite having proven the dishonesty of our detractors - who drew analogies and comparisons between our case and the Muhammad drawings case (for which precedents would have favoured our case), the Court of Appeals nevertheless sided with UEJF & J'accuse.
"Noble passions are like vices; the more they are satisfied, the greater they grow."*
So, according to our attorney, on May 17th 2008, the appeal judge confirmed the provisional order conclusions. In addition, he doubled the damages. Though we have not yet received legal notice of the appeal judgment, the attorneys and solicitors of the plaintiffs are rushing us to pay for their fees and the costs we are also liable to. However, not having received a legal notice of the appeal judgment, we can still lodge an appeal with the Supreme Court - for up to 30 days after receiving this document.
Since December 2007, our detractors have induced financial costs exceeding more than 5 times the yearly operating budget of our association i.e. more than 20,000 euros.
UEJF & J'Accuse, two so-called anti-racism organisations, are sub-agencies of CRIF (Representative Council of French Jewish Institutions). This self-proclaimed institution assumes the right to speak and act in the name of all French Israelites and Jews. At annual dinners, the leaders of this organization don't hesitate to lecture our political and media elites, "suggesting" legislation, even humiliating some attendants. We don't know which legal or moral right, which values allow this organization to hold such strong political influence and to hijack the voice of all French Israelites, given that less than 4% of this population are members of CRIF.
The deeds of organisations whose methods are similar to those of CRIF sub-agencies UEJF & J'accuse are not democratic at all and are in fact contrary to any republican principle. Indeed, lobbying is a common and legal activity amongst Anglo-Saxon societies, and even if European Union institutions are trying to integrate lobbying into their governance model, the French Constitution does not allow lobbying. Their constitutionality notwithstanding, some lobbies have greater political influence than others and often they are the ones responsible for instigating social tension.
If the CRIF and its sub-agencies were only lobbying on behalf their members (which is after all their raison d'etre), even though morally reprehensible, it would be acceptable to a certain extent. The trouble is that CRIF is more likely to fight for the interests of Israel than to address the problems faced by its members or the rights of the community it's meant to defend. While the CRIF is trying to take all French Jews hostage, see what some anti-Zionist associations like the UFJP (French Jewish Union for Peace) think of the CRIF in the open letter below:
Letter from the UJFP to the CRIF
Sunday, February 8th 2009
French Jewish Union for Peace (UJFP)
Open letter to the leaders of the CRIF
The masks have fallen and that's enough for now!
You have absolutely no right to speak neither in our name nor in the name of our own who were penned in ghettos, murdered in pogroms, killed in death camps, but who were also part of all the struggles, from the International for a better world to the Resistance against the Nazi intruder, against colonialism and for freedom, justice, dignity and equality of rights.
You cheered and supported the crimes of the IDF, crushing under its bombs the population you call "a hostile entity", bringing down houses, devastating crops, targeting schools, mosques, hospitals, emergency cars and even a graveyard … Now you are on the side of the Apartheid supporters, oppressors and modern barbarians, and the blood of their victims is spilling on you.
Meanwhile, you lost all human sentiment, all compassion in front of this distress, you've outraged and soiled us by assimilating all the Jews to the supporters of a bunch of war criminals in the same way you soiled the memory of Rachi, Edmond Fleg, Emmanuel Levinas and many others - all that French Judaism was carrying in terms of human worth, intelligence and light.
You've tried to transform a colonial and geopolitical conflict into a communitarian conflict and by pretending that "95% of the French Jews support the Israeli invasion", you stir up anti-Semitism while claiming to be concerned with its return, like pyromaniac firemen. No, Ladies and Gentlemen who are leading the so-called "representative" council of the French Jewish Institutions, in our eyes you represent nothing except the zelators of an abject slaughter.
UJFP national office on 02-07-2009 Union Juive Française pour la Paix (UJFP) - 21 ter rue Voltaire, 75011 Paris. Phone: 06 61 33 48 22. E-mail: contact@ujfp.org. Website: www.ujfp.org
For any political leader to explicitly and cynically support a foreign power by accepting CRIF directives that are detrimental to the interests of his nation is not only morally reprehensible, it's high treason.
Israel is more than a morally illegitimate state; it's the fruit of an abject colonialism under the guise of an heroic and romantic epic, cleared by the myth of the wandering people, oppressed for more than 2,000 years. Oppressed yes, wandering no!
In addition their oppressors have always been Europeans; never in the territory of Islam did Jews experience pogroms or mass crimes. On the contrary, each time Jewish communities were oppressed they always found shelter in the territory of Islam.
However, Zionist propaganda takes effect insidiously and stirs up anti-Muslim racism. The CRIF has several masks; a public one that allows this organization to maintain the illusion of inclusiveness within inter-faith and inter-community dialogues; and a more hideous, insidious one serving dark schemes that seed hate and fear between communities and try to muzzle any criticism of Zionism and Israel.
The story of the "wandering People" is just an historic myth serving an ideology, a biblical alteration, a mythology that justifies the application of so-called "divine right" that supersedes even international right. We can't fix an injustice by creating a greater one. This is however the role these self-proclaimed organizations are limited to; monopolizing noble causes like the fight against racism, while diverting them from their original goal in order to benefit the Zionist ideology.
These details about the CRIF are important since they help us understand the abject methods this multifaceted organization uses in serving one single goal: to defend Israeli policy at all cost. It uses front agencies like UEJF in order to maintain its status as an honorable organization. By the way, Marc Knobel, President of the J'Accuse organisation, and co-plaintiff, is one of its active members.
*Honoré de Balzac
**Jean de la Fontaine
Traduit par http://www.sott.net/
Tagged as: Alter Info, censorship, Mass media
Mary Rizzo is an art restorer, translator and writer living in Italy. Editor and co-founder of Palestine Think Tank, co-founder of Tlaxcala translations collective. Her personal blog is Peacepalestine.
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