French Zionists outraged by former PM's comment
The Zionist lobby in France is outraged at a statement made by France’s former Prime Minister Raymon Barre.
In a radio interview, Bare said the “Jewish lobby” had made a scapegoat of Maurice Papon.
Maurice Papon was a senior official under the wartime Vichy government. In 1997 the Jewish lobby claimed that Mr. Papon helped organize the deportation of hundreds of Jews to Nazi labor camps from the Bordeaux region. In response, Papon said he was only a civil servant following orders from above. The trial lasted six months (the longest in French history). Papon was sentenced to 10 years in jail. In 2002 he was released on medical grounds. He died last month aged 96.
Former Prime Minister Raymon Barre spoke about Papon in a radio interview. He said, “Mr. Papon became a scapegoat. The country is fundamentally hypocritical in seeking out a few scapegoats. The Jewish lobby is capable of mounting disgraceful operations.”
CRIF (Conseil Représentatif des Institutions juives de France) is an umbrella for French Zionist organizations. It corresponds to the ADL in America, and got all “holocaust denial” laws passed in France. CRIF said it was “scandalized," that a former Prime Minister had denounced the Jewish lobby, adding that Mr. Barre "had joined the extreme-right."
Mr. Barre had previously “shocked” the Zionist community when he was Prime Minister. In October 1980 there was a terrorist attack against a Paris synagogue, and the Zionist lobby blamed Palestinians. Mr. Barre went on TV and said, “This appalling attack was intended to hit Jews on their way to the synagogue, it also hit innocent French people who happened to be in the Rue Copernic”.
The Zionist lobby was outraged at Barre’s implication that the deaths of non-Jews have moral equivalency with the deaths of Jews, and at the implication that Jews and Gentiles are separate peoples in France.
During the recent radio interview, Mr. Barre said he does not regret his words.
“In that same statement, I said the Jewish community can’t be separated from the French community. When you quote, you must quote in full. The Jewish lobby was behind the campaign against me. The bombing itself was not even aimed at Jews. It was a blind attack in which three French people were killed who were not Jews. That doesn’t mean that Jews are not French,” Barre said.
Source:
http://www.ejpress.org/article/14827
