#Crif - French Jewish leader slams comparison of burkini ban, Holocaust

 

In his first public statement about France’s debate over the burkini, the leader of the country’s Jewish communities condemned a politician’s likening of the ban on the Muslim garb to persecutions against French Jews.

 

Francis Kalifat, president of the CRIF umbrella group of French Jewish communities, commented on the issue in a statement published on CRIF’s website last Friday, two weeks after the first of some 30 French municipalities passed bans on wearing the full-body swimsuit. Also last Friday, a French high court ruled that the bans were illegal.

 

In his statement, Kalifat condemned tweets by Jean-Luc Melenchon, leader of the Left Party, who has said that in France, “Jews were persecuted, then Protestants, and today Muslims.”

 

Kalifat called Melonchon’s allusion to the Holocaust, where a quarter of French Jewry was murdered by the Nazis and their local collaborators, “a pinnacle of absurdity and indecency” that Kalifat said was meant to “pander to Melenchon’s voters.”

 

He called on political figures to condemns Melenchon’s remarks.

 

“This relativism, and attempt to draw parallels is unacceptable and must be condemned,” Kalifat wrote. “It is revolting and infuriating that some should try to profit politically from the polemic around anti-bikini bans and the Shoah,” he wrote, using the Hebrew word for the Holocaust.

 

Kalifat’s statement contained no direct reference to the ban itself, which critics have said is discriminatory to Muslims and constitutes an infringement on individual liberties. The CRIF has remained uncharacteristically silent on the divisive issue.

 

French Prime Minister Manuel Valls defended the bans as designed to counter “a political project … designed to perpetuate female servitude”... Read more.