PARIS - Deep in the muggy Parisian summer, when it seems the only people
left in the city are tourists and those who serve them, there is a fine
little scandal involving the president's son, his wealthy fiancée, a
much-beloved and scabrous magazine, a crusty cartoonist and humid charges of
racism and anti-Semitism.


Jean Sarkozy and Jessica Sebaoun, his fiancée, took a back seat to his
father, President Nicolas Sarkozy, and Carla Bruni, his wife-to-be, during a
visit to the Valley of the Kings, Egypt, in 2007.

Like all French intellectual fusses, this one has roots in the past - as far
back as the Dreyfus affair, not to mention Algeria. But it also touches
directly on the reputation and power of Nicolas Sarkozy, the French
president, and his efforts to intimidate the press.

The result has been the firing of a radical left-wing cartoonist, Maurice
Sinet, known as Siné, 79, from one of France's best (and most vulgar)
satirical magazines, Charlie Hebdo, after allegations that he had indulged
in anti-Semitic stereotypes while taking a shot at Jean, Mr. Sarkozy's
ambitious second son from his first marriage, who is now 21.

Much attention has been paid to Mr. Sarkozy's third wife, Carla, her new
album of love songs and the tranquilizing effect she has had on the
hyperactive French president. But the French have also been following the
career of Jean Sarkozy and his recent engagement to Jessica Sebaoun,
daughter of Isabelle Maruani (née Darty) and Marc-André Sebaoun. Isabelle
Maruani is an heir to the large electronics and technology company, the
Darty group, a kind of French Best Buy.

Jean Sarkozy has risen fast. A taller, blond version of his father, the
young Sarkozy has some of the sullen, sultry look of the actor Jean-Paul
Belmondo, and though still a law student, he has already become the leader
of his father's party in his father's old constituency, Neuilly-sur-Seine.

In some ways, his rise has been in the face of his father, who wanted to put
a former spokesman in the mayoralty of Neuilly-sur-Seine. But the aide,
David Martinon, proved unpopular, and Jean Sarkozy led a party putsch to
replace him.

Jean Sarkozy has also been a beneficiary of his father's power, it seems.
When his motor scooter was stolen last year, the police recovered it
quickly, even going to the extraordinary length of taking a DNA sample from
his helmet. In 2005, he ran his scooter into the back of a BMW, according to
a complaint brought by the car's owner, M'Hamed Bellouti, who managed to
catch the license plate number as the scooter sped away. The police failed
to find the scooter, but the car owner's insurance company did.
Nevertheless, in a December 2007 trial, the complaint against Jean Sarkozy
was dismissed.

Mr. Bellouti asked then: "Why is there a two-speed justice system? When they
steal his scooter, they are full of zeal. When it hits my car, there is less
zeal."

All this was on the mind of the cartoonist Siné, who last month decided to
write about Jean Sarkozy, whom he called "a worthy son of his father." After
Jean Sarkozy left his trial for fleeing the scene of the scooter accident
"almost to applause," Siné noted, "it's necessary to state that the
complainant is Arab!"

"And that's not all," the cartoonist continued. Jean Sarkozy "has just said
that he wants to convert to Judaism before marrying his fiancée, a Jew and
heiress of the founders of Darty. He will go far in this life, the little
one!"

The column woke up a somnolent Paris, with the journalist Claude Askolovitch
of Le Nouvel Observateur telling RTL radio that Siné's piece was
anti-Semitic for its conflation of Jews, politics and wealth.

The editor of the weekly, Philippe Val, 55, asked Siné to retract. The
cartoonist - who was an anticolonial critic of the Algerian war, supports a
Palestinian state, is a fierce atheist and spends a good part of the day on
a respirator - said he would rather castrate himself.

Mr. Val fired him, then wrote a long explanation of why, asserting that Mr.
Askolovitch was acting on behalf of "the entourage of Jean Sarkozy," and
that "a close collaborator of Jean Sarkozy contacted me to tell me that the
families of Jean Sarkozy and his fiancée had been outraged and were
contemplating a lawsuit."

Nicolas Sarkozy has in the past had editors fired when their coverage has
displeased him, and he is being criticized for trying to bring French public
television more under his control. The family also denied that Jean Sarkozy
was contemplating conversion.

Mr. Val, who had previously won much praise (and incurred Muslim wrath) for
reprinting the Danish cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad, ended his editorial
by quoting Siné as telling a radio station in 1982, "I am anti-Semitic, and
I have no fear of saying so." Siné filed a defamation suit.

Siné has many defenders who deny the passage is anti-Semitic. Gisèle Halimi,
a prominent lawyer, said a charge of anti-Semitism would not stand up in
court, adding, "This operation is part of the ever more numerous witch hunts
aimed at maintaining the psychosis of the persecuted Jew." The magazine, she
said, citing the Prophet Muhammad cartoons, "always posed as a champion of
freedom of expression." Now, she said, "I no longer want to read you or hear
you."

The cartoonist Plantu, in L'Express last month, depicted Mr. Val in a
fascist uniform kicking Siné under a headline saying that Charlie Hebdo was
the magazine "where everything is permitted - including firing a
cartoonist."

Luc Mandret, a well-known blogger, wrote that in June, in Charlie Hebdo,
Siné had defamed Muslims more coarsely than he had insulted Jews, but those
comments had produced no similar reaction. "Siné is a provocateur," Mr.
Mandret wrote.

There was heavier artillery used to support Mr. Val: a letter in Le Monde
signed by 20 politicians and public intellectuals, including Elie Weisel,
Bernard-Henri Lévy, Alexandre Adler, Claude Lanzmann and Bertrand Delanoë,
mayor of Paris. Siné "has broken the barrier that separates humor from
insult and caricature from hate," they said. Mr. Lévy wrote further, "Behind
these words, a French ear is unable not to hear the echo of the most rancid
anti-Semitism."

Jacques Attali, a former government minister writing in L'Express,
summarized the complaint. "One can also read there, and not for the first
time for this cartoonist, the return of the old anti-Semitic hymn: 'The Jews
are rich, so to convert to Judaism allows one to get rich.' "

As for Siné, he is entirely unrepentant. In a letter to Libération, he
wrote: "Sorry to disappoint, but I am the author neither of 'Mein Kampf' nor
of 'The Protocols of the Elders of Zion.' I am only, for the last 60 years,
an anti-imbecile of the first order (a euphemism destined to pre-empt any
eventual refusal to publish this)."


http://www.nytimes.com/2008/08/05/wo.../05france.html






--
Give us back our countries: Stop the criminal multiculturalism ideology
enforced upon the white world against the will of its peoples, leading to
mass immigration from the third-world: Mul-cul + pol-corr = lethal mixture
for the white world. And give us back our freedom: Dismantle all
surveillance technology.