The governing Socialist Party was swift to repudiate a hate-filled attack on Israel by a low-ranking official.
The party’s executive board, meeting Wednesday, urged the quickest possible removal of Roland Gabory, a 51-year-old high-school teacher who sits as a Socialist deputy in a provincial assembly in southwestern France.
Gabory is the author of a letter denouncing Israel as “a racist, expansionist, fundamentalist, parasitic state, which has monopolized the land of Palestine in the name of 4,000-year-old ridiculous biblical twaddle.”
His letter also equated Israelis with Nazis.
“The inexplicable crimes perpetrated half a century ago by those who called themselves the master race do not excuse at all the terrorism of those who still believe they are the Lord’s race,” he wrote.
The letter was published in Sud Ouest (Southwest), a large-circulation provincial daily, and in the Socialist weekly, Vendredi (Friday).
Vendredi has apologized for allowing the letter to appear. “We regret that such hatred has been able to slip into a publication striving to fight against racism and exclusion,” it said.
But the editor of Sud Ouest told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency that the letter drew no reaction from its readers.
Jean Kahn, chairman of CRIF, the Representative Council of French Jewish Organizations, said he was “scandalized.”
Kahn said he could not understand how such views could be expressed by an official of the Socialist Party and demanded that “sanctions” be taken against him.
The Socialist Party’s executive board said it shared “the legitimate emotion and indignation triggered by the scandalous declaration of Roland Gabory, in total contradiction of the values and actions of the Socialists.”
It urged the relevant party body to oust Gabory as soon as possible.
The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.
