The Sine controversy in France; BHL steps up
By Tom Teicholz at 1 August, 2008, 3:12 pm
French humorist and cartoonist Sine (there should be an accent aigu on the last letter but I don’t know how to do that), whose work appears in Charlie Hebdo, a French alternative weekly, has created a furor for his comments related to the rumor that French President Sarkoszy’s son might be converting to Judaism to marry a woman who is Jewish. Sine commented to the effect that in Sarkozy’s France converting to Judaism might be a way to social climb but that he would prefer a muslim in chador to a clean shaven Jew. It was two lines but it has set off a firestorm.
The editor of Charlie Hebdo asked Sine to apologize and retract his comment. He didn’t, He was fired. Suddenly Sine was being defended as being the victim of political correctness, and of having been tarred with anti-semitism because he is critical of Israel and is an anti-Zionist.
Enter Bernard Henry Levy or BHL as the French call him. In a vigorous and well reasoned response in Le Monde, he laid out the thin line between freedom of speech and calling someone out for an Anti-Semitic comment and how criticsm of Israel is no shield or defense for Anti-Semitism.
This has in turn produced a firestorm of critiques of BHL and defense of Sine with one commentator opining “We need comments like Sine’s.”
I interviewed BHL a few years ago and wrote a column about him and as I said then, and as is evidenced by this recent example, he continues to be an exmaple of a public intellectual, an homme engage (there should be an accent there too).
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