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Monday 26 Oct 2015 - 12:32 Makkah mean time-13-1-1437
(Image from google)
Paris, (IINA) - French riot police had to be called out in Paris recently as the offices of Agence France-Presse (AFP) were attacked by a large crowd of pro-Israel extremists, according to The Electronic Intifada online news.
The Jewish Defense League (JDL), a violent radical Zionist group, was angry from AFP’s coverage of current events in the occupied West Bank and Gaza Strip and present-day Israel.
One of the extremists said the demonstration was part of their support for Israel and “our war against the Arabs … journalists working for organizations like AFP support the Islamic terrorists and that’s why we have to fight back.”
Video proudly posted by on JDL France Twitter account shows the mob letting off flares and chanting “Am Yisrael Chai,” or “The people of Israel live” – a Hebrew slogan popular with Israel’s ultra-nationalist right.
The crowd, some of whom were armed and masked, carried Israeli and JDL flags.
David Perrotin, a journalist for the French edition of the news site Buzzfeed, was assaulted after being surrounded by a dozen masked men wielding blunt instruments.
As the group approached the entrance to the building, opposite the Paris stock exchange in the center of the capital, tear gas was sprayed as skirmishes with riot police broke out.
Founded in the United States, JDL militants were convicted of a string of bombing attacks, and are thought to be behind the 1985 assassination of Palestinian American civil rights activist Alex Odeh.
The group was listed in the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s annual terrorism report for 2001.
Although its Israeli affiliate was eventually banned, the JDL is still active and legal in France, Canada and the UK.
The French JDL – the Ligue de Défense Juive – is probably the most well-organized and violent radical Zionist group outside Israel.
It is notorious for violent and relatively sophisticated street-level attacks against Palestine solidarity campaigners in France.
There have been several calls to outlaw the JDL in France. But talk of a ban by interior minister Bernard Cazeneuve (who once condemned their actions as “excessive”) has so far come to nothing.
In June last year two JDL members in Paris were found guilty of placing a bomb under the car of an anti-Zionist journalist. They were given prison sentences, but one absconded to Israel.
Armed members were also involved in a riot in the Bastille area of Paris in summer 2014, as they attacked Palestine solidarity demonstrators during rallies against the Israeli offensive in Gaza.
The French JDL has been involved in attacks on pro-Palestine media commentators and politicians, and has also ransacked Paris bookshops, art exhibitions and events aimed at raising money for Palestinians.
Today, the distinctive yellow-and-black flag of the JDL is a regular sight at “Death to the Arabs” marches in Israel, as it was in Paris last Thursday night outside the offices of AFP.
SM/IINA
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