The President of CRIF said he was worried about the lack of reaction to the remarks of Mohammed Cherif Abbes. "They were considered to be normal, which shows to what extent anti-Semitic propaganda is circulating in Algeria", he declared.
When asked about Nicolas Sarkozy's speech on December 5 in Constantine in which he called upon "the Jewish people not to inflict on the Palestinian people the same injustice that it had itself received for so many centuries", Richard Prasquier said he was "disturbed" by the sentence. To suggest that Jews have only been victims of injustice, and that this is equivalent to the injustice that Palestinians have been subjected to can lead to dangerous confusions, he commented. But the CRIF President said how impressed he was by the "exceptional and courageous" previous sentence from Nicolas Sarkozy's speech in Constantine, comments that are "rarely heard in the Arab world". This is what the Head of State said to the students at Mentouri University: "I appeal to this progressive Islam to recognise the right for the people of Israel, which has suffered so much, to live in freedom."
Richard Prasquier also invited France and its European partners to "not give in to the blackmail of one group, or to the mirage of the fat cheque book of the other group". Otherwise, the President of CRIF felt, they were at risk of "selling their soul".
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