Wikipedia has a pretty good history listed of the early years of the weekly Charlie Hebdo. Much is explained by its original name: Hara-Kiri.

A few times the weekly was banned, resurrected, editorial quarrels, lawsuits …

Banned after satire on the death of Charles de Gaulle. Restarted with the name Charlie which is in reference to both De Gaulle and the cartoon strip of Peanuts. The weekly tried to get the political far-right anti-semitic party of Front National banned collecting 175k signatures in 1996. Editorial fights when an article referred to Palestinians as “non-civilized.” Later as Tikun Olam has mentioned in an article, the sacking of cartoonist Siné in 2008. Controversy broke out over a column by veteran cartoonist Siné which led to accusations of antisemitism. In a long legal battle, Siné was awarded a large sum in compensation for wrongful breach of contract by Val, owner of Charlie Hebdo. The French government under Hollande has limited freedom of expression by new legislation specifically banning criticism of the Jewish state of Israel.

L’affaire Siné


In an open letter to the newspaper Le Monde, as well as in separate articles, legal luminary and former justice minister Robert Badinter, Nobel Prize winner Elie Wiesel, Paris mayor Bertrand Delanoe, filmmaker Claude Lanzmann, French Culture Minister Christine Albanel and no less a personage than philosopher Bernard-Henry Levy argue that “once again, once too often” Sine has crossed “the line between humour and insult, caricature and hatred.”

The pro-Sine group has its own glitterati, including leading architect Jean Nouvel, former presidential (far-left) candidate Olivier Besancenot, the cartoonist par excellence Plantu (Jean Plantureux) and the writer Jean-Marie Laclavetine, who sighed in Le Monde: “We can’t breathe in this country anymore. We need the outrageousness of someone like Sine.”

Sine’s supporters — and thousands have signed petitions circulating on the Internet — maintain that Sine isn’t an anti-Semite, only an agent provocateur, and irreverent satire is a healthy and necessary tradition.


The old vituperator’s friends seem especially upset because Charlie Hebdo editor Val reprinted some of the notorious Mohammad-cartoons in 2006, then successfully defended the satirical weekly against a defamation suit by French Muslim groups. Sine’s supporters can’t see an editor demanding freedom for his magazine to criticize Islam but repressing criticism (as they see it) of Judaism. A well-known half-Jewish, half-Muslim and fully socialist-feminist lawyer, Gisele Halimi, has commented that “Charlie Hebdo has dealt a terrible blow to freedom of expression by seeking to gag Sine, the libertarian.”

Not only during the NATO campaign bombing Serbia in 1996, but also in the Iraq War under George Bush journalists were targeted and killed in bombing raids or sniper fire. Has European and American fascist tendencies found common cause in Zionism and love of Israel? From police brutality to targeted killings, torture and urban warfare, Israel has taken a leadership role for the coward leaders in the West. If journalists are looking for a Chamberlain moment, they are looking in the wrong direction for creeping fascism.

Chomsky slams West’s Charlie Hebdo outrage, cites hypocrisy in the West by targeted killings of journalists

Well-known linguist, author and Israel critic Noam Chomsky criticized the Western media and leadership’s hypocrisy in its reaction to the attack against satirical journal Charlie Hebdo in which 12 people were killed earlier this month.

Writing in a CNN op-ed, Chomsky said that “terrorist” attacks perpetrated by the West did not spark outrage as the Hebdo attack did, nor did they bring calls for “inquiries into the roots of the attack in Christian culture and history,” as the Hebdo attacks did for Muslim culture.

Chomsky gave the example of a NATO missile attack on Serbian state television headquarters that killed 16 journalists in 1999. The attack was not seen by Western leaders as an attack against the press, but rather a legitimate target in efforts to undermine the rule of President Slobodan Milosevic of Yugoslavia.

Chomsky gave the example of Anders Breivik, “a Christian ultra-Zionist extremist and Islamophobe, slaughtered 77 people, mostly teenagers.” He said that Breivik’s attacks in Norway had not brought calls for an inquiry into Western culture.

He said that such outrage was also not directed toward “the most extreme terrorist campaign of modern times — Barack Obama’s global assassination campaign targeting people suspected of perhaps intending to harm us some day, and any unfortunates who happen to be nearby.”

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Ah ... that freedom of speech!

Chomsky questioned the commitment of Charlie Hebdo itself to freedom of expression saying that it fired cartoonist Siné on grounds that a comment of his was deemed to have anti-Semitic connotations.

Breaking News: I’m thanking Avigdor Lieberman for NOT joining the radical-right coalition run by Bibi Natanyahu. This leaves the new coalition on a perilous start with just 61 seats in the Knesset. A bumpy road ahead should break a smile in the White House on 1600 Pennsylvania Ave in Washington. Time for Obama to give Netanyahu a call and extending “best wishes” for the coming weeks or months. LOL

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