France Fears Letting Anti-Zionist Comic Run in Elections

From IsraelNN.com, 06 May 09, by Tzvi Ben Gedalyahu:

French officials are trying to ban the rabid anti-Zionist and Jew-hating comedian Dieudonne M'Bala M'Bala from fielding candidates in the country’s June regional elections. The comic has been fined at least five times for using terms such as “memorial pornography” when referring to Jews, and he faces a trial this week for inciting hatred against Jews.

Dieudonne’s political partner is Alain Soral, formerly associated with Jean Marie Le Pen’s far-right National Front, which has preached anti-Semitic views and Holocaust denial.

The comedian's political activity has alarmed officials, and Claude Gueant, chief of staff for French President Nicolas Sarkozy, told listeners on two French radio programs that Dieudonne should not be allowed to be active in political campaigns. "Dieudonne is anti-Semitic all the time, it's absolutely odious," Gueant stated. "Public authorities are trying to see where these plans [to curb Dieudonne's party] stand under the law. I'm not sure if we'll be able to ban them."

...Dieudonne, who is 43 years old ...has been involved in European Union elections as a candidate or head of a party since 1997. Among other epithets, he has called Jews a “fraud, which is the worst of all, because [they were] the first.” On a live television show, he dressed himself as a hareidi religious Jew and performed the Hitler salute. He was fined nearly $10,000 three years ago for calling a widely-known Jewish television personality a secret donor of the "child-murdering Israeli army.”

Dieudonne once told a press conference that the Jews in France are a mafia who have "total control over French policy.” He also met with Hizbullah terrorists after the Second Lebanon War.

During one recent performance, with Le Pen in the audience, he invited a Holocaust denier to join him on stage in honor of his 80th birthday. Several weeks earlier, Dieudonne presented the Holocaust denier, academic Robert Faurisson, with a "prize for maladaption and impertinence” that was presented by an assistant dressed in a concentration camp uniform with a yellow star.