Are the French Anti-Semitic?

Here in France, une quenelle is a sausage-shaped dumpling made of creamed fish, chicken or some other meat. At least, it was until the comic, actor, polemicist and sometime candidate for political office Dieudonné M'Bala M'Bala appropriated it.

His version sprang from a vulgar joke about a dolphin's fin in a sketch he performed a decade ago, during which he touched his shoulder with one hand while holding the palm of the other hand outstretched toward the ground.

Next, he talked about the "promised land" - a reference to Israel - saying it made him vomit. The comic's father was from Africa and Dieudonné is angry that France paid reparations to Jewish families after World War II but paid nothing to the families of black slaves.

The gesture and the Israel jibe may not have been linked at the outset. But, they are now. Dieudonné incorporated it into his act and said he would like to shove a quenelle up the backside of Zionists.

He invited a notorious Holocaust denier on stage and appeared on a TV chat show dressed as an Orthodox Jewish rabbi, giving a Nazi salute while shouting "Isra-heil!"

He employed the quenelle in an anti-Zionist campaign when standing in the European elections of 2009 as head of an "anti-communitarist and anti-Zionist" party.

To those who believe the world is controlled by Jews - more than a few in France - he is a hero.

Critics say Dieudonné's quenelle is a disguised Nazi salute. He claims the gesture is neither a covert "Sieg Heil!" nor anti-Semitic but anti-establishment, a French equivalent of the rigid middle finger, meaning "up yours."

Photos posted online tell a different story. They picture people, some grinning, some masked, giving the salute outside synagogues, Holocaust memorials, kosher restaurants, Jewish schools and retirement homes, beneath street signs such asrue des Juifs, next to railway wagons used to deport Jews from France during World War II and at Auschwitz-Birkenau, where over a million were killed.

Source http://mag.newsweek.com/2014/02/07/french-anti-semitic-comedy.html