Terrorist 'Carlos the Jackal' endorses French Anti-Zionist Party

Ilich Sanchez, thought to be mastermind behind Munich Olympics massacre, expresses solidarity with party.

By BENJAMIN WEINTHAL, JERUSALEM POST CORRESPONDENT
carlos the jackal 248.88 (photo credit: Courtesy )
carlos the jackal 248.88
(photo credit: Courtesy )
The imprisoned global terrorist Ilich Ramirez Sanchez - better known as the notorious Carlos the Jackal - issued on Monday a campaign endorsement of the Anti-Zionist Party by telephone hookup from the French prison Poissy to 300 supporters in Paris. The anti-Israel party is fielding candidates in the June 7 elections for the European Parliament. Carlos expressed his "solidarity" with the views of the head of the Anti-Zionist Party, French comedian Dieudonné Mbala Mbala. The Anti-Zionist Party platform, calls for an end to "Zionist interference in the nation's public affairs," and a rebuke of "politicians who apologize for Zionism." The radical anti-Israeli party demands that France "free our state, our government, our institutions from the possession and pressure of Zionist organizations; eradicate all forms of Zionism in the nation" and "prevent enterprises and institutions from contributing to the war efforts of a foreign nation, which does not respect International Law." Carlos and Dieudonné share a hatred of the Jewish state. Carlos, who joined the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine in 1970, is serving a life sentence in the Poissy prison near Paris for a triple murder in 1975. He termed Israel "the first terrorist state in history" at his sentencing hearing in 1997 and blamed Israel for framing him in the assassination of two French intelligence agents and a Lebanese informant. Carlos is thought to be the mastermind behind the Palestinian terrorist group Black September murder of 11 Israeli athletes at the Munich Olympic Games in 1972, as well as of a grenade attack on an Israeli bank in the United Kingdom. French courts have fined Dieudonné on five occasions for anti-Semitic statements. He called the Holocaust "memorial pornography" and last December he awarded the French Holocaust denier Robert Faurisson, a prize for "non-conformity and impertinence." Dieudonné had a performer dressed up as a concentration camp prisoner deliver the award to Faurisson. With a view toward building, according to Dieudonné, "the only anti-Zionist movement" in France, his party has attracted a "Who's Who" of anti-Semitic candidates from across the French political spectrum. Among Dieudonné's new political bedfellows is the extreme right-wing party of Jean-Marie Le Pen. Alain Soral, an ex-communist who served as an advisor to Le Pen, is running as a candidate for the Anti-Zionist Party. Le Pen, who described the Nazi death camps as "a detail of history," is purportedly the godfather of Dieudonné's daughter. Another Anti-Zionist candidate is Yahia Gouasmi, head of the Zahra Center, which is affiliated with Hizbullah and the Islamic Republic of Iran. Gouasmi said in late May the Zionists in France control "the media, the education of our children and our government," in order to serve "Israeli interests." Ginette Skandrani, a former French Green Party member, is also running with the rabidly anti-Israel party. She was tossed out of the Green Party for denying the Holocaust. Claude Guéant, the general secretary to French President Nicolas Sarkozy, told the France Radio J program that one should consider banning the "open anti-Semitism" of the Anti-Zionist Party. The French National Bureau of Vigilance Against Anti-Semitism asked the Interior Ministry to prohibit the party's EU campaign. But Rachida Dati, France's justice minister, said the ministry found no basis to legally ban the party. "If the goal of this party would be to conduct an anti-Semitic and racist discourse, he [Dieudonné ] would not have been allowed to run in the election," Dati said.