Finkielkraut
Sivan
Photo: Alex Kolomoisky
France: Court rejects lawsuit against Finkielkraut
Parisian court rejects charges against French-Jewish philosopher made by Israeli film-maker Eyal Sivan for dubbing him "one of the current actors of Jewish anti-Semitism"
A Paris court rejected Wednesday a lawsuit against French-Jewish philosopher Alain Finkielkraut. Finkielkraut was sued by the Israeli film director Eyal Sivan, whom he described as “one of the current figures in Jewish anti-Semitism.”
Sivan, a Left-wing activist, sued Finkielkraut over the remarks. Former Israeli Ambassador to France Eli Barnavi testified in court for Finkielkraut, while two Israeli professors testified for the prosecution.
In a 2003 interview about Sivan’s film “Route 181," which was distributed in small independent Paris theatres, Finkielkraut criticized the Israeli director for linking between the Israeli treatment of the Palestinians and the Holocaust.
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Finkielkraut said he reacted to the “violent unilateral character” of Sivan’s movie, which represents the history of Israeli-Palestinian relations “as the aggression of one people crazed by the Shoah against a profoundly peaceful people,” as quoted by the European Jewish Press.
Finkielkraut also received the support of Paris-based filmmaker Claude Lanzmann, best known for his documentary film “Shoah,” a nine-hour oral history of the Holocaust.
Sivan accused Finkielkraut of being “ready to fight against the last Israeli citizen, including myself, to preserve the state of Israel."
The judge, Nicolas Bonnal, rejected Sivan’s complaint. Bonnal wrote in his decision: "Finkielkraut only credited the other side with intellectual attitudes and never attributed a precise fact which could be proved. Above all he gave a critical analysis of Sivan’s work and of its political positions."
