French Jewish scholar’s hate speech trial leaves anti-racism activists bitter, divided over; -Muslims get anti-Semitism “with their mother’s milk”

(JTA) — The hate speech trial of a prominent French historian charged with calling Arabs innately anti-Semitic is dividing French Jews and sowing dissent within the local equivalent of the Anti-Defamation League.

It is all happening over just two words: “mother’s milk.”

Georges Bensoussan, one of the world’s leading experts on Jews in Arab lands, used the two fateful words during a radio interview in 2015. Citing the work of an Algerian sociologist, he asserted that “in Arab families in France and beyond, everybody knows but will not say that anti-Semitism is transmitted with mother’s milk.”

Bensoussan later insisted he meant this as a metaphor for culturally transmitted bias. Nevertheless, his words prompted both the Collective Against Islamophobia in France and the International League against Racism and Anti-Semitism, or LICRA, independently to initiate a criminal trial against him for allegedly inciting racial hatred.

The verdict in Bensoussan’s trial, which began last month, is expected to determine boundaries of free speech in academia in a country where moderates fear both radical Islam and the surge of xenophobia it is triggering.

But the trial is already pitting anti-racism activists against one another…

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jta (foto:Georges Bensoussan)