Dozens of anti-Semitic messages were left on the Facebook page of the popular French rapper Booba for vowing in a new song to avenge the victims of the Holocaust.
Booba, the son of a Muslim father from Senegal, raps in a song titled “Master Yoda” that was posted Feb. 2 on his Facebook page, “We’ll avenge like victims of slavery and the Shoah.”
Among the 4,340 comments left on his post were comments denying the Holocaust and calling for a new genocide against the Jewish people, in violation of French law on hate speech. Some comments used pejoratives against Booba, the stage name of 36-year-old Eli Yaffa, for mentioning the Holocaust.
A user identified as John Ken’Nabii wrote, “F**k the Shoah, invented by Zionists to legitimize Israel.” And from another user, Bassim Abir: “F**k your mother, you and the Shoah, we piss on all the Arabs that listen to you.”
JSS News, a French Jewish news site, termed the statements “cyber-lynching.”
Dozens of comments contained the phrase “shoananas,” a combination of the Hebrew name for the Holocaust with the French word for pineapple. Coined by the anti-Semitic comedian Dieudonne, it is used as a code word for denying the Holocaust seen to be too vague to violate France’s law forbidding it.
On Jan. 24, a French court ordered Twitter to divulge details of French users who made similar comments.
The post containing “Master Yoda” received 1,413 “likes” on Facebook. Booba has sold more than 1 million albums in France.
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