On Sunday, the BBC’s Paris correspondent, James Waterhouse, delivered his verdict on the weekend’s unrest across France. “They were mostly peaceful,” he informed viewers, before blaming the trouble on “an opportunistic minority” and observing that “few believe this was at the hands of the genuine protesters”. Behind him, a car blazed, masked men battled police and shops were being looted.
It all called to mind Comical Ali. Remember him? Saddam Hussein’s information minister, Mohammed Saeed al-Sahhaf, who insisted that Iraqi forces were prevailing as American tanks rolled into Baghdad? Well, this was Comical BBC. It also reminded me of Omar Jimenez, the CNN correspondent who famously reported in front of a burning building in Kenosha in 2020, while captions described the Black Lives Matter protests as “fiery but mostly peaceful”. Comical CNN.
Only it’s not that funny any more. The “opportunistic minority” has managed to burn down most of Limoges City Hall, set fire to Lyon’s tourist office, storm Marseille’s town hall and injure hundreds of police officers, with thousands arrested. Moreover, they have waved the Palestinian flag – on Saturday, protesters raised it in place of the Tricolore on the Monument à la République in Paris – draped themselves in keffiyehs and daubed “Free Gaza” on shuttered storefronts. Those mostly peaceful scoundrels, bless.
That Jews have received a particularly heavy blow is another detail that the BBC finds infra dig to mention. On motzei shabbat, the Ohalei Yaakov synagogue in Paris’s 19th arrondissement was ransacked, its siddurim and tefillin strewn across the floor and the rabbi’s office vandalised.
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