Court Finds "Le Monde" Guilty of “Racial Defamation” Against Jews

June 4, 2005

Source: The Guardian

http://www.guardian.co.uk/france/story/0,11882,1499139,00.html

On June 4, 2005 The Guardian reported, "A French appeal court has found the editor-in-chief of Le Monde and the authors of an opinion piece in the paper guilty of 'racial defamation' against Israel and the Jewish people. In a ruling greeted with applause by Jewish groups and some alarm by media lawyers, the court ordered Jean-Marie Colombani and the three writers to pay a symbolic one euro in damages to the France-Israel Association and to Lawyers Without Borders. The two groups had alleged that the June 2002 article, headed Israel-Palestine: the Cancer, contained comments that 'targeted a whole nation, or a religious group in its quasi-globality,' and constituted racial defamation."