Youcef Atal made a post about Gaza and has received public punishment for this. Media writing about the punishment are Al Jaz, BBC, NYT, local media and so on. Al Jazeera writes that they don't know what the message was, because he deleted it.
The message he spread is discussed nowhere, so people will just have to trust that the punishments are justified, which at this point I can't, because of the incredible and widespread abuse of the "antisemitism" accusation during IDF's revenge massacre.
The only thing is that Atal himself apologized, making it seem as if he himself has doubts about the message as well. But what was the message? The only quote they give is about God guiding the hand of Palestine in striking back, a message we hear daily from the other side, with no repercussion whatsoever.
I think from a norm-setting perspective, this is bad. If you publicly put someone in the stocks, people need to know what they did wrong. So what did he say and why is it a secret now?
@s2numbuq35i said in #1:
> The message he spread is discussed nowhere, so people will just have to trust that the punishments are justified, which at this point I can't, because of the incredible and widespread abuse of the "antisemitism" accusation during IDF's revenge massacre.
It's pretty easy to google it?
It was 35 second long video in Instagram by a Palestinian preacher called Mahmoud Al Hasanat calling for a "dark day for the Jews" right after the 7 october attacks.
So I guess the prosecuter would have argued that wishing a dark day for the Jews is tantamount for asking for violence against Jews.
There's half a million of Jews living in Franc btw, which the development being that the Jews migrate to Israel because they're harassed in France.
What I mean is that I'm not sure we are ethically in a position to enforce such tone policing on emotional reactions to the ongoing Nakba.
If he's a rich, successful role model, then I understand why they want to make an example of him. If so, the media have a more skeptical position to at least describe.
After all, witnessing these accounts mass murder on defenseless civilians evokes heavy emotions, which also means you can't expect every football player to be a perfect fucking diplomat 24/7.
We can expect him to try, but everyone can make an emotional mistake during an ongoing massacre of defenseless civilians. If he deleted it so quickly that none of these newspapers even know what he said, in my view that should be enough.
In short; this war brings emotions, accidentally posting an emotional video should not necessarily be a reason for large fines. It's not only about a football player, but about all our weaker moments, everyone knows they can share a video, regret it and delete it, especially within the emotional frame of mind that grief and suffering bring.
(El Ghazi case from the Netherlands has similarities)
@Raspberry_yoghurt said in #2:
> It's pretty easy to google it?
Possibly. I used duckduckgo with two or three search terms and did not find it on the first pages.
> So I guess the prosecuter would have argued that wishing a dark day for the Jews is tantamount for asking for violence against Jews.
It is clear some political and extremist organizations claim to want this and have an antisemitic genocide in their ideals, charters, manifestos and whatnot. Still I don't think at this point the word Jews, when used by those who perceive this as an injustice, necessarily means they have the same agenda.
During WWII, in the Netherlands, they used to talk about "moffen", which was a slur for Germans. Of course they should have been more precise and said nazis instead, but they didn't give a shit about using politically correct language, because they were under attack. Can a similar thing be happening here when people are talking about "the Jews"? Because we are good friends with the Germans now.
I would argue both real antisemitism as well as generalizations by those who are targeted are to be expected.
