France: Muslims Quit Jewish/Muslim Friendship Group

Courtesy Nouvel Observateur

The Muslim members of the French Jewish-Muslim Friendship (AJMF) resigned this body, accusing their Jewish counterparts of the AJMF for their silence dealing with the Israeli ‘war crimes’ in Gaza,the co-president of the association, Djelloul Seddiki, announced Friday.

“All the Muslims left Thursday,” Djelloul Seddiki told AFP. Seddiki is also director of the Theological Institute of the Great Mosque of Paris, said that the honorary president of the AJMF, Dalil Boubakeur, rector of the Great Mosque of Paris and ex-president of the CFCM, also resigned.

“We couldn’t stay,” he explained, deploring the silence of his Jewish partners in the AJMF, despite the very heavy human toll of the Israeli operation among the population of Gaza.

“We don’t speak any more, They didn’t call me anymore after the start of the war,” he confirms, having received a call from the co-president of the AJMF, rabbi Michel Sefrati after the announcement of the resignation. “It’s too late,” Djelloul Seddiki says.

In a statement explaining the reasons for his decision, he said he was “shocked and dismayed at the magnitude of the unspeakable massacre, whose victims are the inhabitants of Gaza, for more than twenty days, by the Israeli occupation army.”

He deplored on behalf of the Jewish representatives of the AJMF “the total lack of condemnation which would imply the objectives of living together and the reconciliation between the communities which set by the founders of the AJMF close to five years ago.”

According to him, “this silence can be justified only by complicity regarding these war crimes and makes the ABCs of dialog and friendship counted as obsolete” and “lacking any credibility”.

Djelloul Seddiki’s letter is on the CFCM site (In French)