PARIS—A Jewish member of the French Parliament has received death threats in a letter full of unspeakable insults and accompanied by a suspicious white powder.
Meyer Habib, who represents French citizens established outside France and is Vice-President of the parliament’s foreign affairs committee, is known as a staunch supporter of Israel and a close friend of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
The letter, which contained insults such as ”big Zionist pig”, was received by Habib’s collaborator who had to be isolated in a room and was urged by firemen to wear mask and gloves due to the presence of the suspicious powder. A wing of the Bourbon Palace, the seat of the French National Assembly or Parliament, was evacuated and place in quarantine.
“We were alerted at the end of the morning, a team of chemical risk experts was sent to the site, analyzed the sample and quickly determined that it was icing sugar,” said a spokesman for the Paris fire brigade.
“The incident was taken very seriously” and the National Assembly will file a complaint,’’ said the presidency of the Assembly.
Meyer Habib said he regularly receives death threats. ‘’But the presence of powder is new…I am worried about France. We have the right not to agree with my positions but threatening a citizen with death, this is not normal,’’ he said.
“I am a parliament member representing the 150,000 French living in Israel and I intend to defend them as best I can. Today, this is a new anti-Semitism called anti-Zionism,” he added.
Francis Kalifat, President of Crif, the umbrella representative group of French Jewish institutions, expresses his full solidarity with Habib.