The Simon Wiesenthal Centre has urged French President Francois Hollande to strip former French Foreign Minister Roland Dumas of the Légion d’Honneur, France’s highest decoration, after he claimed that Prime Minister Manuel Valls was ‘’under influence’’ of his Jewish wife.
Richard Odier, president of the Simon Wiesenthal Center in France, and Shimon Samuels, the SWC’s Director for International Relations sent a joint letter to President Hollande expressing shock at Dumas’ “anti-Semitic attack” last week in an interview with French BFMTV.
The former minister under late President Francois Mitterrand said in the interview about Valls: “Everyone knows that he is married to someone… someone very good who has an influence on him.”
When asked if he believes Valls is under Jewish influence, Dumas responded, “Probably, I think so.” He then added, “Of course [he is influenced by his wife]. Why not?”
He has since refused to apologize for his comments.
The SWC said Dumas’ comments were “widely interpreted as an accusation against Valls of double loyalty, by implication, the regurgitation of a Dreyfus-style conspiracy charge of Jewish control of politicians and media.”
Dumas’ “Jewish influence” attack on the French Prime Minister is “contrary to the honor of France and tarnishes the Code of the Légion d’Honneur, at a time when the French Jewish community is in mourning,” the letter said.
The letter reminded that President Hollande stripped British fashion designer John Galliano of his Légion d’Honneur after he made anti-Semitic remarks.
Following the death of Maurice Papon, who was convicted for deporting 1,600 Jews from Bordeaux to Auschwitz between 1942 and 1944, Hollande also cancelled his decoration for “having dishonored the French State.”
"Failure to act decisively can evoke the shadows of a former charge of Jewish double loyalty in France – the Dreyfus Affair revisited," Odier and Samuels wrote.
Samuels commended President Hollande in that, "since last month’s Hyper Casher atrocity and this week's cemetery desecration (in eastern France), you have taken strong measures to assure the Jewish community of your concern for its safety", adding that "those who foment further Jew-hatred must now be sanctioned".