French teacher investigated for sharing anti-Semitism with students

Cnaan Liphshiz

(JTA) — The French education ministry began investigating a Parisian high school teacher who allegedly shared anti-Semitic conspiracy theories with her pupils on Facebook.

CRIF, the umbrella group of French Jewish communities, complained to the ministry about the teacher earlier this week, according to a report Thursday in the group’s newsletter.

It did not name the female teacher in question but said she teaches at the prestigious Janson-de-Sailly school, a post high-school preparatory course, and that she invited the course’s students to follow her Facebook page.

The CRIF report was based on original reporting by the Le Canard Enchainé, a satirical weekly, which, alongside cartoons and satirical articles, also features investigative journalism items and news.

On the teacher’s Facebook page, she wrote, according to Le Canard Enchainé, against “the American Jewish lobby” that she said supports Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign. She also wrote that French President Francois Hollande “is a Jew who benefited from his belonging to that community to ascend in politics and who now denies this,” pretending to have a ‘Catholic’ father on Wikipedia. Hollande “is Jewish and denies it. Backpedaling will begin all over, now that it is less beneficial for Jewry,” the teacher also wrote, according to the CRIF newsletter.

On the Holocaust, she wrote: “The Shoah was designed and organized by Jews.”