Dieudonne Mbala Mbala arrested following brawl with two Jews in Paris

Shirli Sitbon:

Controversial French comic Dieudonne Mbala Mbala was briefly arrested last Tuesday after spraying a 25-year-old man with tear gas in a furniture store in the 11th arrondissement of Paris.

The black comedian, who has previously raised the ire of the French Jewish community with his seemingly portrayal of religious Jews, blamed CRIF, “Zionist militia groups” and Jewish a political leader for incident.

Mbala Mbala told the police he had been attacked by the young man, Sebastien Goeton, and his friend Allan Nathan a short time earlier while he was with his children on Faubourg Saint-Antoine street.

The actor explained he sprayed Goeton because he wanted him to stay put until the Police arrived to the store. When the police arrived it arrested all three protagonists.

The incident started less than an hour earlier when Goeton and Nathan recognised Dieudonne and his children on the street close to the actor’s theatre, The Main d’Or.

The teenage Jews told the actor they did not approve of his repeated accusations against the Jewish community.

They told him he was indirectly responsible for Ilan Halimi’s death in February because he contributed to the anti-Semitic cliche of the rich, dishonest Jew in his one-man shows and interviews.

Ilan Halimi’s murderers told the police they kidnapped him because he was Jewish and Jews had money.

Dieudonne testified he told Goeton, and Nathan to back-off and showed them his tear-gas grenade. He then went into his building and when he came back out Dieudonne said the young men threw at him a glass object that landed near one of his children.

Dieudonne then decided to catch Goeton and Nathan. He brought his kids back inside the building and then followed the two young men into one of Faubourg Saint-Antoine’s furniture stores they were trying to hide in.

According to Le Parisien newspaper, the store manager said Dieudonne was very aggressive and he and the two young men kept on insulting each other.

Then Dieudonne sprayed Goeton with tear gas, explaining that he did so because the young man tried to flee. The salesman denied that part of the testimony and said Goeton was willing to wait for the police in the store.

After their arrest, both men pressed charges against each other.

The comic accused the Jewish umbrella group CRIF and Jewish political leader Julien Dray (spokesman of the Socialist party) of inciting against him because they too evaluated that Dieudonne had indirect responsibility in Ilan Halimi’s kidnapping.

This is not the first time Dieudonne Mbala Mbala has been involved in a violent incident. In 2005 he was physically assaulted by four young Jews while performing in the French island of Martinique. His attackers spent a month in jail.

The actor launched numerous controversies since 2002, mostly against the Judaism and the Jewish community. Among other things, he said in an interview in 2002 that “Abraham invented racism”, in 2003 he showed up in a live TV show dressed as an orthodox Jew with a swastika around his arm and maid a Nazi salute while saying “Isra-heil”, explaining he wasn’t targeting all Jews but just “extremist colons”.

In all of his trials Dieudonne was discharged either on first instance or on appeal. In March 2006 he was condemned in first instance for saying his opponents in the Jewish community were “slave-traders reconverted into banking”. The comic made an appeal.

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