(JTA) — Islamists in Algeria shouted anti-Semitic slogans at a rally celebrating the slaying of 12 people in Paris.
Several dozen men participated in the rally that took place Wednesday outside a mosque in the Belouizidad district of Algiers, the news site tamurt.info reported Thursday.
They shouted “strike France and the Jews,” “Allah is the greatest” and “Charlie is dead.” French authorities suspect the Jan. 7 attack on the offices of the Charlie Hebdo weekly was carried out by Islamists who targeted the publication for its satirical cartoons lampooning Islam.
Elsewhere in Algiers, Islamists celebrated the deadly attack with a dance party on the street near the Djamaa Lihoud mosque, tamurt.info reported.
In France, Jewish groups called on their members to attend a vigil in Paris on Jan. 11 in memory of the people killed in the attack.
“All French citizens must stand united with Charlie Hebdo,” the Union of Jewish Students of France, or UEJF, wrote in its statement about the rally.
CRIF, the umbrella group of French Jewish communities, also called on its members to attend.
The two gunmen, caught on video outside the magazine’s offices, are the subject of a massive manhunt.
Following the killing, two cofounders of the Free Gaza Movement suggested the attack was carried out by the Israeli Mossad spy agency to malign Muslims.
Greta Berlin wrote on Facebook: “Mossad just hit the Paris offices of Charlie Hebdo in a clumsy false flag designed to damage the accord between Palestine and France,” the website honestreporting.com reported.
Another cofounder of the movement, Mary Hughes-Thompson, wrote on Twitter: “#Hebdo killings indefensible. Can’t help thinking #JSIL Mossad false flag though.”
CRIF and other Jewish organizations have criticized Charlie Hebdo in the past for publishing material deemed offensive to Muslims and Jews, including a front-page cartoon in 2012 that showed a haredi Orthodox Jew and a Muslim saying, “No mocking.”
In 2009, a French court acquitted a Charlie Hebdo cartoonist of incitement to hatred charges over a cartoon that suggested that the French former president Nicolas Sarkozy was converting to Judaism for financial reasons.
Citing the Sarkozy case, Wikileaks on Thursday said on its Twitter account that “the Jewish pro-censorship lobby legitimized attacks on Charlie Hebdo for ‘offensive’ speech.”
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