Marion Fesneau-Castaing, the French cultural attaché, who attacked an IDF soldier last week in the Jordan Valley will be expelled from Israel, according to a report in Yisrael Hayom.

Israel filed a complaint with France over the incident, and the two countries decided that the best move would be for the diplomat to leave Israel, and that it was to be considered an isolated incident.

Fesneau-Castaing will be removed from Israel by December.

Based on content from: IDF Blog.

Yesterday, following an illegal attempt by Palestinian Authority Arabs and foreign activists to erect an illegal outpost in Samaria’s Hemdat area, in the northern Jordan Valley, security personnel responded to the site with the intent to implement a standing Supreme Court decision.

At the site, Arabs and foreign activists violently responded, throwing stones and striking Israeli security forces. The security personnel contained the violence with riot dispersal means, seized the tents and detained three Palestinian Authority Arabs who were the main instigators.

Reports that foreign diplomats abused their diplomatic privileges are currently being reviewed and, if required, complaints will be filed with the relevant authorities.

Israeli Foreign Ministry spokesperson, Paul Hirschson, said a formal complaint might be filed with the French over the involvement of French diplomat, Marion Castaing. “If she did participate then a formal complaint will be filed because that is not the way diplomats behave,” he said.

This is what is being shown in the mainstream media: French diplomat Marion Castaing on the floor, with some media outlets questioning about the guns supposedly pointed at her by an Israeli police officer.

But this picture is being shown out of context, and the status of the gun supposedly pointed at her, purposefully misrepresented.

This is what the media fails to show:

The photo used to spread this misinformation was taken as a screenshot from a video with footage clearly showing that Marion Castaing was neither physically dragged to the floor nor had guns pointed at her. Also, the photo clearly shows that the officer is holding his gun by the magazine, nowhere near the rifle’s grip.

Many photos and videos have been manipulated to show Israel in a negative light. This is just another example of the length to which people will go to spread lies as part of the propaganda war against Israel.

Below is the edited “news” report, as reported by Iran’s state controlled TV.

A group of teenagers “of African and North African origins” assaulted ten 13-year-old Jewish students at a public sports center in Paris  from the Ner HaTorah Jewish school on Thursday, according to France’s Bureau for Vigilance against Anti-Semitism.

There were no serious injuries.

The attackers asked the Jews to stop “occupying the area,” the report said, called them “dirty Jews,” and said “Hitler didn’t finish the job.”

When police arrived, the attackers fled, according to a bureau report published Friday on the French Jewish news site JSSnews. Parents and pupils said the attack turned into a fight as the Jewish pupils tried to defend themselves.

Two French soldiers who posed in front of a Paris synagogue a few weeks ago while making an anti-Semitic gesture will be sanctioned by the French army.

The soldiers of the Alpine Hunters elite unit currently are the subject of an investigation, the French military’s spokesperson, Bruno Louisfert, told radio station RTL France Tuesday. He said they will be punished for the act.

Louisfert said that they posed for the photograph in front of the entrance door to the Beth David synagogue with their left hand placed on their right shoulder and their right hand extended over their right thigh.

Dubbed the “quenelle,” the gesture is the brainchild of the anti-Semitic comedian Dieudonne, who invented several anti-Semitic words and gestures seen to be too vague to violate France’s law forbidding hate speech and Holocaust denial. The quenelle is thought to echo the Nazi salute.

In an unrelated incident, unidentified vandals caused serious damage to a Jewish school in Marseille in southern France on Tuesday. The same Chabad-affiliated elementary school, Haya Moushka, was targeted in a similar incident three years ago.

Tuesday’s attack left many shattered windows. The school’s toilets also were smashed, along with heating radiators.

The White House announced Monday that more than dozen more countries have formally backed a “strong international response” to the use of chemical weapons in Syria.

The United States now has the support of 24 countries, not including Israel which has tried to lay low. The list includes an interesting collection of allies, such as Saudi Arabia, Turkey, Italy, Germany, France, Albania, Australia and Denmark.

“We condemn in the strongest terms the horrific chemical weapons attack in the suburbs of Damascus on August 21st that claimed the lives of so many men, women and children,” the statement says. “The evidence clearly points to the Syrian government being responsible for the attack, which is part of a pattern of chemical weapons use by the regime.”

The city of Metz in eastern France has closed one of its streets to vehicular traffic for the High Holiday season through the end of Yom Kippur.

The closure of Rabbin Bloch Street was announced by TCRM, the public transport company of the Messine region, approximately 40 miles northwest of Strasbourg, citing “the Jewish holidays.” The closure began on the afternoon of Sept. 6 and will continue until the end of Yom Kippur, the night of Sept. 14, its website said.

The announcement of the closure provoked angry reactions by some Muslims, who said it reflected a double standard in French authorities’ attitude to Jewish and Muslim sensibilities in applying separation of church and state.

One of France’s leading Muslim news sites, islametinfo.fr, published an editorial on Friday stating that although “it is normal for residents to respect the wishes of others in special moments,” the hitherto uncontested closure at Metz “begs comparison” with a ban imposed in 2011 on street prayers by Muslims in Paris.

Marine Le Pen, leader of the ultranationalist Front National, compared the prayers to “the occupation” — a reference to the Nazi occupation of France. The street prayers at Barbes were the result of overcrowded conditions at the local mosque.

“Strangely, extremist politicians have not found it important to intervene at Metz,” the editorial read. “The double standard that has been applied on secularism has been allowed to endure for too long.”

Metz’s Jewish community, which first established itself in the city in the 16th century, had approximately 4,000 members in 1987, according to the Encyclopedia Judaica. Several Jewish institutions are located on Rabbin Bloch Street.

Rabbi Elie Bloch, head of the Metz community during the Holocaust, saved the lives of 15 Jewish children whom he helped hide from the Nazi occupation. He died at the age of 34 with his family after the Nazis arrested them and sent them to their deaths in a concentration camp in Poland.

Originally published at Gatestone Institute.

“Nothing could be worse than posting a secularism charter on the wall and then the students see around them that what actually happens in school life is the exact opposite of what we tell them.” — Philippe Tournier, Secretary General, French Teachers Union.

The French government has announced a plan to post a “secularism charter” in all public schools in France by the end of September.

The document — which is to appear in a prominent location in all of the 55,000 public schools in France — would serve to remind students and teachers of a list of secular principles underpinning the separation of mosque and state.

Although the initiative has enjoyed a generally positive reception, many observers are saying they doubt the Socialist government of French President François Hollande will have the political willpower actually to enforce secular principles in French schools — with or without a charter.

This skepticism stems from the fact that Muslim children constitute an increasingly large proportion of the 10 million students in the French public school system — and because Muslim parents make up an increasingly important voting bloc in French politics. Muslims, in fact, cast the deciding vote that thrust Hollande into the Elysée Palace in May 2012.

French Education Minister Vincent Peillon, who announced the plan in an interview with the French daily newspaper L’Est Républicain on August 26, said, “Everyone is entitled to his opinion, but not to dispute lessons or to skip classes [for religious reasons]. The charter will be a reminder of [secular] principles. It will be posted in all schools in late September. The law provides for a moral and civic education that promotes freedom from judgment, the capacity to emancipate, and rights and duties. I want to see the return of those values of the [French] Republic in schools in 2013.”

Although the final content of the charter will not be made public until the middle of September, a draft of the list which contains a total of 17 paragraphs has been circulating since July 11.

The first section of the draft list is entitled “The Republic is Secular,” and consists of six rather straightforward paragraphs that mostly echo the French Constitution. Paragraph 2 of the draft, for example, states that, “France is a republic that is indivisible, secular, democratic and social. It ensures equality before the law, on the whole of its territory, for all citizens. It respects all creeds.”

According to Paragraph 3, “The secular Republic is based upon the separation of religion and state. The state is neutral with regard to religious or spiritual beliefs. There is no state religion.” Paragraph 4 states that “Secularism guarantees freedom of conscience for all. Everyone is free to believe or not to believe. It allows the free expression of his beliefs, respecting those of others within the limits of public order.” And so on.

The second section of the list, entitled “The School is Secular,” changes tack by directly confronting Muslim students who take to disrupting classes whenever they do not agree with their teachers on certain subjects.

Paragraph 14 states: “Lessons are secular. To ensure that students are as objectively open as possible to the diversity of worldviews as well as to the extent and accuracy of knowledge, no subject is a priori excluded from scientific and educational inquiry.”

According to Paragraph 15, “No student may invoke religious or political convictions to challenge and/or to prevent a teacher from teaching certain parts of the curriculum.” Paragraph 16 states that “the wearing of conspicuous symbols or dress by pupils as relates to their religious affiliation is prohibited in public schools.”

The draft charter also states that “the secular school offers students the conditions to forge their own personality, exercise their free will and learn about citizenship. It protects them from proselytizing and from any pressure that prevents them from making their own choices.”

Reactions to the announcement have been mixed, with some questioning if or how the measure will be enforced.

The Secretary General of the French Teachers Union, Philippe Tournier, told Radio Europe 1 that while he welcomed the secularism charter in principle, he worried about its implementation. “The intentions are quite positive, but the essential thing still remains: putting into force what [the charter] affirms,” he said. “Nothing could be worse than posting a secularism charter on the wall, and then the students see around them that what actually happens in school life is the exact opposite of what we tell them.”

Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan said Israel was behind last month’s military coup in Egypt.

Erdogan told a meeting of the provincial chairs of his ruling Justice and Development, or AKP, party that he has evidence that Israel was involved in the July 3 overthrow of Egyptian President Mohamed Morsi, the Turkish Hurriyet news service reported.

“Who is behind this? Israel. We have evidence,” the prime minister said, according to Hurriyet.

He cited as proof a statement by a French intellectual he identified as Jewish, who told the Israeli justice minister during a visit to France before Egypt’s 2011 elections, “The Muslim Brotherhood will not be in power even if they win the elections. Because democracy is not the ballot box,” Hurriyet reported.

The White House condemned Erdogan’s remarks.

“Suggesting that Israel is somehow responsible for recent events in Egypt is offensive, unsubstantiated and wrong,” White House spokesman Josh Earnest told reporters later Tuesday.

Turkey downgraded diplomatic ties with Israel and later expelled Israel’s ambassador following the Mavi Marmara flotilla incident in May 2010 that resulted in the deaths of nine Turkish nationals in a confrontation with Israeli Navy commandos. The ship was trying to evade Israel’s maritime blockade of the Gaza Strip.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu apologized to Erdogan in March for the incident, and representatives of the countries have met for reconciliation talks. The talks reportedly are held up over the amount of compensation that Israel is to pay to the families of the Turkish casualties and how the payments are to be characterized.