Sir, – That the quenelle is anti-Semitic is beyond dispute (Liam Cooke, January 3rd). In France it has become part of a social media craze in which people find ever-more offensive places to insult Jews by doing a quenelle.
There is even a photograph of someone doing a quenelle outside the Ozar Hatorah Jewish school in Toulouse, where Mohammed Merah murdered three Jewish children and a Jewish teacher in March 2012
If the people in these photographs did a Nazi salute at any of these sites they would risk instant arrest and prosecution.
The quenelle is a way of getting around the law, while still getting the same thrill of breaking the taboo against anti-Semitism. The quenelle as an insult was invented by the avowedly anti-Semitic French comic Dieudonné Mbala Mbala.
Anelka has excused his quenelle by saying that it was “just a special dedication to my comedian friend Dieudonné”; but this is no excuse, it just confirms the offence, as he knows what his friend stands for.
What is most amazing and disturbing is that three French international soccer star players have now associated themselves with the reverse Nazi salute in an era of multi-culturalism from which they have benefited. – Yours, etc,
FRANK BAIGEL,
Bury, Lancs,England.