April Benayoum: Miss France 2021 First Runner-Up Receives Flood of Antisemitic Hate

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April Benayoum: Miss France 2021…

MISS FRANCE 3

Miss France 2021 — the 91st edition of the French national beauty pageant — took place on Dec. 19, 2020. The winner of the competition was Amandine Petit, who represented the region of Normandy. The first runner-up was April Benayoum, 21, a model and winner of the title Miss Provence. After Benayoum alluded to her part-Israeli background during an on-air interview, she was bombarded with antisemitic hate messages on social media.

Quote: “Renaud Muselier, a former French member of the European Parliament from the Provence region, called the attacks an ‘abomination.’ He emphasized that Ms. Benayoum was ‘French, of Italian and Israeli origin, from Provence, from the south,’ which means she ‘perfectly represents our region and our country.’ ”

Sources: BBC.com

Read “Miss France runner-up April Benayoum targeted by anti-Semitic tweets” >>

Read “Miss France runner-up targeted by wave of anti-Semitic abuse after on-stage interview” CBS >>

Photo: Ol Canadian

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“In the last weeks, our nation has seen a series of anti-Semitic attacks targeting and terrorizing American Jews. We have seen a brick thrown through window of a Jewish-owned business in Manhattan; a swastika carved into the door of a synagogue in Salt Lake City; families threatened outside a restaurant in Los Angeles; and museums in Florida and Alaska, dedicated to celebrating Jewish life and culture and remembering the Holocaust, vandalized with anti-Jewish messages. These attacks are despicable, unconscionable, un-American, and they must stop.”

— President Joe Biden

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“I’ve served as a congregational rabbi for a decade or so. My leadership has coincided with an ominous rise in antisemitic incidents from vile online threats to the killing of 11 Jews at a Pittsburgh synagogue in 2018. During that time, I’ve listened to hundreds of conversations detailing real life encounters of antisemitism. I’ve heard diverse opinions and a wide range of experiences about its nature in the present day — from a swastika drawn in the bathroom of a school to microaggressions in the workplace and everything in between. But nearly every conversation I hear about antisemitism has one, surprising thing in common: in every instance where an antisemitic act has been committed, our culture — and conversations surrounding these hateful acts — tend to diminish or even deny antisemitism.”

— Rabbi Diana Fersko | MSN.com

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“Trump’s dinner with the musician Ye, who’s made a number of antisemitic remarks, and a notorious Holocaust-denying internet streamer [Nick Fuentes] is just the latest example of antisemitism’s increasing visibility in electoral politics… Trump is not the first Republican candidate or official to spend time with [Fuentes] and later claim not to know about his very outspoken, antisemitic beliefs.”

— Reporter Lisa Hagen | NPR.org