PARIS (JTA) -- Jean-Marie Le Pen, exiting leader of France's far-right National Front party, made a public anti-Semitic slur while handing over the party leadership to his daughter.
Le Pen suggested in a weekend farewell speech that Jews cry wolf, unduly claiming to be victims of anti-Semitism, during his comments on the case of a Jewish French journalist who filed an official complaint against the National Front last weekend.
Mickael Szames, a journalist for the French media station France 24, said over the weekend that he was violently pushed out of a private National Front gala and injured by a group of security guards, reportedly because he was Jewish. He filed an official complaint over the attack.
In response, Le Pen, 82, jokingly told journalists that "the person in question thought he could say that he was kicked out because he is Jewish. It didn't show, either on his (press) card, or on his nose, if I dare say."
The National Front denied that Szames was beaten and said it would file a complaint against him for slander.
Le Pen's comments in the incident come as no surprise. In his farewell speech Saturday, Le Pen said he had no regrets for calling the Holocaust a "detail" in the history of World War II, nor for other comments that repeatedly cost him fines in court and a reputation as France's leading political xenophobe.
France's largest Jewish umbrella group, the CRIF, said in a statement Monday in response to Le Pen's outburst that "we understand that Jean-Marie Le Pen feels the need to show that he still exists to a small extent, and that he is not foregoing any of his obsessions."
The American Gathering of Holocaust Survivors and their Descendants also said in a statement issued Monday that Holocaust survivors "are shocked but not surprised that Le Pen would once again revert to foul and offensive Jew-baiting in remarks at the close of his notorious political career."
"Until it distances itself from such comments, the National Front party will live in the shadow of these words of hate," the statement said.
New party president Marine Le Pen, 42, refrains from the kind of advertised disdain her father showed for the role of the Jewish community in French society. But like her father, she has taken a firm stance against the spread of Islam in France.
The newly elected leader of the National Front recently compared Muslim prayers in the streets around certain Parisian neighborhoods to the Nazi occupation. She was overwhelmingly elected president of the party over the weekend and is expected to modernize the group into a more powerful political force.
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Banks repossessed a record one million US homes in 2010, and could surpass that number this year, figures show. Foreclosure tracker RealtyTrac said about five million homeowners were at least two months behind on their mortgage payments. Foreclosures are likely to remain numerous while unemployment remains stubbornly high, the group said. Among the worst hit states were Nevada, Arizona, Florida and California, once at the heart of the housing boom. 
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... The initial successes of our forces against the Soviets were due to the fact that the Russians were not stationed in defense positions, but were instead positioned right at the front for attack, which made it possible for us to quickly encircle large Soviet forces. Thus, in the first weeks of the war, we were able to capture more than three million prisoners of war as well as enormous quantities of war equipment, all of which was on the frontier, positioned for attack. That's the truth of the matter, which can be proven. 
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A new biography of Joseph Goebbels, the limping Nazi propaganda chief, shows him to be a serial seducer who kept detailed notes of his affairs ... In his 912-page study, Joseph Goebbels: Biography, Peter Longerich, a German academic and history professor at the University of London, has delved into rarely-accessed material from his subject's diaries, which span 30 years, to paint a remarkable portrait of the man who became one of Hitler's most trusted lieutenants. 
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... "The book exposes the operational methods of the Israeli military in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, and the impact of these methods on the people who live in the territories -- Palestinians, settlers and the soldiers themselves," reads the introduction in an advance copy obtained by AFP. The book targets ordinary Israelis and tries to show that, contrary to the army's claims that its actions are purely defensive, the policy on the ground is "an offensive one which includes expropriation of territory, tightening control over the civilian population and instilling fear." 
Former Israeli soldiers who have testified against army abuses have for the first time given up their anonymity, to make their voices all the harder to ignore ... / For anyone who has covered Israel, the West Bank and Gaza over the past few years, reading Occupation of the Territories, the new book from the Israeli ex-soldiers organisation Breaking the Silence, can be an eerily evocative experience ... While Israeli forces have indeed had to deal with "concrete threats in the past decade, including terrorist attacks on Israeli citizens", their operations, especially in the West Bank, extend beyond the solely defensive and "systematically" lead to the "de facto annexation" of occupied territory "through the dispossession of Palestinian residents". 
The British government opted for the Trident nuclear weapons system because it estimated it could kill up to ten million Russians and inflict "unacceptable damage" on the former Soviet Union, according to secret Whitehall documents written in the 1970s. The macabre calculations that underpinned the decision in 1980 to replace Polaris nuclear missiles with Trident have been revealed by a Ministry of Defence memo, marked "personal and top secret". In a nuclear war, Britain would have had to be prepared "to finish what we start", it said. Other MoD documents set out in chilling detail exactly how an attack on Moscow and St Petersburg could cause enough death and destruction "to bring about the breakdown of the city as a functioning community". 
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... There is a policy open to this nation that will lead to success -- a policy that leaves us free to follow our own way of life, and to develop our own civilization. It is not a new and untried idea. It was advocated by Washington. It was incorporated in the Monroe Doctrine. Under its guidance, the United States became the greatest nation in the world. It is based upon the belief that the security of a nation lies in the strength and character of its own people ... The time has come when those of us who believe in an independent American destiny must band together, and organize for strength. We have been led toward war by a minority of our people. This minority has power. It has influence. It has a loud voice. But it does not represent the American people. 
.. . But if Hitler was out to conquer the world - Britain, Africa, the Middle East, the United States, Canada, South America, India, Asia, Australia - why did he spend three years building that hugely expensive Siegfried Line to protect Germany from France? Why did he start the war with no surface fleet, no troop transports and only 29 oceangoing submarines? ... Why did he offer the British peace, twice, after Poland fell, and again after France fell? Why, when Paris fell, did Hitler not demand the French fleet, as the Allies demanded and got the Kaiser's fleet? Why did he not demand bases in French-controlled Syria to attack Suez? 
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