A French-Jewish DJ has complained to police of incitement to violence after she was forced off stage due to protests by the audience at a performance in the southeastern city of Grenoble last week, her lawyer said on Thursday.
Butch filed criminal complaints in Grenoble and Paris alleging incitement to hatred and violence, assault, and obstruction of artistic freedom among other complaints, her lawyer, Audrey Msellati, told AFP.
Videos from the July 18 concert show several activists from the La France Insoumise (“France Unbowed”) far-left party attempting to push past security guards in Butch’s direction while asking her: “What did you do in Tel Aviv? Why did you support the Yadan bill?”
Butch, whose full name is Leslie Barbara Butch, was said online, on anti-Israel forums, to have appeared at a gay cultural event in Tel Aviv last year, though AFP reported that she did not attend.
The so-called Yadan bill, which the ruling coalition decided to put on ice earlier this year, sought to address the overlap between anti-Zionism and antisemitism, and to give courts tools to treat anti-Zionist incitement similarly to how antisemitic incitement is handled.
In France and beyond, Jewish and Israeli artists have been heckled, deplatformed and chased off stage with increasing frequency since Oct. 7, 2023, when a Hamas attack on Israel triggered a regional war that was accompanied by an explosion of antisemitic incidents and sentiment in Europe and beyond.
In the Netherlands, a Chanukah concert last year was canceled and then reintroduced under threat of legal action by organizers. In Belgium, a municipal venue declined to host the Munich Philharmonic last year because its conductor is Israeli.
