French Prime Minister’s Nephew Stabbed in Eilat

Jerusalem, 9 January, 2018 (TPS) -- Three tourists, among them the nephew of French Prime Minister Edouard Phillipe, were stabbed in Eilat last week.

Police said the incident, which occurred last Thursday on the city’s promenade, began when a group of men tried to provoke the victims, eventually attacking them with knives. The attackers – believed to be Israelis – fled the scene.  The tourists were evacuated to Yoseftal Medical Center in the city and listed in moderate condition. Police officials added that they were examining CCTV footage of the area and searching local hotels in order to find the suspects, but said that as of this writing, no suspects have been detained.

France’s Ambassador to Israel, Hélène Le Gal declined to comment on the incident, but embassy officials said they had helped the victims return to Paris on Friday.

Philippe recently defended the publication of a controversial new printing of a well-known series of anti-Semitic pamphlets written by Louis Ferdinand Céline (1894-1961), a prominent French supporter of Adolf Hitler.  The pamphlets had been out of print since the end of the second world war but Gallimard, a major French publisher is planning to publish a new 1000-page collection of the essays in May. In an interview last weekend, Phillipe defended the move on grounds of free speech and said that he was “not afraid” of the new publication and that “you cannot deny the writer’s central position in French literature.”However he insisted that a carefully composed critical and contextual commentary should be added