Violence is becoming worryingly common on the streets of France

It’s been a brutal month in France but one would barely know it from the reaction of much of the political and media class. Their attention has been focused on a rapper called Médine, who was invited at the start of August to appear at the Green party’s summer conference, which opened in the Channel port city of Le Havre on Thursday. 

In the time between being invited and the conference, the 40-year-old rapper of Algerian descent became embroiled in a social media brouhaha after he described the Jewish writer Rachel Khan as a ‘ResKHANpée,’; this is a crass play on words, ‘rescapée’ (survivor) being the word for someone who survived the Holocaust. Khan’s grandparents came through the holocaust. 

Médine subsequently apologised for his ‘clumsiness’ but insisted that his tweet was not anti-Semitic. He commented: ‘I’m part of those who put the fight against anti-Semitism and anti-Muslim racism on the same level.