Miss France runner-up targeted by anti-Semitic abuse
by Thomas Adamson, The Associated Press
Posted Dec 21, 2020 4:58 am EDT
Last Updated Dec 21, 2020 at 5:14 am EDT
PARIS — France’s interior minister has led high-profile condemnation of anti-Semitic abuse directed at the runner-up of Miss France 2021, who has Israeli origins.
Saying he was “deeply shocked by the rain of anti-Semitic insults,” Gerald Darmanin noted in a tweet that police were now mobilized to investigate.
April Benayoum, 21, came second in Saturday’s televised pageant, but her moment in the limelight was quickly sullied. When, in an on-set interview, she called herself Italian-Israeli, the comment triggered a wave of abuse on Twitter. Some of the tweets invoked the Holocaust.