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Top French Chef To Attend Culinary Festival in Israel, Dismisses Boycotters as “Misinformed”

A famous Parisian chef who plans on attending an international culinary festival in Israel pushed back against anti-Israel activists on social media, calling them “misinformed,” the Jewish Telegraphic Agency reported Thursday.

Stéphane Jégo, head chef of Chez L’Ami Jean in Paris, wrote on Twitter that activists who attempted to dissuade him from visiting Israel were suffering from “an affliction [hitting] people who are, at best, misinformed, mix everything up or at worst biased and dishonest.” Those activists had been picketing his restaurant in recent weeks and have harassed him online.

Round Tables, a conference hosted by American Express, is bringing international chefs to Israel to partner with some of Tel Aviv’s top restaurants.

Jégo noted in one of his tweets that the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) movement is illegal in France, a reference to a ruling last year by the nation’s highest court that activists singling out Israel had “provoke[d] discrimination, hatred or violence toward a person or group of people on grounds of their origin, their belonging or their not belonging to an ethnic group, a nation, a race or a certain religion.”

Jégo made news earlier this year when his restaurant featured food prepared by Mohammad El Khaldy, a refugee from Syria.

[Photo: AFP / YouTube ]