Israelis rush to get their hands on new edition of once-unknown Charlie Hebdo
Tel Aviv bookseller says she has received more than one hundred calls for the first edition following terror attack.
By NATHAN WISEPeople queue for the new issue of satirical French weekly Charlie Hebdo at a kiosk in Nice.(photo credit: REUTERS)
Before the terror in France earlier this month that killed twelve people at the French weekly magazine Charlie Hebdo, very few people in Israel had ever heard of the satirical journal and even less ever read it.But demand has spiked for the so called "survivor's edition" of Charlie Hebdo, the first one released since the attack.Sarah Postec, a bookseller at the French bookstore Libraire Du Foyer in central Tel Aviv told The Jerusalem Post that she has made a waiting list of fifty people who want to receive the latest edition of the iconoclastic journal. "We have received more than 100 calls for Charlie Hebdo and many people are also coming in off the street asking for it," Postec said.Postec said that her store does not carry Charlie Hebdo but may have carried it around ten years ago. She said readers in Israel do not read the journal because it is far too left-wing for the local audience."I tried to ask a friend to buy me some copies in France but it was sold in minutes," Postec said. She said the local Steimatzky's bookstore chain ordered 100 copies and she asked to receive a few copies from the order. The first edition since the attack by Islamist gunmen sold out within minutes on Wednesday. The cover features a cartoon of the Prophet Mohammad that defenders praised as art but critics saw as a new provocation.Millions of copies of the edition were printed, dwarfing the usual 60,000 print run. On its cover, a tearful Mohammad holds a "Je suis Charlie" sign under the words "All is forgiven."Reuters contributed to this report.
