Jewish French MP gets white powder in the mail

Dozens of policemen and firefighters have converged on Jewish-French legislator Meyer Habib's office in Paris after he received an envelope filled with white powder.

The envelope had arrived at Habib's office earlier on Sunday and was opened by his assistant. After finding the white power with a threatening note, a wing at the Bourbon Palace was put under quarantine which has since been lifted.

The note said "stupid Jew, you will die and we will hurt you".

Habib told the Behadrei Haredim website that such threats are not new. "This morning my parliamentary assistant opened the letter. He immediately called for security, they closed the wing where my office was kept for an hour, and carried out tests on the powder. The powder proved to be not dangerous," said Habib.

"I'm used to it, it's not new, there are pro-Palestinian groups and jihadists here who do not like what I do and represent, and they threaten me in different ways."

Regarding security, Habib said that "I have security on me regularly, security is not reinforced after the letter, the French parliament will file a complaint with the police, they are already investigating other cases."

Habib, formerly the Deputy Chairman of the French Jewish umbrella group CRIF (Conseil Représentatif des Institutions Juives de France), was elected in 2013 to the French parliament, the first time an observant Jew was chosen as a lawmaker.

Habib is close to Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu who endorsed his candidacy.

The 52-year-old, who is married with four children, divides his time between Paris and Jerusalem. He was a member of the Beitar youth movement in his teens and made aliyah to Israel in the late 1970s. In Israel, he studied at the Technion in Haifa, graduating as an industrial engineer.