Jews aren't served there?

This post seems to engender a lot of interest, judging by the relative flood of visitors to my blog in the last three days.

My attempt to find some fresh details that may shed some more scintillating light upon the incident have not been successful. The story has been reported in the more mainstream media, such as in "Haaretz" and "Le monde".

The owner of the cafe seems to have confirmed that an incident did take place but that it was triggered by the patron's odd behaviour, and apparently was initially about prices... The police seems to have been sceptical from the beginning. The mayor is very concerned about the image of his city.

Nothing could be stranger than the this response to the story, published in one of my favourite Internet haunts:

Needless to say Engage, those online guardians against criticising Israel, woops, I mean antisemitism, have picked up on the story with a post to the Engage ...

Yes, indeed, the potentially malign nature of this incident pales in comparison with the mendacity of "Engage" in reporting and then withdrawing the story (can you even begin to figure out the point of this critique?). The main concern of the blog in question, a pro-Palestinian, antiZionist Jewish blog, seems to be more (much more) interested in needling Engage's editor-in-chief rather than focus on what they purport to care deeply about.

I sometimes visit the blogs where these people hang out and I am surprised, always, at the scarcity of what is called "Jewish genius" there, by which I mean, the kind of argumentation that is based on knowledge, verifiable facts, common sense, rational thinking and a little respect for another's different point of view.

All attitude, very little substance.

It's all about autoerotic admiration and very little to do with Palestinian suffering.

There, I got carried away myself in this useless discourse. Enough.

The main point of my post was this question: why is this story about Prof. Kalmann so interesting to so many people from so many different and so distant lands?

I'm almost afraid to ask.