Yossi Schwartz ISL (RCIT section in Israel/Occupied Palestine), 11.02.2024
French President Emmanuel Macron described the October 7 attack by Hamas on Israel as the “biggest anti-Semitic massacre of our century” as he hosted a ceremony paying tribute to the 42 Zionists who immigrated to Israel from France and were killed on October 7th.
The LFI, France’s biggest left-wing party in parliament, said it would also be appropriate for Macron to host a memorial event for the French citizens killed in Israel’s bombardments of Gaza.
“There were 42 French citizens who were killed. It’s normal and it’s important that France pays homage to them. It’s a national homage in which all the political groups are invited,” said MP Manuel Bompard on Sunday” [1]
Mathilde Panot, the head of the France Unbowed parliamentary group, said she also plans to attend the ceremony, and called for authorities to pay tribute to the French-Palestinians who were killed in Israel’s bombing campaigns of Gaza.
The LFI described Hamas as “an armed offensive of Palestinian forces“
“It is obvious that we owe the same emotion and the same dignity to the French victims of the bombings in Gaza, and this tribute will be paid to them at another time,” the presidential official said. Many families of French citizens who died in Hamas’s attack emphasizing they do not want to see figures from the hard left France Unbowed (LFI) party in attendance, accusing it of failing to sufficiently denounce the attack and term Hamas a terror group” [2]
Then why did the LFI led by Jean-Luc Mélenchon insist on participation in such a pro Zionist event rather than denounce it? Why do they need bourgeois respectability?
It is not surprising that the French imperialist called the attack on the settler colonialists an act of anti-Semitism rather than an act of the Palestinian resistance against Zionism. France not only committed genocide in Algeir, helped Israel to build the site for nuclear weapons, attack with Israel Egypt in 1956 but in WWII participated in the genocide of the Jews.
“In a message on the 77th anniversary of the massacre of May 8, 1945 committed by the French colonial army against Algerian demonstrators, Algerian President Tebboune said the bloodshed was a turning point in Algeria’s history. The May 8, 1945 massacre was the largest and ugliest carnage committed by France in a single day where Algerian official figures estimate that around 45,000 Algerians were killed for demanding independence to their country. Algeria represents the most recent and bloodiest example of France’s colonial history on the African continent. Approximately 1.5 million Algerians were killed and millions more displaced in an eight-year struggle for independence that started in 1954” [3]
In Vietnam the French army committed massacres. The most known is the Haiphong Massacre which occurred on November 23, 1946, when the French cruiser Suffren and several light ships bombarded the Vietnamese coastal city of Haiphong, killing some 6,000 Vietnamese people. [4]
“When the Third Republic collapsed under German attack in the early summer of 1940, there were approximately 350,000 Jews in France. Less than half of them were French citizens. Many were refugees who had fled Nazi persecution.
France signed an armistice with Germany which went into effect on June 25, 1940. Under the terms of the armistice, Germany annexed the provinces of Alsace and Lorraine which shared borders with Germany and had long been a bone of contention between the two countries
As early as the winter of 1940-1941, however, the SS and police had established an apparatus for the Jewish affairs office of the Reich and Central Office for Security under command of SS Lieutenant Colonel Adolf Eichmann. In March 1942, with the replacement of the Military Commander in occupied France and Belgium and in preparation for the deportation of the French Jews, Heinrich Himmler appointed SS Major General Carl Oberg as Higher SS and Police Header for German-occupied France
In July 1940, the French National Assembly voted to suspend the constitution of the Third Republic and placed the new “Vichy regime” under the government of Marshal Henri Philippe Petain. Under this government Jews were arrested and sent to the death camps.” [5]
In 1956 France, Britain and Israel attacked Egypt because Nasser nationalized the Suez Canal, supported the independence of Algeria and stood with the Palestinians.
The demagogic concept that to oppose the Zionist apartheid and its crimes against the Palestinians is anti-Semitism is not only an attack on the right of free speech but for the Jews as Dave Zirin an American Jew wrote: “What Netanyahu, Jonathan Greenblatt of the Anti-Defamation League, and Hollywood amplifiers like Juliana Margulies (three people who seem to be trying to “out-racist” one another) push is the idea that criticism and protests against Israel’s policies are inherently antisemitic and therefore need to be silenced by the state. Their logic threatens Jews everywhere. If politically confronting Israel is branded as antisemitic, then for people new to this movement, it may stand to reason that to be Jewish is to be a Zionist. Netanyahu has devoted his life to binding the fate of all Jews to the furtherance of the Israeli state. This is rank antisemitism: the assumption that to be Jewish is to support Israel’s crimes. To be clear: Anyone who attempts to fasten a 5,000-year-old religion to a 150-year-old colonial project is guilty of antisemitism. They are pushing the idea that my family, merely because of our religion, supports war crimes abroad and the crackdown on critics at home.” [6]
Down with the Imperialists!
For Palestine red and free from the river to the sea!
Endnotes:
[1] https://www.politico.eu/article/france-macron-october-7-tribute-controversy/
[2] https://www.france24.com/en/france/20240207-macron-pays-tribute-to-french-victims-of-hamas-attack-on-israel
[3] https://www.aa.com.tr/en/middle-east/frances-massacres-in-algeria-cant-be-forgotten-tebboune/2582040
[4] Cirillo, Roger (2015). The Shape of Battles to Come. Louisville: University Press of Kentucky. p. 187
[5] https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/france
[6] https://www.thenation.com/article/politics/zionism-antisemitism-congress/