This article was written by activists of the New Anticapitalist Party-Revolutionaries (NPA-R) in France.
In recent weeks, a certain turning point seems to have affected part of French public opinion regarding the situation in Gaza. Last month, a poll estimated that “74% of French people would approve of sanctions against Israel if the massacre continues.” The way the question was asked alone testifies to the embarrassment of the polling institute… Colleagues and relatives who had not been heard from before are expressing their horror at the barbarity inflicted on the Gazans. In Paris, the June 14 demonstration brought together at least 30,000 people, a figure not seen for years. Will the vice loosen on activists supporting the Palestinian people?
Unprecedented repression…
As in all Western countries, supporting the rights of the Palestinian people in France has become increasingly difficult in recent years. During the Israeli offensive on Gaza in the summer of 2014, for example, demonstrators had already had to defy a ban issued by the Socialist government in order to march in Paris.
The attack perpetrated by Hamas on October 7, 2023 took the French state’s repression of supporters of the Palestinian cause to a new level. It has intensified in two ways. The authorities banned a number of events, from conferences to demonstrations, in the name of a “threat to public order.” This pretext was also used to expel Palestinian activist Mariam Abu Daqqa in November 2023 – to Egypt, since she could not return to Gaza, where 29 of her family members had already died under the bombs… Challenged in court, the banning orders were gradually overturned by the judges. But between the obstruction of mobilization and the climate of persecution, the French government succeeded in limiting the scale of the protest against Israeli crimes. Needless to say, the French Zionists held their support galas and conferences without a hitch, even inviting supporters of the defenders of the ethnic cleansing of Gaza.
The second axis of repression is the use of the incrimination of “apology for terrorism.” In November 2014, Socialist Interior Minister Bernard Cazeneuve moved it from press law to the Penal Code. Our comrades at Révolution Permanente, whose spokesman Anasse Kazib himself went before the courts last Wednesday, prosecuted by the French state on this charge, rightly denounce the re-establishment of an “offense of opinion.”
… and its class dimension
The first supporter of Palestine to be convicted of apology for terrorism, in April 2024, was trade union leader Jean-Paul Delescaut. He was given a one- year suspended prison sentence for a leaflet denouncing the 75-year Israeli occupation of Palestine; the appeal has not yet been heard. Since then, businesses have become one of the sites of repression. In May 2024, Toray’s (Toray Industries, a Japanese manufacturer with its European headquarters in France) bosses invoked the apology of terrorism to dismiss CGT (General Confederation of Labor) union secretary Timothée Esprit. The reason was a post on his Facebook page. On March 6, a court ordered them to reinstate the activist and pay him 30,000 euros in damages. However, the bosses are likely to relaunch the proceedings.
More recently, a computer engineering company initiated dismissal proceedings against a trade union delegate who had denounced, on behalf of a group of employees and at a meeting of all staff, the contract that led him to work for the Israeli army via a subcontracting chain.
Are the bosses ideologically aligned with “Israel’s right to defend itself,” or are they seizing an opportunity in their hunt for militants? The truth is, the two combine very well. But in return, a younger generation of workers is identifying the Palestinian cause with that of the freedom of peoples. If, following in the footsteps of activists who are currently in the minority, they were to express this, it would be a source of support not only for the Palestinians, but also for the class struggle in general in France.
Wider issues
Since October 2023, all political forces from the moderate left to the far right, as well as the vast majority of the media, have followed the government’s lead. For them, any criticism of the far-right government led by Netanyahu is anti- Semitism. La France Insoumise (LFI, left) is the only party represented in Parliament not to have fallen into line. It paid for this courageous choice with a long-running press campaign aimed at accrediting the idea that this movement, from its electoral base to its leaders, would be anti-Semitic. It’s possible that LFI’s commitment to Palestine has boosted its electoral scores in certain working-class neighborhoods where immigrant populations are concentrated. But on a national scale, it was anything but electoral to put forward in the election for the European Parliament in June 2024 the list’s seventh candidate, the Franco-Palestinian jurist Rima Hassan – who was on the Madleen boat, during its attempt to break the Gaza blockade. On the contrary, it was going against the grain of the rise in racist ideas that is driving the vote for the far-right Rassemblement National (RN – National Rally) party higher and higher.
But smearing supporters of the Palestinian cause with the infamous accusation of anti-Semitism was not enough. The RN also had to be cleared. Founded in 1972 by former [Nazi] SS, nostalgic for [Nazi collaborationist] Petainism and French Algeria, it has been striving for over 15 years to forget its origins in order to gain power.
Netanyahu’s government itself has given it its blessing, recently inviting its president Jordan Bardella to take part in a conference on anti-Semitism. For the leaders of the RN, scoring these points brings them closer to the exercise of power. It also allows them to express in “republican” form the old anti-Arab racism inherited from colonization and the Algerian war of independence.
Because behind the Palestinians, it’s all the “Muslims of appearance,” as former President Sarkozy referred to North Africans in 2012, who are being gagged by the accusation of anti-Semitism.
Dissolve? Not so simple…
The law authorizes the Minister of the Interior, by simple declaration in the Council of Ministers, to dissolve any group threatening “republican” order. Intended to repress far-right leagues when it was created in the 1930s, this law has since been used at least as much, if not more, against the radical left. Thus, the simultaneous dissolution of the [extreme right] identitarian group Lyon Populaire is intended to mask the political attack represented by the dissolution of the far more important anti-fascist group La Jeune Garde, 10 days ago.
Against the Urgence Palestine collective, a coalition of organizations behind some of the Paris protests, and which has developed a number of branches in major French cities, the government is hesitating. The threat has been brandished for several months, but has not yet been carried out. Last year’s attempt to dissolve the radical environmental collective Les Soulèvements de la terre ended in a pitiful defeat: not only did the courts overturn the dissolution, but the environmental collective’s campaign in its defense enabled it to set up branches in dozens of localities. Until a few months ago, such a reaction to the dissolution of an association supporting Palestine would have been improbable. But with the recent shift in public opinion, the government is certainly less certain of winning. For the moment, the Minister of the Interior has slyly contented himself with freezing the personal bank account of an official of Urgence Palestine. He can no longer pay his rent or do his shopping on the grounds that his account could be financing international terrorism…
The fight goes on
On Saturday, May 31, Paris Saint-Germain soccer club finally won the European Cup it had been chasing in vain for three decades. In the stands, a huge “tifo” – a fresco painted on a cloth dozens of meters long and wide, which supporters unfurl over their heads before the match – proclaimed “Free Palestine.” The reactionary Bolloré news channel interrupted its live interview with supporters after the victory: they too kept shouting “Free Palestine” at the journalist and her cameraman. This voice is being heard a little louder these days in France. We need to amplify it if we really want to push back the repression.
