An “unacceptable trial”. This is how the coordinator of La France Insoumise (LFI), Manuel Bompard, described on Sunday the accusations made to MP David Guiraud, accused of putting Hamas atrocities into perspective by asserting that Israel had committed acts of barbarism in the past comparable.
“I don’t see why I would sanction a person who recalled a historical context in which the horrors of October 7 took place,” perpetrated by Palestinian Hamas in Israel, declared Manuel Bompard on BFMTV. He recognized, however, that MP Guiraud “made a factual error” by wrongly attributing direct responsibility for the Sabra and Chatila massacres in 1982 in Lebanon to the Israeli army.
A video captured during an intervention in Tunis
David Guiraud has been at the center of a political storm since the broadcast on social networks on Saturday of a video captured during an intervention in Tunis. We hear him pronounce the following sentence: “The baby in the oven was made, in fact, by Israel, the disemboweled mother was made, it’s true, by Israel.” Then after a hesitation: “I think it was in Sabra and Chatila.”
Elected from the North, David Guiraud is, among the rebellious deputies, one of the most fervent defenders of the Palestinian cause and one of the most severe detractors of Israel.
The massacres of Sabra and Chatila, in 1982, were committed by Lebanese Christian phalanxes allied with Israel during a military intervention by the Jewish state in Lebanon. But Israel was also held responsible for not having prevented these massacres which left between 800 and more than 2,000 dead in these Palestinian camps.
A volley of indignant reactions
David Guiraud’s statements sparked a flurry of indignant reactions and threats to file a complaint against the MP. “There seems to be a competition in rebellious France over who will be the most abject. For the moment, he has just climbed onto the first step, but he could be dethroned, knowing him, by another of his colleagues,” Marine Le Pen declared on Saturday during a trip to Pas-de-Calais, the leader of the deputies of the National Rally (RN). These comments “shock everyone,” she added.
“Rebellious France covers itself with a little more shame and dishonor every day. History will record that French deputies took the side of Hamas terrorists,” said Bruno Retailleau, leader of Les Républicains (LR) senators, on the X platform (ex-Twitter).
Denunciation to prosecutors
The Macronist MP from the North, Violette Spillebout, announced in the newspaper The voice of the North that she was going to contact the public prosecutor for these “negationist comments”. Meyer Habib, LR deputy for French people abroad, announced that a denunciation would be made “to the Paris prosecutor under article 40 of the code of criminal procedure” against him “for advocating terrorism and inciting racial hatred.
In a long series of messages on X, David Guiraud admitted to having been wrong about Sabra and Chatila and denied any minimization of the October 7 attack.
“No, I was not ‘putting into perspective’ Hamas’ war crimes, which we have clearly condemned. Let me be clear, I never doubted the massacre, nor the atrocity of the acts committed against civilians,” he wrote. Not sure that this is enough to end the controversy.