The Eiffel Tower in the colors of Israel: In France, nothing is symbolically more powerful than when the Paris landmark shines under the sign of a cause – at night, in a robe of light, as it did again on Monday. There were solidarity marches for the victims of the Hamas terrorist attack in several cities across the country, and the participation in them was probably so large because the terrible scenes from the Middle East reminded the French of the night of terror in the east of Paris eight years ago: The attack on the Young participants in the rave party at Kibbutz Reim in Israel recalled the attack on concertgoers at the Bataclan in the eleventh arrondissement and on guests in the cafés nearby on November 13, 2015.
In French politics, the condemnation of Hamas’ terrorism is almost unanimous and resolutely loud – but only: almost. A polemic is tearing the company apart; it could change it permanently. At the center is Jean-Luc Mélenchon’s left-wing populist party La France Insoumise, currently France’s strongest left-wing force and a key partner in the electoral association Nupes, short for “Nouvelle Union populaire écologique et sociale”, which also includes the Socialists, the Greens and the Communists .
Election tactics on the backs of the victims?
In its first communiqué after the attacks, Mélenchon’s party wrote the following sentence: “The offensive by the Palestinian forces, led by Hamas, comes in the context of an intensifying Israeli occupation policy in Gaza, the West Bank and East Jerusalem. We regret the Israeli and Palestinian victims.”
You throw it Insoumis Firstly, that they deliberately avoided the term “terrorism”, even though it was already clear at that point that the Hamas attackers had indiscriminately killed and abducted children, young people and the elderly. Secondly, instead of clearly condemning the attack as a premise, they had already cited the context as if it justified the brutal murder of civilians. The tenor is that it is entirely permissible to criticize the policies of the Israeli right-wing government, its aggressive settlement policy and the humiliation of the Palestinians. But first it is important to condemn the terror, without ifs and buts, without relativization.
It wasn’t a faux pas, even if some members of the party subsequently used somewhat clearer words against Hamas: La France Insoumise is popular in the banlieues of major French cities and among voters from the second and third generation of immigrants from North Africa. It is now said across the board that the party is using electoral tactics on the backs of the victims and is accepting that it is playing with fire.
For Marine Le Pen’s father, the Holocaust was “a detail of history”
The distortions in the left-wing camp are just so great that the continued existence of the Nupes hardly seems conceivable. All allies distance themselves from the Mélenchonists. Socialist MP Jérôme Guedj put it this way: “You disgust me!” And Élisabeth Borne, France’s Prime Minister, who was previously close to the Socialists, accuses France Insoumise of an “outrageous ambivalence”: With its anti-Zionism, the party sometimes conceals “a type of anti-Semitism.”
There is now an open debate in France about whether La France Insoumise is ultimately the real threat to France’s democracy – even more so than the rising Rassemblement National of the right-wing extremist Marine Le Pen, which has always played the role of outsider.
Le Pen is benefiting from this discord on the left, and from a historical perspective, that is also a memorable development. For several years, Le Pen has been working on a so-called de-demonization of herself and her party: the French are supposed to be convinced that nothing would happen if she became president. They should also forget where the party comes from and who their father is: Jean-Marie Le Pen once described the Holocaust as “a detail of history.” At the rally for Israel in Paris, eight MPs from Marine Le Pen marched – without invitation from the Jewish associations, of course, but tolerated.