The divisions within LFI continue to come to light. Since Saturday, tensions have been particularly high over the attack against Israel. In the midst of a controversy over the position considered too ambiguous by his party and its leader Jean-Luc Mélenchon, LFI deputy François Ruffin continued on Tuesday to make another voice heard by believing that it was necessary to have “strong words” to denounce the “abominations” committed by Hamas in Israel.
The Palestinian Islamist movement, which controls the Gaza Strip and launched an unprecedented deadly attack on Saturday against the Jewish state, is “a fanatical, terrorist organization, which has always been the adversary of progressives in the Middle East,” declares the rebellious elected official in an interview published by The world.
LFI criticized within Nupes itself
It is therefore a position that goes against La France insoumise. Since Saturday, the party has refused to qualify Hamas as a “terrorist” organization. The leader of its deputies, Mathilde Panot, only condemned on Tuesday in the National Assembly “all war crimes”, evoking both “the civilians killed in Israel by the acts of terror perpetrated by Hamas” and “the civilians who, in Gaza, are killed under the IDF bombs”, the Israeli army which launched its response. These comments sparked a heated controversy within the left-wing Nupes alliance.
“No gazelle modesty,” replies François Ruffin, when asked about this controversy. “What is well understood is clearly stated: on Saturday, Hamas committed abominations. We must put strong words on horrible acts, otherwise our words are discredited, mocked, bogged down in Byzantine justifications, not up to the seriousness of the events,” he adds.
However, the man who is often seen as a potential left-wing candidate for the 2027 presidential election also insists on what, according to him, was “the breeding ground for Hamas”. “Having made Gaza an open-air prison, without hope for the youth, has fueled the worst,” he believes. He therefore calls on France not to “blindly” support the Israeli government. “We must constantly set a ceasefire and peace as our objective,” he asserts, deploring “an alignment with the United States.”