Accused of fueling anti-Semitism, notably through his statements since October 7, Jean-Luc Mélenchon defends himself “of having failed in his duty” towards the Jewish community which on the contrary “abandoned” him. “I feel abandoned by those I have defended all my life. We have never failed in our duty. Nor to the principles on which it is founded,” declares the leader of LFI in a long interview given to the magazine Orient XXI.
“The Jewish community that I knew, with whom I campaigned when I was elected from Massy, lived in debate and accepted its differences. There were the “cult” and the “cultural” ones. The left was the “cultural”,” he adds.
“We are inventing a controversy”
Absent from the November 12 march against anti-Semitism, Jean-Luc Mélenchon assures that the Jewish community “is wrong” to feel abandoned by the left because “we will always be the first to fight without weakness against the spread of racism” : “historically, the Jewish community had made the fair and judicious choice of the left. » He believes “that we are inventing a controversy” about the choice of words he uses in his statements which created the scandal, such as that on the President of the National Assembly, Yaël Braun-Pivet, whom he had accused to “camp” in Israel. “This is part of an ideological war whose aim is to silence the opponents,” he judges.
“No one has filed a complaint against me for anti-Semitism, even though it is an offense in France. So it’s because our accusers don’t believe it themselves,” he continues.
“I called for a ceasefire on October 7”
In the interview, Jean-Luc Mélenchon defends his political position since the Hamas attack. “I called for a ceasefire on October 7,” he said, even though this call, on the very day of the Hamas attack, was one of the reproaches addressed to him by the rest of the political class. “In this matter, (Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin) Netanyahu’s action against the Gazans is not legitimate. This is not self-defense, but genocide,” he maintains.
“There are mass protests in many countries, including the United States of America, with large segments of local Jewish communities participating,” he notes. “In no country in the world, except perhaps in a good part of the French media class, is there an anti-Arab, anti-Muslim divide,” he notes.