Asked on Tuesday about anti-Semitism, the Keeper of the Seals Eric Dupond-Moretti challenged “the far left” and pointed to a recent controversial motion for a resolution on Israel, immediately provoking a strong protest from the deputies of the Nupes coalition who left the Hemicycle.
In a question to the government on the perpetrators of the 1982 Rue des Rosiers attack, the related deputy LR Meyer Habib was angry with the “Islamo-leftists” of LFI, whom this close friend of former Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu takes part regularly. Meyer Habib denounced a “filthy resolution of 37 Nupe deputies”, illustrating according to him a “hatred of Jews and Israel”.
Jérémy Corbyn and the LFI candidates
Initiated by the communist Jean-Paul Lecoq, this motion for a resolution signed by some forty elected representatives from the left condemned Israel’s “apartheid regime” against the Palestinians, “an institutionalized regime of oppression and systematic domination by a single racial group. She had caused controversy on the left and had provoked a series of condemnations from associations.
In his response, and before attacking the “far right”, Eric Dupond-Moretti sent a “little word to the far left”: he listed “Corbyn, apartheid, the words you have chosen to comment on the speech of the President of the Republic, these words stick to your skin”. In addition to the resolution on “apartheid”, the Keeper of the Seals made particular reference to the presence of the former Labor leader Jérémy Corbyn – accused of laxity against anti-Semitism – with LFI candidates during the legislative campaign. His arrest therefore prompted the departure of elected leftists.
Aymeric Caron asked “an apology” to the Prime Minister
On their return, the leader of the socialist group Boris Vallaud deemed this exit “unwelcome”: the “country does not need division on this subject”. “We know that you are Republicans and that you defend the fight against anti-Semitism like us, but that is not the case for everyone on these benches”, replied Prime Minister Elisabeth Borne, targeting LFI.
The ecologist Sandrine Rousseau deemed it “unworthy to qualify the LFI deputies as anti-Semitic”. “Anti-Semitism is settled in the courts and its trivialization contributes to its dissemination,” she added to the government’s address. The rebellious Aymeric Caron asked him for an “apology” from the Prime Minister.