It all started with a publication shared on Zineb El Rhazoui’s X account. A message about the Israeli bombings raining down on the Gaza Strip. One indignation led to another, the former collaborator of Charlie Hebdo had her Simone Veil prize withdrawn by Valérie Pécresse “on behalf of the Île-de-France region”. Back to the origins of the controversy.
The original tweet
It is a message clearly comparing Zionists to Nazis and accusing Israel of carrying out a genocide in the Gaza Strip which ignited the powder. “The Zionists have perfected the science of genocide. They improved the Nazi model […] Their end goal is the complete extermination of the Palestinians, just as the end goal of the Nazi parties was the complete extermination of the Jews. But it’s more than that, just like the Nazis wanted to take Europe, the Zionists want to take Jordan, Egypt, Syria and Lebanon, at a minimum. They will eventually do it if no one stops them,” written like this on Benjamin Rubinstein who defines himself as “content creator, anti-imperialist journalist, geopolitical analyst, American [et] proud to be “.
A sharing that disturbs
This text was then shared by Zineb El Rhazoui last Saturday, shortly after its publication, and without any other form of comment. A publication then noticed and denounced by Aurélien Veil, grandson of the former president of the European Parliament who was deported to Auschwitz. He called on the president of the Île-de-France region to express his “disturb” upon reading the tweet.
Four years ago the region “gave Madame Zineb El Rhazoui a prize bearing the name of my grandmother Simone Veil. My grandmother who spent several months, from April 1944 to January 1945, surviving in the Auschwitz-Birkenau camp, not far from the gate surmounted by the inscription “Arbeit macht frei” presented in this message retweeted by Madame El Rhazoui. Among my grandmother’s struggles are the transmission of the memory of the Shoah and the refusal to trivialize the genocide committed by the Nazis,” he explains. “Everyone is free with their ideas and their declarations, and Madame El Rhazoui like everyone else. However, I cannot help but express to you my confusion and my dismay to note that my grandmother’s name is associated in the present circumstances with the trivialization company that she had expressly and on multiple occasions declared fear”, he continues, then asking Valérie Pécresse “a strong word”.
Zineb El Rhazoui’s reaction
Faced with this reaction, the main interested party directly responded to the nephew of Simone Veil, believing that his aunt’s legacy “is that the human being, whatever his color, his creed, his language, his sex, is irreducible in his right to live and to be free […] For me, honoring Simone Veil means rebelling against ALL civilian deaths, whatever their nationality or religion, whatever the ideology of the assassin. If the Simone Veil prize means being outraged only at the innocent victims of October 7, and not those of October 8, October 9, October 10, October 11… until this day, well I don’t want it not,” she still argues.
The action of Valérie Pécresse
The day after Aurélien Veil’s indignant tweet, Valérie Pécresse took this call literally and decided to withdraw the prize in question from Zineb El Rhazoui. The “recent statements regarding the tragic events that have occurred in Israel and the Palestinian territories since October 7 – including his retweet of a parallel between Auschwitz and the Israeli response against Hamas terrorists in Gaza – are outrageous and shocking,” asserts she on Facebook.
They have “terribly bruised our compatriots who experienced the barbarity of the Shoah”, adds Valérie Pécresse, who therefore chose, “in the name of the region”, to withdraw the prize awarded each year “to a particularly deserving Ile-de-France woman.” “.