In an article published in daily Le Monde, over 200 personalities pleaded “so that anti-Zionism no longer serves as a pretext for anti-Semitism”.
French Minister of Overseas Manuel Valls declared Monday that hatred of Jews comes essetiually from the Arab-Muslim world, in France and elsewhere’’.
He made thet statement in an interview on CNEWS-Europe 1 as he reacted to anti-Jewish slogans chanted at demonstrations against racism over the weekend.
“What has changed over the last twenty-five years is that this hatred of Jews comes essentially from the Arab-Muslim world, in France as elsewhere. Islamism makes hatred of the Jews its matrix and its main objective,’’ said the former Prime Minister.
These words echo those of French Interior Minister Bruno Retailleau, for whom anti-Semitism now has a “double face” in France, “Islamism and the far left”, while, according to him, far-right anti-Semitism has become “residual.”
In an article published in daily Le Monde last Friday, over 200 personalities pleaded “so that anti-Zionism no longer serves as a pretext for anti-Semitism”.
“It’s up to the Republic to protect Jews,’’ they wrote, denouncing “anti-Zionism” as a “pretext for anti-Semitism”.
“Anti-Zionism is all the rage”, begins the article, written by the ‘Nous vivrons’ collective set up in the wake of the unprecedented Hamas terrorist attack on Israel on October 7, 2023.
“The message is simple: Zionism is colonialism that must be eliminated”, deplore the authors of the article.
Signatories of the article include Yonathan Arfi, President of Crif, the umbrella body of French Jewish institutions, former Prime Minister Gabriel Attal, former French President François Hollande, philosopher Elisabeth Badinter, Minister for Equality between Women and Men Aurore Bergé, actress Charlotte Gainsbourg and writer Anne Sinclair…
“Since October 8, 2023, we have witnessed a relativism of the massacres of October 7, 2023, and a condemnation of Zionism. In short, if the Jews hadn’t been there, all this wouldn’t have happened”, it is stressed in the tribune, which recalls that ‘’according to figures from the Ministry of the Interior, a third of the anti-Semitic acts recorded in 2024 were motivated by the Palestinian cause.’’