The Orient XXI magazine, HQ of the French anti-Israel intelligentsia – L’Express

“We are now aware of other publications comparing Hamas terrorist attacks to the French resistance against the Nazi occupation. They probably fall within the definition of anti-Semitism adopted by the International Alliance for the Memory of the Shoah, endorsed by France in February 2019”, adds the Quai d’Orsay. Indeed, Sophie Pommier, decorated with the Legion of Honour in November 2017 after an experience at the French embassy in Iraq, written. She is a member of the editorial board and editorial committee of Orient XXI, one of the centers of gravity of the pro-Palestinian sphere in France. This online magazine also participates in a media network in the Arab world, a project financed to the tune of several hundred thousand euros by the French Development Agency (AFD). Some of these sites do not hesitate to explicitly support Hamas.

Launched in October 2013, Orient XXI aims to cover “a vast region from Morocco to Afghanistan”, indicates its site. The latter produces analyzes and boasts of “giving the floor not to pseudo-experts in “terrorism” or “Islamology”, but to specialists, journalists, academics, researchers, diplomats who really know the region”. Around Alain Gresh, former editor-in-chief of Diplomatic worldwe count among the founders Christian Jouret, former political advisor at the Quai d’Orsay, or even Henri Mamarbachi, formerly of the AFP and Jean-Pierre Sereni, former director of New Economist.

Orient XXI has not yet reacted to the comments of its collaborator. Internally, we prefer to highlight “the surge of hatred” that Sophie Pommier has faced since November 8. “Threatened with death and rape”, the ex-employee of the Quai d’Orsay filed a complaint. “Suggesting that she is anti-Semitic, as the ministry’s statement does, is an absolute scandal,” whispers a source at the media’s management. Sophie Pommier will soon take up her pen to express herself in a text “that Orient XXI will take up again”, indicates this source.

Sophie Pommier joins the editorial line of Orient XXI. The media does not qualify Hamas as a terrorist organization and prefers to see it as “the right to resist oppression” of the Palestinian people – in the words of its founder, Alain Gresh. “Every time the Palestinians revolt, the West – so quick to glorify the resistance of the Ukrainians – invokes terrorism, he wrote in an article published on October 9two days after the attack. […] The tenacious, fierce, stubborn resilience of the Palestinians still astonishes the occupiers and seems to shock many Westerners.”

On this site, we talk less about the massacres of October 7 than the “tactical success” of the “Hamas offensive”. On November 6, in his article France. Freedom of expression violated and repressedresearcher Laurent Bonnefoy, member of the editorial committee of Orient XXI, thus points out “the effect of astonishment due to the level of violence in Israel, (frequently referred to as “primary violence”, that is to say disconnected of the history of Israeli occupation and resistance to it).

The media team shows its desire to side with the Palestinian side. On social networks, a few hours after the October 7 attack, Sarra Grira, editor-in-chief of Orient XXI, former journalist at France 24, published a cryptic message in Arabic: “When Gaza responds to Riyadh…”, associated with Palestinian flag. Saudi Arabia was then on the verge of normalizing relations with Israel.

Unlike “official France” which “shamelessly supports the racist extreme right in power in Israel”, according to the words from editorialist Denis Sieffert, in a post published on October 28, the majority reading grid at Orient XXI wants Hamas to be an organization of resistance to the violence of the occupier. “The essential question in Palestine is the illegal occupation, denounced by the United Nations. We have the right to resist it, including with arms,” says Alain Gresh to L’Express. This is what “have carried out all liberation movements with a greater or lesser use of violence, including in South Africa or Algeria, where the FLN committed attacks against cafes.”

The interpretation calls into question, while France considers Hamas like a terrorist organization. “Unlike Al-Qaeda, Hamas is a radical Islamist movement, with a popular and national presence, stemming from the Muslim Brotherhood, whose development has, moreover, been abundantly encouraged by the Israelis to act as a counterweight to the PLO since the 1980s. But since October 7, we can consider that it has become “daechized”, points out to L’Express the Islamologist Gilles Kepel, recent author of Prophet in his country (The Observatory). It is today undeniable that they committed an unprecedented terrorist action which combines the horror of September 11 with the images of carnage produced by Daesh. October 7 is an act that falls somewhere between a raid and a pogrom.”

Alain Gresh, for his part, only agrees to qualify the organization as terrorist “if we call Israel the same”. Indicating that he “does not particularly like Hamas”, the founder believes that it is “one of the organizations that the Palestinians have chosen. We will therefore have to negotiate with them”. “These are political organizations whose program varies according to circumstances,” he adds. “I have not heard a European official say that we could not negotiate with the Israeli government because there are fascists and Jewish supremacists.”

Orient XXI welcomed several clearly pro-Hamas personalities, such as the former research director at CNRS François Burgat. The Islamologist was listed among the members of the editorial committee on the Orient XXI website until May 2023. Again with L’Express, the specialist stated on October 19: “For the first time, for a few hours, Israel had more victims than Palestinian victims. It’s over! Now, we are suffering hundreds and hundreds of victims under the bombs in Gaza […] I’m sorry but [l’attaque du Hamas] was a mechanism of resistance to physical military oppression.” Not without subsequently drawing a parallel with the French resistance fighters “qualified as terrorists by the Nazis” during the Occupation.

Since 2016, Orient XXI has also structured a network of seven media “established in the Middle East and North Africa”. “All these partner publications come from the Arab Spring. They were created by democrats. We tried to strengthen these structures in countries where it is becoming increasingly difficult to maintain them,” indicates Alain Gresh. Among them, we count for example 7iber, founded in 2007, which covers Jordan, the Egyptian media Mada Masr, or even Nawaat, a Tunisian blog created in 2004. Among some of them, the positions assumed after October 7 are virulent . “The fighting continued in at least six locations, including Sderot (a town in the south of Israel), where resistance fighters barricaded themselves in the police station for more than twenty hours, and one of them was able to escape. “remove some despite the bombing of the police station by the occupation”, is for example written in an unsigned article in 7iber. The site is customary in this regard. As early as 2008, a published post presented Hamas as a “resistance movement”, designating only Israelis under the term “Zionists”, a “brutal immoral entity”.

In the days following the Hamas attack, the Tunisian website Nawaat made similar arguments, also referring to the “right of Palestinians to resist.” “The gap between the occupying army and the besieged people is one of the headlines that the Palestinian resistance has reimposed since the start of Operation Al-Aqsa Flood,” we can read in description of a video posted on the site on October 10. However, Nawaat’s positions on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict are not the only ones that catch the eye: a post dated July 2017 is titled: “France must be excluded from the Francophonie”. Its author, Sadri Khiari, is a founding member of the National Council of Liberties in Tunisia. In France, he is also co-founder of the Party of Indigenous Peoples of the Republic. A political movement, which, on October 9, also took a position on the Hamas attack, tweeting: “May the Palestinian resistance, which carries out its action with determination and confidence in heroic conditions, receive in these terrible hours all of our militant fraternity. Palestine will win, and its victory will be ours.”

Surprise, this media supervision project is supported in part by public funds. From 2018 to 2022, the French Development Agency, a public establishment, supported the Orient XXI initiative to the tune of 605,830 euros. This December 12, 2022, an activity report highlighted that more than 180,000 additional euros were once again allocated to Orient XXI for this project.

“As part of its activities to support civil society, AFD does not endorse public positions or militant actions that its beneficiaries might undertake and ensures that it maintains the neutrality that is required of it as a public establishment, assumes AFD with L’Express. In respect of freedom of expression, it is vigilant to ensure that its financing does not contribute in any way to debates or advocacy actions which would mention, call for or encourage, in a manner direct or indirect, positions contrary to French law as well as European law.