The devil always hides in the details, in the things left unsaid. This Saturday, October 7, since early morning, the French political class has unanimously denounced the terrorist abuses of Hamas on Israeli territory, coming from the Gaza Strip. In the rebellious ranks, a long and heavy silence, lasting for hours. No MP, no executive reacts before 1 p.m., the time chosen by Jean-Luc Mélenchon to set the tone, the procedure to follow. In a tweet condemning “violence [qui] only produces and reproduces itself”, he puts Hamas and Israel back to back. About thirty minutes later, a press release from the rebellious parliamentary group is published by Mathilde Panot, leader of the LFI parliamentarians. “A press release of shame”, says a disgraced rebel, who knowingly forgets to qualify the militias as “terrorists”, even solemnizes their action which has become an “armed offensive by Palestinian forces”. Here is Hamas thus transformed into a regular army.
“The opposite of this press release would have delighted me, admits Senator Laurence Rossignol. But nothing is wrong with this text which does not clearly condemn Hamas or the terrorist attack… I do not understand why the Insoumis refuse to clearly state that terrorism never works for peace.” The text was written on the sly, in around thirty minutes, and discussed in the Telegram loop of the rebellious “office”, this governing body bringing together Mélenchon’s most loyal lieutenants and from which those too critical of the leader such as Alexis Corbière, Clémentine Autain, Raquel Garrido and even François Ruffin. Not all members of the said office were present and were unable to discuss the text.
“We will have to sort out the rebels”
It was Danièle Obono who took care of writing the first version of the text, enough to make people cringe within the movement. The LFI MP from Paris – close to the Indigenous Party of the Republic for whom Hamas attacks are part of “Palestinian resistance” – had already made a name for herself in the 2022 legislative elections by inviting the former English Labor leader Jeremy Corbyn, who in 2009 described Hezbollah and Hamas as “friends” and was suspended from the Labor Party in 2020 for his “inexcusable” failings regarding the “lack of will to tackle anti-Semitism” within the movement . “Danièle was very involved,” confirms one of her LFI colleagues. Immediately, François Ruffin reacted against the management, and received the support of Alexis Corbière and others, more discreet.
With this press release, far from being the result of unpreparedness, Nupes has reached a point of no return. That Jérôme Guedj, the one nicknamed in the PS “the first rebel among the socialists”, great defender of the coalition created in 2022 – he who was the prodigy son of Mélenchon in the 2000s before their long separation – affirms this point blank is far from being anecdotal. The member for Essonne said he was disgusted by the lack of compassion from Mélenchon and other rebels, even believing that “the question” of remaining in Nupes now “arises”.
Even more, the idea of a government coalition ranging from the PS to LFI, hypothetical but desired by many on the left to lead the next presidential campaign of 2027, now appears obsolete. It is no longer a question of working on compromises between a minimum wage of 1,800 or 2,000 euros, of a negotiation on the retirement age, nor of agreeing on disobedience to European treaties, but indeed a moment of truth like the French left has rarely experienced. “The real question is whether these Rebels, the small clan around Mélenchon and those who refuse to denounce Hamas terrorism, can stay in the Nupes. Is it up to us or them to leave the “union of the left, pretends to question a pro-Nupe socialist framework. Obviously, if we one day want to work on a government coalition, we will have to sort out the Rebels.”
“Some of the LFI elected officials are indifferent to anti-Semitism”
More than a political fault, other rebels speak of a “moral fault” against the backdrop of a cynical political strategy pushed by Jean-Luc Mélenchon for several months: the explosion of Nupes. “Jean-Luc is moving towards a candidacy and the alliance is inflating him. He asks for a text and holds a position which he knows full well will not be accepted by the partners. And if things go wrong, that suits him, that frees him…” confides an old traveling partner of Mélenchon, disappointed to see a new generation of rebellious executives “devoid of political and historical culture”. And to add: “In France, because Vichy, because the Shoah, we have the responsibility to be careful with our words, continues the same rebel. This does not prevent us from defending the Palestinian cause.”
Another message, more pernicious, added fire to the Nupes powder. “Hate attracts hatred,” wrote LFI MP Ersilia Soudais, placing responsibility for the attacks on Israel. A refrain which is reminiscent of an old anti-Semitic antiphon used in the 1930s, which continued in other forms after 1945. Because that is also what it is about: the report of the left – intellectual and political – with Israel, with the Jews. “Thirty years of misunderstandings” wrote the historian François Furet in The new observer in 1978: “The Israeli winner [prend] the place occupied by the Jewish plutocrat in the imagination of the right or the left in the 19th century.”
Already in 2022, Ersilia Soudais supported the resolution carried by the communists condemning “the institutionalization by the State of Israel of an apartheid regime”. A break with the traditional communist position on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict: for the first time in its history, part of the left called into question the policy of the Jewish state “since 1948”, the date of its creation. In short, its very existence. Why do the same people who praise the French Revolution question the legitimacy of Israel’s political self-determination? Jean-Luc Mélenchon has always defended himself against any anti-Semitism, but the question of letting things happen at the heart of the movement arises. “Some of the LFI elected officials are indifferent to anti-Semitism, judges a socialist executive. It is not their subject, because it is not their electorate nor their culture.” Is Jewish misfortune worth less than others? This is called communitarianism; and the facts are stubborn, said Lenin.