Their presence was not desired by the families of the victims and the elected representatives of France Insoumise were greeted with boos at the national tribute organized at Les Invalides, this Wednesday, February 7.
The families had asked that they not be there, but the rebellious elected officials insisted on attending the tribute to the French victims of the attack carried out by Hamas on October 7. Invited to the Republican ceremony as parliamentarians, as tradition dictates, Manuel Bompard and Mathilde Panot ensured their presence at the tribute organized at the Invalides this Wednesday, against the wishes of the victims’ relatives. “In the name of what can I be denied the right to emotion and sorrow?” had also declared the coordinator of France Insoumise before the ceremony.
This insistence on attending the tribute resulted in the rebellious elected officials being greeted with boos at the Hôtel des Invalides. Hundreds of passers-by gathered in front of the monument to attend the ceremony and upon the arrival of each deputy member of France Insoumise, many of them chanted in turn: “collaborator”, “anti-Semite” or even “submitted to Hamas . Some did not go out of their way to challenge the elected officials with the slogan “LFI, Hamas says thank you” as reported BFMTV.
If the LFI elected officials were not welcome at the ceremony in the eyes of the families, it is for their position on the subject of the war between Israel and Hamas, especially for their refusal to qualify the attack by the Islamist group as an act terrorist. Several families of victims had asked in a letter to Emmanuel Macron to prohibit the presence of the political party at the tribute seeing in the latter “a provocation, an insult to our dead” according to a signatory of the letter interviewed by BFMTV a few days before the ceremony. If inviting LFI elected officials to the ceremony was a protocol obligation, the Elysée had called on elected officials to ask themselves the question of what was “fair and elegant” with regard to the victims’ relatives.
The presence of rebellious elected officials, including Manuel Bompard, Mathilde Panot and Aymeric Cayron, was also criticized by the political class. The president of the association of mayors of France and LR mayor of Cannes, David Lisnard, notably denounced a “problem of decency” on LCI. But this also caused a reaction from Jewish institutions such as the Consistory of Paris, including President Joël Mergui, invited on Public Senatepointed out “an insult to the Jews, to Israel, to the resistance” on the part of LFI: “When we have the indecency to suggest that it is resistance, we could have the decency not to be present facing the victims’ families.