“My response to the unworthy front page of L’Humanité” – L’Express

Faced with inhumanity and barbarism, there are no double standards. France will stand united with one voice. This was without counting on these usurpers with big hooves, so-called humanists, but whose humanity has one color. The smell of death has no difference, but you, sitting comfortably writing your diary, what do you know?

I can teach you. I speak from experience. An experience I would have done without.

The experience of the soldiers and the children and the professor murdered in 2012 because they were Jewish. The experience of journalists and cartoonists killed in 2015 for having caricatured and thinking freely. The experience of the victims of the hostage-taking at the Hypercasher in Vincennes, the motive of which will not escape you, although your bad faith makes me doubt it. The experience of the Paris killings of November 13, 2015. The experience of the horror of July 14, 2016 in Nice. Death, wherever it is, is the same. The attackers, too, are the same, they are Islamist terrorists, it is the same totalitarian ideology. In France, Gaza or Israel, they are the same.

I speak informed by experience, again, since neither Gaza, nor the Palestinian territories, nor Israel are unknown to me. Because I have been going to Israel for more than forty years, first as international secretary of young socialists – at the time I enjoyed sharing the spirit of the kibbutz and the pioneer founders of the Hebrew state, but also the conversations passionate with my Palestinian friends – then as a political leader, mayor, deputy, Prime Minister, or in a personal capacity. I have always thought that peace and common life between Israelis and Palestinians were possible on this unique and sacred land for the three religions from the Book. My town of Évry was twinned with the Khan Younès camp in the south of the Gaza Strip. I went there before Hamas seized power in the Gaza Strip by force and violence, eliminating Fatah leaders and putting an end to a collaboration of support for families, women who returned to a long darkness under the yoke of the organization founded by the Muslim Brotherhood.

If I went to Israel a few days ago, after the atrocities of October 7, with a delegation of parliamentarians, it was to support Israel, a friendly, democratic country, the only one in the Middle East that shares our values. . Because we all knew that gravediggers of humanity would oppose all morality in supporting Israel. The blood, the smell, the marks of the attack, we saw it all. We visited the towns and kibbutz attacked, met the families of the French hostages and victims: 35 of our compatriots died! I experienced the most difficult moments there, taking me back to the attacks of 2015 and 2016 against my country. Israel has the right and duty to defend itself to eliminate the terrorist organization which threatens its integrity and its citizens, and whose goal is the eradication of Israel and the Jews. Do you see this as “unconditional” support for Netanyahu? Ultimately, that doesn’t surprise me. You are no longer subject to false propaganda.

It is undoubtedly the evil of the century. You lack nuance, so you won’t be able to understand it in any way. Supporting Israel is not the same as supporting government policy, contrary to what narrow visionaries think. Otherwise friendships between countries would be so fragile. No, it is based on deeply anchored links, those of democratic values ​​in the first place and which bring us together. Those of a common vision, a very close way of life, a shared history. These friendships will survive us, but not politics. Benjamin Netanyahu showed us this friendship during the big demonstration of January 11, 2015, walking a few meters from Mahmoud Abbas… I will never forget that.

And the Israelis also know better than anyone to tell the difference. Like every Saturday evening for months, hundreds of people gathered in the streets of the country to denounce the policies of the Netanyahu government on October 7. But the course of history changed the plans, and these same Israelis were thousands to line up behind the flag, because their country is their most precious asset. The victims and hostages of this barbaric attack, members of kibbutz or young participants in a rave party, did not, for the most part, support Netanyahu’s government and voted instead for progressive parties. Some had strong ties to the Palestinians.

I have always defended by conviction the French position in the resolution of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, for a negotiated two-state solution. But granting me the right to give lessons in Israel for the defense of its country, which was violated on October 7, is absurd. Those who allow themselves to do so are just as happy. We did not wait for the opinion of any State when it was necessary to defend France following the attacks of 2015 and strike the Islamic State in Syria. We all hope that the Palestinian civilian populations will be least affected by the IDF’s legitimate response. France is doing its utmost to help them. Because this is not a war between Israelis and Palestinians, but rather a confrontation between a democratic state and a terrorist organization which is guilty of a real pogrom.

This country, which you like to condemn and oppose Hamas, welcomes Palestinian homosexual refugees persecuted in Gaza where they are pursued, humiliated, killed. It is the same country that treats the children of Gaza, in the hospital we visited in Tel Aviv, little girls suffering from cancer. This is the same country in which more than 20% of Israeli Arabs live.

Peace will come first through the elimination of Hamas, then through the reestablishment of the Palestinian Authority in Gaza and the West Bank, provided that it changes, that its corrupt and discredited leaders are renewed, and that Israel fully committed with the support of the international community. Hope is the only long-term solution, particularly for the Palestinians, abandoned by Arab countries and trapped by Hamas, Hezbollah and Iran who have always sought to sabotage any desire for peace.

Your abject A should shame you. The shape, the colors chosen, the political amalgamations, the expression of the faces, first and foremost that of Yaël Braun-Pivet – victim of abominable anti-Semitic remarks -, the fighter planes in the background, aim to make us complicit in “the massacres ” civilian casualties in Gaza. Isn’t it supposed to echo the Second World War? Clearly, infamy is no longer a defense. Nothing further gives credibility to your crass imbecility. You are trying to put a target on our backs.

I do not have to justify myself to a newspaper that I do not read, which conveys an ideology responsible for the worst tragedies of the 20th century and which has sullied the message of Jean Jaurès for so long. Denouncing the Faustian pact of a part of the left with Islamism cost me dearly, but I regret nothing. Unless you find justifications legitimizing the attacks of September 11 and November 13, your ambiguity would flirt dangerously with vile anti-Semitism. Jankélévitch theorized it in the avant-garde: “The Jews were persecuted because they were them, and not because of their opinions or their faith […]. They were not reproached for professing this or that, they were reproached for being. To a certain point, this refusal still extends to the existence of the State of Israel.” If Zionism is in itself a legitimization of these acts, then you will assume the filthy face of these thousands of anti-Semites hidden behind anti-Zionism to continue to exist.