“Auschwitz planet”, “Zionists = null”, “antifa therefore anti-Zionist”… In the premises of the Sorbonne Nouvelle, in Paris, these tags with anti-Semitic and anti-Zionist connotations, which L’Express was able to consult, were traced during the month of April. “Danny Snitch, come clean” also wrote the graffiti artists, a sneering provocation aimed at the president of the university. And a clear allusion to the April 4 episode. That day, around thirty activists demonstrated against the holding of a conference of the Union of Jewish Students of France (UEJF). “Zionists out of our universities,” they wrote on a banner displayed in front of the entrance to the establishment. Daniel Mouchard went to the scene, called the police, and had the gathering dispersed. A handful of students are now the subject of a disciplinary procedure and a judicial report.
Since October 7, 2023, pro-Palestinian activism has spread to the university; virulent and disruptive activism is taking on a growing role, even if it comes from a tiny minority of students. In the days following the Hamas attack, statements here and there showed support for the terrorist organization. In Toulouse Jean-Jaurès, around twenty activists from the Revolutionary Youth League were immortalized in an amphitheater on October 11, behind the banner “Le Mirail supports the Palestinian resistance”. “Yesterday, Palestinian resistance fighters launched an attack against Israel,” Sciences Palestine, an association of Sciences Po Menton, also wrote on October 8 on Instagram. Summoned by management, the students deleted their message and expressed their regrets. At EHESS, the Solidaires union is distributing a leaflet providing its “unwavering support for the struggle of the Palestinian people in all its modalities and forms of struggle, including armed struggle”. Romain Huret, the president of the school, points out a possible apology for terrorism on the Pharos platform. Several of these students were recently interviewed by the police.
According to France Universités, 67 anti-Semitic acts have been recorded in establishments since the Hamas terrorist attack in Israel, compared to 33 in the 2022-2023 academic year. “There have also been four reports by establishments to the public prosecutor under article 40 for acts of anti-Semitism in 2022-2023. There have been eight since October 7,” insisted Guillaume Gellé, the president of the association, on April 10 in the Senate, where a mission on anti-Semitism in higher education was launched. Paris VIII is one of the universities where anti-Semitic entries have led to the filing of a complaint. But, more often than not, distrust towards Jewish students who have not sufficiently distanced themselves from Israel takes another, more insidious form. “I often talk about ostracization on a daily basis. In one institution, it’s a student with whom no one wants to give a presentation. In another, it’s an atmosphere where campus social life is organized around support for Gaza But I also have a case where a student found anti-Semitic inscriptions like ‘dirty Jew’ on the place where she sits all the time”, describes Samuel Lejoyeux, the president of the UEJF.
“One before and one after March 12”
The association manager depicts “a before and after March 12” in universities. That day, around a hundred Sciences Po students, activists of the Palestinian cause, took possession of the Boutmy amphitheater. A UEJF student is turned away at the entrance to the room, versions conflict on the reasons, in particular around the phrase “don’t let her in, she’s a Zionist”, which no one recognizes for the time to have been pronounced. The government, then Sciences Po, took legal action, and Jean-Luc Mélenchon launched into the battle by accumulating conferences in the faculties, five since March 14.
This April 25, the former presidential candidate relayed the tweet of encouragement from Lambertist deputy Jérôme Legavre (LFI group): “In France, Sciences Po Paris students imitate American students. They are right. Their example is to follow everywhere.” Reference to the nighttime occupation of the premises of the Grande Ecole, on April 24 and 25, by around fifty students. Tents were set up in the gardens of the establishment, the police intervened the first evening. Among the demands of the Palestine committee, supported by the Student Union, a union very close to La France insoumise, the suspension of partnerships with Israeli institutions and the “immediate cessation of disciplinary proceedings” against the occupiers of March 12.
The genealogy of this March 12 mobilization illustrates the militant connections, over the past seven months, between historically virulent far-left activism against Israel and the sphere of influence of La France insoumise. “Jean-Luc Mélenchon is clearly seeking to recover the movement after more violent groups have prepared the ground,” believes Samuel Lejoyeux. It all started at the beginning of January 2024, when the Scholars Against the War on Palestine (SAWP) movement, led by Canadian David McNally, professor of political science in Toronto and figure of the North American far left, called on teachers around the world to to speak out against the Israeli offensive in Gaza. Ambiguous with regard to Hamas, which he judges to be both “sincere” and “foreign to the revolutionary left”, he said in an interview with the media Tempest, in February 2024, McNally justifies the massacre of October 7, qualified of “attempt to restore the idea of resistance”.
In France, this initiative was immediately invoked by a collective of teachers, students and activists, signatories of an “Appeal from the French academic world for Palestine: immediate end to the genocidal war!”, published in Humanity on January 9. The two main leaders of this French network are Sbeih Sbeih, associate researcher at the CNRS and former president of the Paris branch of the General Union of Palestine Students in France, as well as Hèla Yousfi, lecturer at Paris Dauphine-PSL. “Long live Palestinian resistance!“, wrote this academic on October 7 on Twitter. On February 22, the newly created university coordination against colonization in Palestine (CUCCP) took word for word the text published in Humanity, and calls for “a day of European university mobilization in solidarity with Palestine” on March 12. Which will therefore inspire the occupation of the amphitheater at Sciences Po.
In the meantime, organizations like Solidaires, the NPA or Permanent Revolution, the small group to which actress Adèle Haenel is close, have given their support to the movement. In Palestine university committees, affiliations and original ideological nuances often become confused. It is up to the establishment presidencies to distinguish between anti-Semitism punished by law, anti-Zionism which flirts with the call to hatred and radical activism protected by freedom of expression. “Certainly, student organizations must benefit from freedom of expression, but from the moment this is no longer expressed within a democratic framework, we can no longer call it that. Nothing prevents “express your ideological options, provided you do not use the threat”, estimates Isabelle de Mecquenem, associate professor of philosophy and member of the Council of Elders of Secularism and the Values of the Republic.
Activists believe they are often victims of political repression. “Most occupation movements or demonstrations are pacifist, but we are victims of a real form of repression, and this is not said enough. There is a form of exploitation of the question of anti-Semitism , which we use to harm the anti-genocidal movement”, denounces Alice*, an activist from the Palestine committee of Panthéon-Sorbonne. “We are on a crest line,” summarizes Romain Huret. “If freedom of expression and association is part of university democracy, manifestations of anti-Semitism and racism are obviously prohibited.”
*The first name has been changed
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