On October 7, Rabbi Ackermann “got really scared.” Turning on his smartphone, he “prays that the Greens haven’t said anything stupid”. The same day, party officials unanimously condemned the Hamas attacks, far from the procrastination of their former rebel allies. Relief. Since the last presidential election, Emile Ackermann sees himself, in a way, as a consultant to the ecologists. In 2021, he was contacted to prepare Yannick Jadot’s speech at the CRIF annual dinner. In April 2023, it was he again who, alongside other elected officials, tried to bring representatives of Jewish community associations to the conference on “left-wing” anti-Semitism, organized by Green senator Guy Benarroche and the group work to combat anti-Semitism. The round table could also have lost participants. The day before, EELV issued a press release denouncing the disruption by the UEJF – invited to the Senate – of a conference given in Paris by lawyer Salah Hamouri, member of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, an organization classified as terrorist by the EU.
Ackermann was Nadine Herrati’s idea. For several years now, the president of the federal council of EELV, of Jewish faith, has been fighting to strengthen the commitment of environmentalists against anti-Semitism. It was she who, in 2021, scrapped, in the face of those who did not see the use, for the creation of a dedicated working group. Alongside him, around sixty activists, “80% Jews”, work there.
In a formation that supported the boycott of Israel in 2013, they attack, among other things, anti-Zionism and anti-Semitism in pro-Palestinian circles. “People are being told to think about overinvesting in this conflict, and against Israel. There is a great reluctance among us to denounce it.” Last July, the working group submitted its “ecological doctrine” of struggle to the party. But during the deliberation, the article denouncing “as anti-Semitic any statement or position calling into question, including partially, the existence or legitimacy of the State of Israel” was deleted. “We are Jews, left-wing, and we can have family in Israel,” breathes Jonas Cardoso, coordinator of the group and co-creator of the collective of left-wing Jews Golem, founded on the eve of the march against anti-Semitism in November 2023 , where ecologists are among the most active members.
Three months after the start of the Israel-Hamas conflict which tore the Nupes apart, Nadine Herrati believes that her group played a role in the party’s positions: “On the sequence, we are consulted as much as possible by Marine’s office Tondelier.” The latter says she is “proud to be at the head of a party, the only one”, with such an authority. Two months earlier, the blood of the group’s activists only boiled over during the Medina episode. “Overall, I feel it is difficult for us to condemn anti-Semitic remarks or bias when they come from people who are themselves discriminated against,” breathes Alice Timsit, elected official and coordinator of the working group. “In France, Jews have difficulty placing themselves in this intersectional prism,” analyzes Emile Ackermann.
For these reasons, Aurélie Filippetti slammed the door of the party. Formerly a spokesperson for the Greens, she remembers the demonstrations against the war in Iraq in 2003, where two young Jewish demonstrators were attacked. She then defends the idea of being “Zionist and pro-Palestinian”, is criticized for it, and feels that anti-Semitic acts or slogans are not “so serious” in the face of the oppression that certain Muslims experience. “The touchstone, for some, was the existence of Israel. On this subject, they have evolved well,” confides the former minister.
The working group is now taking inventory of these dark episodes. But that’s saying something if the subject isn’t “a shitty stick”: “I was more seen as left-wing. Now, I’m being right-wing!” quips the president of the federal council. Its new objective: to travel an environmental delegation to Israel, a first since the 2013 visit, which sparked internal controversy. “Yes, but to talk to who?” asks Marine Tondelier. A question obsesses Nadine Herrati: “Are we moving forward or not? Sometimes I am totally discouraged, sometimes I tell myself that we are very useful.”
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