Not a day goes by without us being reminded, by LFI or by their supporters, of our “Arab” or “Muslim” origins whenever we do not agree with them. Before, we were accused of “playing agents of the extreme right” when we criticized political Islam in France. But since October 7, 2023, we have become “agents of Israel” or “service Arabs”. After his appearance on the show What era on France 2, Karim Bouamrane, mayor of Saint-Ouen and member of the Socialist Party, was described as an “appearing Muslim” by geopolitologist Pascal Boniface, director of Iris.
Today, when you are of Arab origin, it is enough to prove with quotes and figures that the Hamas project is not the defense of the Palestinians against colonization, but the creation of a new Islamic colonization inspired by Muslim Brotherhood, to be called a “traitor” by the French far left. I regularly receive messages or comments calling me an “Israeli agent playing the Arab service”, a “useful idiot of the Zionists”, not to mention “I hope they pay you well” or ” they found a new Chalghoumi”, in reference to the imam of Drancy. This last “accusation” was also taken up by Rima Hassan against Karim Bouamrane, who attacked LFI’s community discourse in relation to Israel. “A Chalghoumi who speaks well remains a Chalghoumi,” commented the pro-Palestinian muse, criticizing the socialist representative for having condemned Iran’s attack against the Jewish state in April.
Israel, the scarecrow of the Syrian regime
Should we remind this left that we fled the dictatorships of the Middle East? In Syria, my native country, opposing the regime of Bashar al-Assad means you are accused of working for Israel, which is equivalent to a death sentence according to article 264 of the Constitution: “The sanction for collaboration with an enemy state is execution.” At the start of the revolution, demonstrators were accused by the regime of being spies for the Jewish state, receiving checks from Mossad. It is under the pretext of this imaginary plot that the media close to power have justified torture against opponents, the application of the state of emergency and the repression of freedom of expression. Israel is the scarecrow with which the Syrian regime has always frightened its population.
We fled this fascism to take refuge in France, country of Enlightenment, debate and freedom. A France that belonged to us even before we were on its soil: that of liberalism. And we paid a dear price for it, at the cost of our families, our environment and our friends. In Syria, it is not only the Assad regime that applies this totalitarian spirit, but also the entire society. My father’s family thus disowned me, considering me a “traitor” to their Islamist values. Since then, I have been nothing but an apostate who deserves to be killed, and who no longer even has the right, according to Sharia law, to be buried in a Muslim cemetery. And now the French far left is taking up this rhetoric, repeating these same accusations! While in the meantime, the far right is being very clear towards us: “We don’t care about your ideas, go home.” My answer is just as clear: “I’m going back to Bastille, where I live.”
When LFI deputies explain the Middle East to us…
The odious essentialism practiced by LFI and its allies has a corollary: far-left elected officials, with sometimes very dubious historical or geographical knowledge, present themselves as specialists in the world in which we grew up. They positioned themselves as defenders of the rights of Israel’s “victims”, going so far as to include Hamas terrorists. Whether directly, by justifying the massacre of October 7 as “intervening in a context of intensification of the Israeli occupation policy”, according to the LFI press release published the day after the pogrom, or by avoiding qualifying the Islamist movement as a terrorist organization. They have become experts on the Palestinian cause. This is how I should follow the words of Aymeric Caron to better understand Hamas, that of Ersilia Soudais to evaluate my knowledge of Syria, or that of Mathilde Panot to better understand Palestine, under penalty of seeing myself accused of being only a “service Arab”, or worse, “an agent of Israel”. All this is presented in the name of the fight against colonialism. But it is this paternalistic attitude which is precisely the purest colonialism!
Karim Bouamrane’s “fault” is that he expressed himself freely as a socialist. He condemned LFI for “the exploitation of a part of society where Jews are pitted against Muslims, believers against non-believers, whites against blacks.” I was able to observe this reality in the Parisian suburbs, in Saint-Denis, Aubervilliers or in Yvelines, during dozens of writing workshops on the theme of deradicalization. I regularly asked this question to students, mostly of North African origin: “If you had the right to vote, who would you vote for?” They confirmed to me that they would vote for Mélenchon because “he is the only one who protects Muslims from white French people”. Since October 7, many students have told me that they will vote LFI, not only to defend the Muslims of France, but also those of Palestine in the face of Israeli occupation and Jewish colonization.
Due to the proliferation of anti-Semitic, violent and identity-related remarks, LFI must not only leave the left-wing family, as Karim Bouamrane demanded during the France 2 broadcast, but the formation must also be publicly condemned. Its deputies and their supporters have gone beyond the limits of democratic debate. While we put forward ideas, they focus on the origins of their adversaries and place us in the box “appearing Muslims”, while we are simple citizens like the others, free of our opinions, proud to love and to belong to this country: France.
* Writer and poet born in Damascus, Omar Youssef Souleimane participated in demonstrations against the regime of Bashar el-Assad, but, hunted by the secret services, had to flee Syria in 2012. Refugee in France, he published with Flammarion The Little Terrorist, The Last Syrian, A room in exile, and recently Being French.
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