On Sunday December 10, Valérie Pécresse, president of the Île-de-France region, withdrew the Simone-Veil prize from the essayist and journalist Zineb El Rhazoui. The reason given: in a publication shared on X (formerly Twitter), the text thus “reposted” by the journalist compares the situation in Gaza to that of Auschwitz.
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Zineb El Rhazoui is a former journalist from Charlie Hebdo. She was on vacation in Casablanca during the Islamist terrorist attack against the satirical newspaper in January 2015. Since this attack, she has been regularly threatened with death, she is one of the most protected women in France and lives under police escort.
Hailed then for her fight against Islamism, Zineb by her pen name, therefore received the Simone-Veil prize in 2019, a prize awarded each year to a particularly deserving woman from Île-de-France, who embodies the legacy of Simone Veil, the former president of the European Parliament.
Relaying a message and strong criticism
But Zineb El Rhazoui, by relaying a message already published on Zionists have perfected the science of genocide. They improved on the Nazi model. The goal is the extermination of the Palestinians just as the Nazis planned to exterminate the Jews », We can read in one of the re-shared messages where Israeli prisons were compared to the Auschwitz-Birkenau camp.
It was Aurélien Veil, grandson of the former President of the European Parliament who was deported to Auschwitz, who expressed his “ consternation “. Valérie Pécresse, current president of the Île-de-France region, has therefore decided to withdraw the 2019 prize from Zineb El Rhazoui.
Everyone is free with their ideas and declarations, and Madame El Rhazoui like everyone else.
However, I cannot help but share with you my confusion and my dismay at seeing that my grandmother’s name is associated https://t.co/ttGMNVWvJW— Aurélien Veil (@AurelienVeil) December 9, 2023
“ By denouncing the mass crimes committed by Israel in Gaza, as well as the crimes of Hamas against Israeli civilians, I am honoring the legacy of Simone Veil more than ever. “, also defended this former collaborator of the satirical weekly whose editorial team was decimated by a jihadist attack in early 2015.
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