Manuel Bompard and Mathilde Panot, two heavyweights of rebellious France, assured to participate in the national tribute paid to the victims of the Hamas attack this Wednesday, February 7, against the advice of the bereaved families.
They are not welcome in everyone’s eyes, but rebellious elected officials promise to attend the tribute to the French victims of the Hamas attack. “I intend to participate” declared the coordinator of La France insoumise, Manuel Bompard, this Sunday February 4 at the microphone of BFMTV. The MP considered it “normal for the nation to pay tribute to the victims” and the presence of elected officials from his political family to “share” the “pain” of the victims’ families is also justified according to him.
Before Manuel Bompard, it was Mathilde Panot, the president of the group of rebellious deputies in the National Assembly, who assured to take part in the ceremony to pay tribute “to all the French victims of this war in the Middle East” . A way for the elected official to say that she will pay tribute as much to the 42 French and Franco-Israeli people killed during the attack perpetrated by Hamas on October 7 as to those who perished in Gaza under army strikes Israeli. This position, daring since the tribute is designed particularly for the victims of the Hamas terrorist attack and not for all the victims of the war between Israel and Hamas, assumed by the left party rekindles tensions. The Elysée has also indicated that a “memorial time” dedicated to the French victims of Gaza will be organized later.
“A provocation, an insult to our dead”
If the elected representatives of France Insoumise say they share the “pain” and the “grief” of the families of the French or Franco-Iraeli victims, the latter are opposed to the arrival of representatives of the party founded by Jean-Luc Mélenchon. They also made this known in a letter addressed to Emmanuel Macron on January 30 and in which they requested that any presence of La France insoumise at the national tribute be “solemnly prohibited”. But the ceremony being republican, the Elysée invited parliamentarians from all political families, even if the arrival of members of France Insoumise would be “a provocation, an insult to our dead” according to a signatory of the letter interviewed by BFMTV which recalls that “LFI has never agreed to recognize the attack of October 7 as terrorist”.
The collective of victims’ families also criticizes the political party for “bearing a very heavy responsibility for the explosion of Judeophobia” due to its positions and declarations on the conflict between Israel and Hamas. Accusations rejected by Manuel Bompard according to whom some are trying “to attribute to rebellious France positions that it has never defended”, in particular anti-Semitic postures. Ignoring the wish expressed by the relatives of the Hamas victims in the letter, the deputy gives assurance of his good intentions and says he does not want to “transform a moment of national tribute into a political moment”.
“I find it quite incredible that an official ceremony in tribute to victims, to hostages, excludes a group,” said Eric Coquerel at the microphone of BFMTV from Rafah, on the Palestinian border, where he went on Saturday February 3. But other words from the same rebellious MP are not likely to calm the resentment of the families of Franco-Israeli victims. By calling for a “permanent and immediate ceasefire”, the politician called on LCI to “stop the genocidal risk” which hangs over the Palestinians in Gaza due to Israeli attacks. A term also used by the International Court of Justice, but which in the mouth of a rebellious elected official risks reinforcing the rejection of families.