Sunday October 20, Pascal Boniface, director of the French Institute of International Relations (IRIS) and researcher in geopolitics, challenged the PS mayor of Saint-Ouen Karim Bouamrane on the social network X (formerly Twitter), after the latter criticized the “importation for electoral purposes” of the war in Gaza and deplored its effects of ” division of the French » without a word of compassion towards the thousands of Palestinian victims.
On the occasion of this tweet, Pascal Boniface questioned the meteoric media rise of this character from the right wing of the Socialist Party, projected since this summer on the front of the political scene, using the term “ muslim in appearance “. A risky formula seeking to designate an individual perceived as Muslim and praised by the media system for making reactionary, Islamophobic and racist comments in particular. A process which has in fact been observed on numerous occasions, with the police officer Linda Kebab, the star journalist of C News Sofia Mabrouk, or the columnist Zineb El Rhazoui, before the media system completely turned against the latter after she denounced the genocide in Gaza.
Pascal Boniface’s formulation, which can be considered clumsy and for which the author apologized by explaining that he was not assigning Karim Bouamrane to a religion on the basis of his skin color but was seeking to express that he was ” perceived as Muslim in the eyes of others », gave rise to a vague campaign of exploitation and censorship.
While Pascal Boniface’s statements were intended to call out the Socialist Party for its silence on the massacres in Gaza, representatives of the right wing of the party responded with a wave of hypocrisy. Led by the PS deputy Philippe Brunthe co-president of Place Publique Aurore Lalucq, the PS mayor of Saint-Denis Mathieu Hanotin, or even the Islamophobic “comedian” Sophia Aram, these supporters of Israel’s unconditional right to defend itself have thus accused the expert in geopolitics of racism, in order to discredit his words and denunciation of the genocide in Gaza.
Worse still, this campaign quickly took the form of direct political censorship. Indeed, the town hall of Dijon, led by François Rebsamen, former minister and close to François Hollande and support of Emmanuel Macron in 2022, decided on Monday to cancel “the Internationals”, an event of conferences and debates on co-geopolitics. organized by the city and Iris, and which was to be held on October 22 and 23. At the same time, the metropolis of Nantes, led by Johanna Rolland, first deputy secretary of the Socialist Party, ended the partnership between Iris and the city for the organization of “Géopolitiques de Nantes”. A scandalous obstruction of the expression of researchers and experts, above all because they call into question the foreign policy of the current government and the complicity with the State of Israel.
This campaign of censorship and exploitation against Pascal Boniface, a recognized researcher in geopolitics, is part of a broader offensive against intellectuals in solidarity with Palestine. While a real crime of opinion has been restored in recent months, we must stand together to denounce these ridiculous manipulations which only serve to make support for the Palestinian people invisible and continue to denounce the genocide carried out by the State of Israel.
