It was one of his campaign promises, in the 8th constituency of French people living abroad which mainly includes Israel. Renaissance MP Caroline Yadan unfortunately took action this weekend by tabling a bill aimed at “to fight against new forms of anti-Semitism”. Under the pretext of this entirely legitimate fight in a context of increased acts against Jews since the attacks of October 7, 2023, the text in reality organizes the confusion between anti-Semitism and anti-Zionism, hatred of Jews and criticism of Israel as a diet.
In an interview given to PointCaroline Yadan does not hide the political ulterior motives of this text. This one falls “three essential axes of this new form of anti-Semitism: the apology of terrorism, the negation of the State of Israel and the comparison with the Shoah”.
And the former Licra activist explains: “I wanted to make all references to expressions such as ”From the river to the sea” with maps where Israel has disappeared; as Rima Hassan (the rebellious MEP – Editor’s note) can no longer with impunity consider that Hamas is a resistance movement (what she never said – Editor’s note) or that we can no longer post a Nazi flag accompanied by a Star of David on our social networks. »
Signatory socialist deputies including François Hollande
If the text were to pass, the joke by comedian Guillaume Meurice comparing Benyamin Netanyahu to a “Nazi without foreskin” would expose him, for example, to a criminal conviction for anti-Semitism. Caroline Yadan sees this as a simple extension of the Gayssot law of 1990, which sanctions negationism: “Disputing the Shoah is punishable, even if it is presented in disguised, dubious form, by way of insinuation or comparison, analogy or comparison. As a result, comparing the State of Israel to the Nazi regime would be sanctioned as an outrageous trivialization of the Shoah. »
Those who compare the war crimes of Tel Aviv to those of the Third Reich – an argument whose relevance can be entirely doubted – would be thrown into the same basket as deniers like Robert Faurisson, who deny the existence of the chambers. gas.
Never has a law so explicitly limited the impossibility of criticizing a State and its policies. “This text is a mistakethunders PCF deputy Jean-Paul Lecoq. It is not possible that there is a single state in the world whose policies cannot be criticized. Paradoxically, this contributes to making Israel an exceptional state and therefore isolating it. » The “Yadan law” was co-signed by 90 deputies, including 75 from the majority (former minister Aurore Bergé was among the first to sign) but also 5 socialists, including Jérôme Guedj and François Hollande.
Enough to fuel tensions within the New Popular Front, the text being explicitly thought of by its author as an attack against rebellious France, which “is precisely part of the problem by its legitimization of hatred of Jews in our country under the guise of anti-Zionism.”
Note that this is not the first attempt to gag support for Palestine. In 2019, another Macronist MP, Sylvain Maillard, tried to have a text adopted penalizing anti-Zionism in the same way as anti-Semitism, but it was transformed into a non-binding resolution.
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