A spokesman for Emmanuel Macron’s French Government has accused members of opposition parties on both the Left and Right of anti-Semitism.
Olivier Véran, the official spokesman of the Macron administration, attacked both Marine Le Pen’s Rassemblement National (RN) and Jean-Luc Mélenchon’s La France Insoumise (LFI), accusing both of still harbouring individuals engaged in anti-Jewish hatred.
Speaking to the French media, the spokesman described both groups as being willing to criticise anti-Semitism when it was their political opponents practising it but not when it originated from within their own ranks.
“You have people on the far Right who will condemn anti-Semitism when it is on the far Left or among Islamists. And then you have the far Left which will condemn anti-Semitism when it comes from the far Right,” he said.
“When it comes to looking at home, whether to the far Right or the far Left, they can’t see the wood for the trees,” he added.
Véran’s comments come amid an escalating war of words within French politics over the conflict in Israel and Palestine.
The Macron administration’s support for Israel has drawn significant flak from the country’s hard Left, Mélenchon accusing Yaël Braun-Pivet, the President of France’s National Assembly, of encouraging an anti-Palestinian “massacre” to take place.
“Not in the name of the French people!” he wrote online.
Supporters of Braun-Pivet have responded by accusing Mélenchon of speaking in an anti-Semitic manner towards the Jewish stateswoman.
The left-winger denied the charges, hitting back by saying those supporting Macron were now engaged in an “absurd policing of words”.
The European Commission has ignored anti-censorship pleas from Israel, stating that footage depicting Hamas “atrocities” and “war crimes”, or anything to do with the terrorist organisation, must be censored on the European internet. https://t.co/EL0gESQo1u
— Brussels Signal (@brusselssignal) October 18, 2023
France is not the only European country that has been drawn into a tense internal debate regarding the violence in Israel and Palestine.
Amid an increase in anti-Semitic incidents since the Hamas terror attacks earlier in October, Germany is once again questioning its largely open-borders approach to mass migration.
“It was a grave mistake to let in so many people of totally different culture and religion and concepts, because it creates a pressure group inside each country that does that,” said Henry Kissinger, a German-born Jew who fled Nazi Germany as a child and became one of the most influential policymakers in US history.
Friedrich Merz, the leader of Germany’s Christian Democratic Union (CDU), has now called on the government to stop giving citizenship to any migrants who do not recognise the legitimacy of Israel.
“Anyone who doesn’t sign up to this has no place in Germany,” he said.
European Union leaders appeared to give Israel “carte blanche” to commit alleged human rights crimes in Gaza in the wake of this month’s terror attacks by Hamas, Ireland’s Prime Minister said. https://t.co/z3EDva4MMA
— Brussels Signal (@brusselssignal) October 20, 2023
