The leader of the left-wing MPs’ coalition in the French parliament was summoned for questioning by police on Tuesday 23 April. It was over an investigation into suspected justification of “terrorism” over comments on 7 October attack by Hamas on Israel.
In reality, the politician was stating the truth: that the Hamas attack came off the back of decades of Israeli colonialism and occupation-based apartheid.
Panot: telling the truth about Israel
Mathilde Panot heads the lower house of parliament faction of the France Unbowed (LFI) party, which has been repeatedly accused by opponents of failing to clearly condemn the attack by Hamas.
The LFI – which is now France’s strongest political force on the left – has in turn lashed out at what it sees as an erosion of free speech and accused Israel of committing “genocide” against Palestinians in the Gaza Strip.
Panot said it was the first time in modern French history that a head of a parliamentary faction “was summoned on such serious grounds”:
I am warning about this serious exploitation of justice aimed at suppressing political expression.
On 7 October, the French LFI group in parliament published a text which sparked controversy because it described the Hamas attack as “an armed offensive by Palestinian forces” that occurred “in a context of intensification of the Israeli occupation policy” in the Palestinian territories.
Of course, this context is correct.
Manufacturing consent for genocide
However, as the Canary previously wrote, the West has been manufacturing consent for Israel’s genocide in Gaza. For example, it has pushed the notions that:
- Hamas’s attack was unprovoked – despite decades of Israeli apartheid, killings of Palestinians, and war crimes against them.
- The far-right Israeli government is the victim and a ‘good guy’ in this – when it is an openly racist, authoritarian colonial occupier.
- Israel’s actions in Gaza and the Occupied Territories are permissible – when it is clear it has repeatedly broken international law in recent days.
However, Western colonialists were never going to manufacture anything other than consent for hatred of Palestinians – and for Israel’s killing of them.
The LFI’s firebrand figurehead and former presidential candidate Jean-Luc Melenchon described the summons an “unprecedented event in the history of our democracy”, accusing the authorities of “protecting a genocide”.
Last week, two conferences by Melenchon on the situation in the Middle East were cancelled in Lille, first at the university then in a private room.
This is against the backdrop of the US now sending $13bn more in military aid to Israel. That’s despite its forces killing at least 34,183 people in Gaza, most of them women and children.
Featured image via the Canary
By Steve Topple
This post was originally published on Canary.
