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In France, a group of 127 Jewish intellectuals call on the National Assembly to oppose this Tuesday, December 3, a motion for a resolution initiated by a LaREM MP to fight against "new forms" of anti-Semitism, which provokes criticism even in the majority.
" We, Jewish scholars and intellectuals from Israel and elsewhere, many of whom are specialists in anti-Semitism and the history of Judaism and the Holocaust, raise our voices against this motion for resolution, " writes the group. of 127 Jewish intellectuals in a tribune in the World dated Tuesday. Among the signatories are several professors - or former professors - stationed in Paris, Oxford (England), Princeton (United States) or Jerusalem.
Without binding value, the resolution submitted to the Assembly was proposed by the deputy LaREM of Paris Sylvain Maillard. She suggests adopting the definition of anti-Semitism of the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA), already validated by several countries and supported by French President Emmanuel Macron in February in front of the Crif . He then said he wanted to expand the definition of anti-Semitism to anti-Zionism.
" False nose "
For the authors of the text, anti-Semites often hide their hatred of Jews by showing their hatred of the State of Israel. A drift that must be named
to better fight it, they say. " The idea is to be alert to these false noses that can take insults and can be well defined that it is anti-Semitism, " says Sylvain Maillard RFI.
► See also: Antisemitism and anti-Zionism, a disputed equivalence
The motion for a resolution, which will be discussed in the early evening Tuesday at the Palais Bourbon, is far from consensus. It has been co-signed by a hundred or so deputies from various sectors, including about 80 LaREM only. Two elected representatives LaREM, Gwendal Rouillard and Fadila Khattabi, as well as a handful of deputies PCF and MoDem, asked in Le Monde for the withdrawal of the text, which " answers in a very questionable way to real questions " of fight against antisemitism.
" Any opposition to the policy of the State of Israel would make you incur the risk of being treated as an anti-Semite, so being punished as such in the courts. To begin to turn a political opinion into a crime is extremely dangerous, "also warns France's insubordinate MP Eric Coquerel.
" Except to send a disastrous political message, there can be no question of giving up this project, approved for a long time by the office of our group, " replied Monday his boss Gilles Le Gendre in an internal mail including Agence France- Press has read. The leader of the deputies In March, however, says " take into account " the concerns of some by agreeing to the creation of an information mission " on the evolution of different forms of racism and discrimination ."
A "highly problematic" resolution
According to the collective of Jewish intellectuals, the resolution is " highly problematic ". First because it " equates (...) anti-Zionism with anti-Semitism ". But, says the collective, " for the many Jews considering themselves anti-Zionists, this amalgam is deeply offensive ". " Many victims of the Holocaust were anti-Zionists, " he recalls. " For Palestinians, Zionism represents dispossession, displacement, occupation and structural inequalities. (...) They oppose Zionism not out of hatred of the Jews, but because they live Zionism as an oppressive political movement ".
The second reason is that the definition of anti-Semitism of the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) itself would be " highly problematic ", " unclear and imprecise ". It is also " already used to stigmatize and silence critics of the State of Israel, including human rights organizations, " said the collective.
" We can not consider this as independent of the Israeli government's main political agenda to root its occupation and annexation of Palestine, " say those in the podium who are worried that " political support, even in France ".
For his part, the inter-ministerial delegate to fight against racism, anti-Semitism and anti-LGBT hatred (Dilcrah), Frédéric Potier, assured in the daily that " the definition (of the IHRA) does not prohibit the criticism of the policy of the State of Israel ", but constitutes" an additional instrument to better decode hatred of Jews ".