The political class in France have rounded on Jean-Luc Mélenchon for his failure to condemn Hamas’s attack against Israel. The far-left firebrand, a Gallic Jeremy Corbyn, reacted to Saturday’s massacre of Israeli civilians by Islamist terrorists with a tweet:
‘All the violence unleashed against Israel and Gaza proves only one thing: violence only produces and reproduces itself. We are horrified and our thoughts and compassion go out to all the distraught victims of all this. There must be a ceasefire.’
Mélenchon and the majority of his party, La France Insoumise (LFI), have since doubled down on their remarks, drawing condemnation from political opponents, Jewish groups and media commentators. Prime minister Elisabeth Borne derided the ‘revolting ambiguities’ of Mélenchon’s party, whose ‘anti-Zionism’, she said, was ‘also a way of masking anti-Semitism.’
Mélenchon’s ambiguity towards Israel has increased in recent years as he and his party have shamelessly courted identity politics and encouraged the victimhood of a small minority of France’s six million Muslims.
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