LYNA AL TABAL A hundred years of hell in Palestine

Dr Lyna Al Tabal, Rai Al Youm, 1/8/2025

Translated by Tlaxcala

France has finally decided to recognise the State of Palestine.

In the month when the leaves fall and lies blossom on the banks of the Seine, France has finally granted recognition — timid, belated, seven decades behind...

And UK, the very country that sold off land that did not belong to it, has decided in turn to make a gesture... But Resolution 67/19, adopted by 138 countries at the United Nations General Assembly in 2012, had already granted Palestine the status of ‘non-member observer state’, on the same footing as the Vatican. It was on this basis that Palestine was able to join international organisations and treaties, such as the International Criminal Court and UNESCO.

Okay, you Europeans number 450 million. Your economy is worth $20 trillion. You shine on the stock markets and dominate the markets... But tell me: can your governments weigh even a kilogram of justice? A handful of dignity? Recognition seventy years late – is that your offer? You call that a gesture? You are giving Palestine nothing. Nothing. Is that all you have to offer? Really?

Will this recognition stop a tank? Will it warm the cold bed of a murdered mother? Bring a child back to life? No.

Yes, Europe loves Palestine... but from afar. Like one loves a lost cause, an oriental myth, a poem by Mahmoud Darwish framed on the wall of a Parisian living room. And you know it: Israel will swallow this recognition like it swallows the West Bank — whole.

Enough talk.

The world doesn't need another declaration. It just needs you to stop arming the killer.

This recognition is a caricature. What Palestine needs is for this complicity to end. The UN condemns Israel every day. What has that changed? Gaza is dying of hunger, suffering genocide, crimes, misery...

Three colours dominate: the grey of the ruins, the red of the blood, and the bright gold of disaster – that of the markets thriving on the rubble. There is no need for further statements. Keep your ‘courageous’ gestures. Jeffrey Sachs is not a revolutionary. He is an expert, a man who simply tells the truth: ‘Stop supplying arms to Israel, and the war will end.’

The solution begins with one word: responsibility. The responsibility of Israel, but also of all those who support it. Imposing sanctions is the minimum. Their Prime Minister is accused? Then let him be taken to The Hague in handcuffs and let the trials begin – if you still believe in that word: peace.

The only measure that makes sense in this region is the disarmament of Israel.

But what can Europe do in the face of the great powers that dictate their laws and impose their will? The Trump administration has not even bothered to hide its imperialism: ‘We will do what we want, you are worthless,’ it has proclaimed.

All this is merely the logical consequence of a choice: that of the Western world, which has preferred unipolarity to justice.

Let's not waste our time today by condemning Abu Mazen (President of the Palestinian [In]Authority)... There's no point in shooting at a hearse: history will judge him in the end.

And for goodness' sake, stop shouting ‘Where are the Arabs?’ — that question no longer makes sense. It's a stupid question.

The Arabs, my friend, have disappeared...

All that's left is you, me, and a handful of believers, dreamers, who can be counted on the fingers of one hand.

They have disappeared, like ancient species. So don't ask where they are.

All this has happened because the Western world has decided to move towards a single empire that does not resemble it and does not respect it. Europe could have prevented this war or mitigated its violence... but it chose to fall in love!

Europe is like an old lady wearing a hat made of colourful peacock feathers, who believes that America loves her... She is blinded by her love for America. Since the late 1990s, Europe has not adopted an independent foreign policy, except for a policy of hostility towards Russia... Russia is a Soviet nightmare for her, when it should have been a trading partner, but she has decided to be Washington's unhappy mistress.

Ursula von der Leyen, the official spokesperson for the American empire within the European Commission, is a ridiculous woman! You know, of course, that it is American officials who run Europe, but you continue to pretend that Brussels is the capital of Europe.

You know very well that it is Washington that calls the shots...

And yet, despite everything, you smile and wave the European flag proudly.

There is no security for Ukraine, nor for Europe, nor even for your children's dreams, in this insane American adventure that you have joined and become the leaders of.

You are complicit in a million deaths. Yes, you knowingly participated in this massacre in Ukraine.

You have sown only death. And what has changed? Nothing.

Let's return to the American position. Trump, true to form, threatens: ‘America will enter Ukraine to finish the job.’

And Putin, also true to form, bursts out laughing: “Let him talk... He always does the opposite of what he says”.

In Palestine, the situation is very clear, Mike Huckabee says there is no possible solution in Palestine!

The US has abandoned its policy in the Mashreq and handed it over to Benjamin Netanyahu... It is the Israeli lobby that dominates US policy. It's a joke!

In 1996, at the height of the peace talks, while Israelis and Palestinians were sitting in the negotiating rooms, shaking hands in Madrid, negotiating in Oslo and placing Palestinian flags alongside United Nations flags, and while Yasser Arafat was modifying the pact in the hope of a state, Netanyahu and his USAmerican Zionist advisers were preparing a plan to replace the two-state solution with a ‘solution by force’: encircle Syria, strike Iraq and suffocate the Palestinians. And strike any alliance that formed to support Palestine, including Hezbollah and Hamas. They called this solution "A Clean Break " because they had decided to break away permanently and impose their reality.

Based on this document, the US waged seven wars in five years. General Wesley Clark carried out the instructions of the Israeli political bureau. You can listen to General Wesley Clark on the Internet, he talks about this subject. He was NATO's commander-in-chief in 1999... These are Netanyahu's wars, by the way: to eliminate the remnants of the Soviet allies, dismantle the system of every state, every alliance and organisation hostile to Israel, and sow chaos in the region.

And every time a war broke out, Netanyahu would flash that same smile — the smile of a man lighting a cigarette at the first sign of depression. For thirty years, he has tirelessly repeated his vision: there will be only one state, Israel.

‘And any dissenting voice will be crushed — not by us directly, but by our American friends,’ he said. That, in general, is the policy of the United States in the Mashreq, even today.

This policy did not begin with Trump, nor with Biden, and it was not invented by Clinton, Bush or Obama. It is the tedious game of U.S.  politics: if you are not with us, you are against us, and if you are against us, wait for your regime to collapse from within. Is this not the daily reality of U.S. politics? Since World War II, the US has constantly intervened directly in the affairs of other countries, under the guise of a fallacious discourse on democracy. Between 1945 and 1989, it brought about seventy regime changes. It accused the Soviets of wanting to conquer the world, then used this pretext to conquer the world itself...

Our destiny is already mapped out, set in stone for the next hundred years... But we have this habit of surprising them, of sabotaging their most sinister plans. They thought Gaza would collapse in a month. They dug our graves, pitched their tents in the Sinai and redrew the maps of the region.

What a grotesque illusion! They believed that Gaza was just an inconvenient detail to be swept away in a few weeks. But every massacre gave birth to a new missile: from the Qassam to the Yassin, then the Badr-3; from the Ayyash 250 to the R160, to the Al-Quds and the Asif al-Ghadab.

What impotence! Have you forgotten that Gaza defies even the laws of physics? Everything that is thrown at it... ends up bouncing back.

They gambled on the colonisation of the West Bank — and they won that gamble.

They believed that a military victory would signify the end of the conflict. But Gaza reminds them every moment: this is not a battle, it is an existence.

What victory can be claimed when the stability of an army depends on a box of Prozac? A state that can only stand with antidepressants is not a state: it is a patient.

This is not advice, but a warning — cold, clear — from an enemy who does not like you... but does not even wish you dead.

It is simply telling you: go home.

The further you extend the borders of Greater Israel, the closer you run to the wall of nothingness.

For the closer you get to this imperial dream, the more it loses its meaning.

You may have won a few battles, but you are wasting what matters most: time.

And history never forgets arrogance.

The more you expand, the more vulnerable you become. The further you go, the more you exhaust yourselves. Look at Ben Gvir: a sham minister, ranting like a simpleton — ‘Send bombs, not aid to Gaza!’ "

He believes that history is written by shouting. He thinks that missiles can replace memory.

But war is not won only on the battlefield. It is won — or lost — in books, in people's minds, in the mark you leave behind.

And history, my enemies, is not dictated by megaphones. It remembers. And it will consign you — you, your bombs, your buffoons — to the red margin of eternal shame.

Tell me how? Tell me, for God's sake, how can a state claim victory when it has already lost the story?

Because one day — soon — everyone will read that Israel was a fascist state, an apartheid regime that razed cities, annihilated peoples, brought down governments to survive... and then collapsed, suffocated by its own hatred.

And that history is not being written by Tel Aviv. It is being written by Gaza.

Gaza is writing it with its rockets, with its blood, with a will that neither bombs nor tanks can break.

You will read it in a few years. And your children will read it in their school textbooks.

And on that day, they will look at you... and they will feel ashamed.

 

 

Elnet, or the Zionist art of buying European consciences on the cheap

It’s called Elnet, short for European Leadership Network, not to be confused with ELN, short for the other European Leadership Network, a “respectable” think tank created in 2011 and based in London. Elnet is anything but respectable: it is an Israeli-Yankee war machine created in 2007 after the second Intifada to poison Western opinion with pure Zionist hasbara [propaganda]. Its core target: national and European MPs in EU. After October 7, 2023, Elnet organized 20 trips to Israel for 300 European and British MPs. But Elnet has also diversified its operations, organizing trips to the Promised Land for military personnel, industrialists, and leading intellectuals, including Bernard-Henri Lévy and Michel Onfray, not to mention the indescribable Swiss-Catalan Manuel Carlos Valls i Galfetti, as well as trips for Israeli officials to Europe. Among the parliamentarians, the organization casts a wide net, from conservatives to environmentalists, liberals to social democrats, and from Lithuanians to Portuguese, Hungarians, Romanians, French, Germans, Italians, and more. Below are documents on this enterprise of buying (at low prices) consciences. -Ayman El Hakim

 

Elnet, a pro-Israel agent of influence at the heart of French Parliament

Since 2017, this lobby has sent around a hundred members of parliament to Israel, all expenses paid. Its CEO claims to have done “more than [his] share” in the support of the “vast majority” of the French National Assembly and Senate for the Jewish state since 7 October.

Pauline Graulle, Mediapart, 29/12/2024
Translated by Tlaxcala

In the photos, they pose smiling in front of the Wailing Wall, looking focused in a meeting room at the Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs, or looking serious during a visit to a kibbutz attacked by Hamas on 7 October... Over the years, dozens of these images of French MPs and senators have appeared on the website of Elnet – which stands for ‘European Leadership Network’, an association well known to most parliamentarians who regularly receive emails inviting them to travel to Israel.

On paper, these trips, which are fully funded by Elnet - they cost €4,000 for four days, including hotel and air travel - are very attractive to elected representatives: they offer “high-level” meetings with intellectuals, ambassadors and Tsahal officers, as well as visits to the Knesset, the Yad Vashem memorial or military bases on the Palestinian border...

https://elnetwork.eu/branch/france/

“Through your presence, you will contribute to strengthening the bilateral strategic relationship between two countries [...] that share the same values [and] have the same enemies”, wrote the organisation in the summer of 2021 in an email sent to thirty-four Macronist, Les Républicains (LR), centrist and Socialist MPs on the eve of their departure for the Hebrew State. During their trip, they were able to meet a former No. 2 in the Mossad to discuss the country’s security issues, and Benyamin Netanyahu, then leader of the opposition, who summed up the recipe for the “Israeli miracle” in one word: “capitalism”.

In March 2023, fifteen LR MPs travelled to Jerusalem to, among other things, listen to a police commander explain the video surveillance system in the Old City, which uses facial recognition, and watch with him the video of an attack committed a few weeks earlier by Palestinians. Two months earlier, as demonstrations against Netanyahu’s controversial reform of the justice system multiplied, it was the turn of the Macronist MPs to listen to a Likud MP assure them that the government would in no way undermine fundamental freedoms...

After 7 October, Elnet stepped up its action. Just eight days after the massacres committed by Hamas, the organisation sent ten LR and Renaissance MPs - as well as Manuel Valls, recently appointed Minister for Overseas Territories - to visit the Shurah military base south of Tel Aviv, where the bodies of 300 as yet unidentified victims lay, to meet hostage families and talk to survivors at Ichilov hospital. “As media attention turns to images of destruction in Gaza, it is even more critical for European decision-makers to see the reality on the ground from an Israeli perspective to help maintain the necessary support from key European allies”, commented Elnet after the trip.

In January 2024, as the death toll in Gaza approached 25,000, a delegation of 22 senators, including Francis Szpiner, Loïc Hervé and Françoise Gatel, ministers in the Barnier and Bayrou governments, also published an opinion piece on their return from their Elnet trip: “This trip has strengthened our attachment to Israeli society and our deep conviction that Israel [...] is in vanguard of a war of civilisation against barbarism”, they wrote.

A long lobbying work

Created in 2010, the French branch of Elnet - which also has branches in Belgium, the UK, Germany and Italy - has taken up residence just a few metres from the National Assembly on rue Saint-Dominique. A strategic location for the NGO, which claims to be “100%" funded by private contributions and has set itself the goal of “strengthening diplomatic, political and strategic dialogue between France and Israel”.

Behind this objective, Elnet finds it hard to hide its bias in favour of the extreme right-wing government led by Netanyahu. Even more so since the start of the war on Gaza, which several international organisations, such as Amnesty International, are now describing as “genocide”. “It’s a lobby that’s well established”, sums up Socialist senator Rachid Temal, author of a report published in July on foreign influences, who stresses that “the association, like all other lobbies, has the right to work to influence others as long as it declares itself as playing this role”.

__________________________

Very late regularisation by the HATVP

Despite the 2016 Sapin law on the fight against corruption, which requires lobbyists representing special interests to register as such with the Haute Autorité pour la transparence de la vie publique (HATVP – High Authority for Transparency in Public Life), it took Elnet eight years to register with the body.

This incongruity was not lost on UDI senator Nathalie Goulet who, during discussions on foreign influences at the Palais du Luxembourg this summer, noted that, “Some organisations that regularly invite MPs on trips [...] are not on the list of these lobbies, such as Elnet”.

Asked by Mediapart on November 21 about the reasons it had not yet declared itself to the HATVP, Elnet replied: “We did not feel that we fell into the category of lobbyist. To ensure that we were in compliance with the law, we met with the HATVP and agreed with its officials that we needed to declare ourselves as such. This is now underway”. Also contacted on this point, the HATVP indicated that it “could not tell [us] any more about it”. As luck would have it, Elnet finally appeared on the register... five days after we contacted them.

__________________________

On September 23, in an interview with the online medium Qualita, a channel aimed at French people who have emigrated to Israel, the president of Elnet-France, Arié Bensemhoun, openly congratulated himself on his organisation’s influence on the French political microcosm.

“I remain relatively optimistic about the ability to change the parameters of diplomatic discourse,” he said. “On the one hand, there is official diplomacy, and on the other, there is parliamentary diplomacy. I would remind you that the vast majority of the [French] parliament supports Israel [...] in its fight against Hamas and Hezbollah, and this is the result of decades of work by many people, and we have done more than our share.”

Indeed, since 2017, debates on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict have gradually changed in tone in a National Assembly that until then had taken a rather benevolent line on the Palestinian cause, in unison with the Quai d’Orsay [French Foreign Office]. Between the vote, in 2019, on a resolution to condemn any “antizionist” speech to automatically consider it antisemitic, 

“In 2022, the President of the France-Palestine group resigned after being deprived of the floor a debate on “apartheid” in Israel, and in 2023 the President of the National Assembly, Yaël Braun-Pivet, declared her “unconditional support” for the Hebrew State: it would be an understatement to say that the atmosphere has changed.

Could this be the hand of Elnet? In any case, the association has been hard at work lobbying French MPs in recent years. When questioned by Mediapart, the NGO said that it "does not keep the accounts”. However, if we are to believe the official statements made by MPs and senators - who are obliged to make public “any acceptance of an invitation to travel a legal or natural person from which they have benefited by virtue of their mandate” - 55 trips have been organised for MPs and 46 for senators since 2017.

In all, around one hundred members of parliament have travelled to Israel with Elnet, which has become by far the leading organisation for influencing the country via trips by members of parliament.

Aficionados in the Macron party and in the LR party

Some members of parliament have even become Elnet regulars. On the Macronist side, the Renaissance deputy for the French in Israel, Caroline Yadan, as well as her colleague from Hauts-de-Seine, Constance Le Grip, and the Minister for European Affairs, Benjamin Haddad [son of Jewish Tunisians, Transl. N.], have made several return visits. Fervent defenders of Israel’s “right to defend itself” since October 7, they all belong to the France-Israel Friendship Group and carry out a form of pro-Israel campaigning within the ranks of the presidential camp.

This is also the case for Aurore Bergé, former president of the France-Israel Friendship Group (from 2019 to 2023) and now Minister for Equality between Women and Men and for the Fight against Discriminations, who was one of the very first to take advantage of Elnet trips. In July 2018, just after she entered the Palais-Bourbon, the young MP for Yvelines was part an Elnet delegation of thirty-one parliamentarians who were welcomed for a discussion described as a “constructive” dialogue with Benyamin Netanyahu.

Since then, she went on at least two more trips with Elnet, and she describes the association as “useful in the fight against the scourge of anti-Semitism, especially at a time when it is resurfacing”. Her most recent trip was on October 7, 2024, to commemorate the deadly Hamas attacks, in the company of her colleagues Caroline Yadan and Sylvain Maillard. From the scene of the Nova festival massacre, they took the opportunity to defend a position aligned with that of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs on sending weapons to Israel.

Elnet also has several supporters on the right, including Loïc Hervé, vice-president of the French Senate (UDI), Meyer Habib, a “personal friend” of Netanyahu, as well as LR members Michèle Tabarot, Roger Karoutchi, Karl Olive - now close to Emmanuel Macron - and Pierre-Henri Dumont. The former chairman of the Assembly’s International Affairs Committee - who lost his post in 2024 – has never hesitated to act as an ambassador for the organisation: “It’s an honour to be part of the Elnet delegation,” he said recently in a well-calibrated message, duly relayed on social networks by the organisation.

On the other hand, a number of MPs do not take kindly to Elnet’s insistent solicitations. Ludovic Mendès, a Macronist MP, reports that he was approached by the CEO of Elnet-France two years ago at a dinner organised by Crif (the representative council of Jewish institutions in France). But “there’s no question of going anywhere with an organisation funded by who knows who and which promotes a religious or political line”, he assures Mediapart. “When I go to Israel, I also want to be able to go wherever I want, including to the Palestinian side”. A former member of parliament close to Gabriel Attal also says that she refused the NGO’s proposals: “I have ethics,” she says.

In the Socialist ranks former MP Valérie Rabault and MP Jérôme Guedj, both members of the France-Israel group at the French National Assembly, have also decided not to respond to Elnet’s requests, for fear of potential “interference”. David Habib, MP Liot (Liberté, indépendants, outre-mer et territoires) and former vice-president of the Palais-Bourbon in charge of ethics, has decided to put his cards on the table: he did indeed go on a trip with Elnet, but he paid all the expenses out of his own pocket.

Finally, there are the participants who accept the trips but say they are “not fooled” about their objectives. “Elnet is about soft power and is clearly not there to send a critical message about Israel. But these trips are still interesting”, says Macronist Mounir Belhamiti, a member of the National Assembly’s defence committee, who visited Israel once at the time of the military programming law, but refused go back after October 7.

A position shared by his colleague Christophe Marion, who has visited Israel twice with Elnet:

“It’s a bit like the trips to the USSR in the 1930s,” he smiles, “even though it gives us a better understanding of the complex situation in the region. I have no problem going as long I’m not asked to take a position afterwards.” However, the elected representative admits that he would probably ask himself more questions if the organisation offered him the chance to go back today.

Targeting the “far left”

Defining itself as a “think tank for strategic dialogue between France and Israel”, Elnet asserts that it is content to promote “democracy, freedom, justice and peace” in an “independent” and “apolitical” manner.

But politics are all that Arié Bensemhoun, the chairman of Elnet-France, talks about when it comes to politics. Whether on Radio J [Zionist radio station], where he has a regular column, or on CNews [far-right TV channel, owned by tycoon Vincent Bolloré], he is far from taking an “apolitical” view of the conflict in the Middle East.

The day after the judges of the International Criminal Court (ICC) decided to issue an international arrest warrant for the Israeli Prime Minister, he wrote on X: “The accusations made [...] are based on nothing, no evidence, apart from the false allegations of NGOs in the pay of the Islamists and terrorists of Hamas and the Palestinian Authority [...]. Like they did with the Nazis in the past, nations have bowed down to the Islamists who want to destroy our free and democratic societies”.

In mid-September, when UNICEF counted more than 43,000 deaths, including more than 14,100 children, in the Gaza Strip, Arié Bensemhoun also explained on Radio J that “the Palestinian civilians we are told are innocent are not all innocent. No one can imagine that the Nazis could have done everything they did without all or part of the people being complicit. The same applies to the Palestinians in Gaza”, said the man who has been denouncing “NGOs sold out to Hamas” for  past year.

In France, he also attacks “Islamists”,“left-wing extremists” and other “wokists”. The “far left” remains the favourite target of the former president of the Union of Jewish Students of France (UEJF) in Toulouse (Haute-Garonne), starting with La France insoumise (LFI) and its “anti-Jewish obsession”, which Arié Bensemhoun criticises time and again in his editorials. A few days ago, it was Dominique de Villepin who paid the price, as shown by this text published on the Elnet website, following statements made by the former Prime Minister.

On October 16, the head of Elnet-France also took the liberty of sending an open letter to the President of the National Assembly, “solemnly” calling on Yaël Braun-Pivet to “impose disciplinary sanctions” on Aymeric Caron, vice-president of the France-Israel Friendship Group.

According to him, the Insoumis MP plays “a cynical and leading role in legitimising hatred of Jews in our country” for having relayed “unsourced” videos of massacres in Gaza or comparing the Israeli army to the “Nazi monster”. According to our information, Yaël Braun-Pivet refused to receive the Elnet leader’s request. However, her entourage refused to let us read the letter.

Elnet in UK (click to read)

Paris, May 18-19, 2025, an event not to be missed

Investigating the Algerian roots of French far right leader Jordan Bardella

Farid Alilat, The Africa Report, 24/6/2024

 

French far-right Rassemblement National (RN) party President and lead MEP Jordan Bardella in Paris on June 20, 2024. (Photo by JULIEN DE ROSA / AFP)

Jordan Bardella, the president of France’s far right Rassemblement National, has an Algerian great-grandfather who was an immigrant worker. He settled in France, in the Lyon region, in the early 1930s. 

Jordan Bardella, president of the Rassemblement National and a potential future French Prime Minister, never speaks of his great-grandfather’s Algerian origins. The topic is hidden within the Bardella family and remains a taboo within Marine Le Pen’s former National Front. Yet, Mohand Séghir Mada, Bardella’s great-grandfather, indeed hailed from Kabylia, Algeria.

The Rassemblement National has made immigration one of the lynchpins of its election campaigns, regularly hammering migrants as being part of the social ills of France.

France will hold legislative elections on 30 June and 7 July, following President Emmanuel Macron’s decision to dissolve parliament after a disastrous showing in recent European elections.

Guendouz, in the wilaya of Bejaïa, Mohand Séghir Mada's birth place

 Back to Guendouz

The ancestor of Jordan Bardella came from the village of Guendouz, the main town of the Aït Rzine commune in the Bejaïa department*. In the 1920s, Algeria was a French colony, and in this small village clinging to the mountains facing the Soummam Valley, people survived by cultivating small olive fields and raising goats and sheep. Misery was widespread in the Kabylia region.

Albert Camus, a writer and future Nobel laureate in literature, was so moved by the situation that he dedicated a series of reports to it, published in 1939 in the newspaper Alger Républicain under the title “Misery in Kabylie.”

There were no factories, colonial farms, or manufacturing plants to provide jobs and prevent starvation. This dire poverty and hunger drove hundreds of thousands of people from Kabylie to emigrate to France in the early 20th century to work in factories and mines. In Guendouz, the Mada family struggled. The hardship forced Tahar Mada and his two sons, Bachir and Mohand Séghir, to sell or mortgage their olive fields.

To feed the family, the only option was to take a boat to France. Thus, in 1930, Mohand Séghir Mada and his older brother, Bachir, left their village for mainland France. Upon arriving in Marseille, Jordan Bardella’s great-grandfather moved to the Lyon region, with several thousand Algerian immigrants working in textile factories. According to Moussa Mada, Bachir Mada’s son, the two brothers worked in a dye factory in Villeurbanne.

SALAH LAMRANIFrench abaya ban: State conspiracy mongering and institutional harassment

 Salah Lamrani, Le Club de Mediapart, 22/9/2023

The author is a French literature  teacher and union activist

 France’s new Education Minister, Gabriel Attal, launched the 2023 school year with a thunderous announcement: “I decided it will no longer be possible to wear an abaya at school”, he said, in the name of a preposterous conception of secularism (or “laïcité”) adopted by President Emmanuel Macron. This “abaya ban” is a serious violation of the fundamental rights of presumed Muslim (i.e., racialized) pupils, who are unfairly stigmatized and discriminated against. Though he is the youngest Minister of the Fifth Republic, 34-years-old Gabriel Attal used the oldest and dirtiest trick in the book, namely the politics of scapegoating an oppressed, defenseless minority. Just like his predecessors, who were fond of such nauseating polemics that obscure the real and glaring problems of the French educational system.

Aminata, Assma, Yasmine, Alicia, Hassina, sent home for “non-compliant outfits”

What is an abaya?

The term “abaya” refers to a variety of dresses of varying lengths, which are in no way religion-specific garments, but simple fashion items with a cultural connotation at most. Major brands such as Zara, H & M and Dolce & Gabbana have been making their own for a long time. As proof of this, when Sonia Backès, the French Secretary of State in charge of Citizenship, was shown on TV several types of dresses to know if they were abayas and whether they should be accepted or forbidden in schools, she hesitated, stammered and toke a side step, replying that “it depends on the context”. Thus, in a quasi-official manner, the criteria for acceptance or rejection do not depend on the garment itself, but on the pupil wearing it and her presumed religion, which can only be determined on the basis of skin color and/or name. At the height of hypocrisy, Gabriel Attal justified this blatant discrimination by saying that “you shouldn’t be able to distinguish, to identify the religion of pupils by looking at them”.

 A traumatic start to the school year

Yet this is exactly what has been happening since the start of the school year, with hundreds, if not thousands, of middle and high school girls being scrutinized, hounded, stigmatized and humiliated, even blackmailed, ordered to partially undress or be sent home for wearing outfits as neutral as a tunic, skirt or kimono, deemed too loose or too covering, as if the suspected modesty was a crime of lese-laicity. This obsession with controlling women’s bodies is reminiscent of the colonial period. Ironically, such a step places France alongside retrograde countries such as Saudi Arabia and Afghanistan that have instituted a “morality police” enforcing a strict dress code, with the notable distinction that French bans do not apply to everyone, but only to pupils presumed to be Muslim.

 

 “Aren't you pretty? Unveil yourself!” Propaganda poster distributed in 1957 by the Fifth Bureau of Psychological Action of the French Colonial Army in Algeria, urging Muslim women to take off their Islamic scarf.

 

SALAH LAMRANIIslamophobia in France: Stop the Fires of Hatred!

Salah Lamrani, CGT Éduc'action Clermont-Ferrand , 1/7/2023

The summer period is notoriously prone to forest fires, a formidable threat to our natural resources and the surrounding biodiversity. However, there is an even more insidious danger spreading through our societies, undermining our values and cohesion: irresponsible hate speech. A reminder of some recent occurrences is in order.

Occitan Hearth

At the end of April, in elementary schools, middle schools, and high schools in the Academies of Toulouse and Montpellier [French southern cities of the Occitania region], a survey on “absenteeism” during the month of Ramadan and the Eid al-Fitr holiday, particularly affecting priority education zones [underprivileged areas with a significant Muslim community], targeted exclusively Muslim pupils. Commissioned by the Interior Ministry, this survey was required from schools by the police and the Ministry of Education. This situation provoked a legitimate outcry.

Following the denunciation of these stigmatizing practices—which turn a basic practice of Islam into a security issue—fraught with illegality, since religious statistics (even non-nominative ones) are strictly regulated in France, the authorities, as usual, talked a lot of hot air: “clumsiness”, “badly formulated message”, “autonomous research by an intelligence officer”, “study of the impact of certain religious holidays on the operation of public services”... As if cops were known for carrying out sociological investigations in schools; as if a religion other than Islam had ever been in the line of fire; as if occasional absences, provided for in the Education Code and legally unassailable (for the time being), could harm the functioning of Europe's most overcrowded classrooms—after Romania.

A wet-finger estimate in [the right-wing newspaper] Le Figaro, announcing a “record absenteeism rate” on the day of Eid al-Fitr 2023 due to an alleged “TikTok trend,” is said to have prompted this investigation, which is perhaps intended to provide more quantified data for future witch-hunts. The data, moreover, is hardly usable, for while some school heads and inspectors have encouraged staff to respond to these tendentious surveys, which we can only deplore and denounce, others have fortunately dissuaded them from doing so—not to mention the fact that it is difficult to presume the reason for an absence on a Friday just before the national school holidays.

The question immediately arose as to the motives behind such a survey. Was it “only” a question of stirring up yet another unfounded controversy at the expense of the Muslim community? Or is the government planning to call into question an acquired right that is in no way contentious, in the name of an ever more narrow and misguided interpretation of secularism (which could tomorrow attack pork-free or meat-free menus in school canteens, ban any refunding of half-boarding fees for Muslim pupils during the month of Ramadan, etc.)? Will staff be the next targets of these investigations? Already, some non-teaching staff have been refused a “religious holiday” leave, which is illegal and unacceptable. Any attempt to generalize these measures on the pretext of “combating separatism” and “ensuring the smooth running of the public education service” must be fiercely opposed.

PACA Hearth and Ministerial Fuel to the Fire

On June 15, the Mayor of Nice and President of the Provence-Alpes-Côte-d'Azur (PACA) Regional Council, Christian Estrosi, issued an alarmist press release denouncing “several extremely serious incidents” which had occurred the previous day in three Nice elementary schools, and which were reported to the School Inspection Office, then to the Prefect of the Alpes-Maritimes Department, and the Prime Minister, Elisabeth Borne. The following day, the French Minister of Education, Pap Ndiaye, went even further, speaking of “intolerable facts,” the “mobilization of the Values of the Republic teams in all the schools concerned to ensure full respect for the principle of secularism on a permanent basis,” and the implementation of “the necessary government measures” to ensure respect for secularism—or “laïcité”—in schools.

The alleged “facts”? Some children in 4th and 5th grades were said to have “performed the Muslim prayer in their school playground” or organized “a minute's silence in memory of the Prophet Mahomet[1].” These were nothing more than rumors, as the expressions of doubt (“it is reported to me,” “or”) and the conditional tense (“These unacceptable situations would also have taken place in secondary schools”) clearly underlines. Worse still, before even the slightest verification of these absolutely insignificant alleged facts (it's just a handful of 9-10 year-olds having fun in the playground), Christian Estrosi likened these “attempts at religious intrusion into the sanctuaries of the Republic that are our schools” to “religious obscurantism attempting to destabilize us” and to “families who left to wage jihad in Syria,” who are reportedly beginning to return to France and sending their children “to our schools.”

Pap Ndiaye(replaced in the recent cabinet reshuffle by Gabriel Attal) and Christian Estrosi

And without even waiting for the results of “the General Inspectorate's investigation to establish the facts precisely and draw the appropriate conclusions” (no kidding), the full force of the law was brought to bear against this allegedly dangerous “slide” (which at this stage has not even gone beyond the stage of gossip): “meeting with all the departments concerned to set up an action plan,” “reinforcement of State action to ensure that these attacks on secularism are firmly combated,” “campaign to prevent and combat radicalization,” “firm, collective, and resolute response,” setting up “secularism and values of the Republic training courses” which “will be the subject of a common module bringing together all personnel...” The joint press release from Christian Estrosi and Pap Ndiaye concluded with a fanfare worthy of this outpouring of catastrophist press releases, disproportionate means, and withering epithets: “the principle of secularism is non-negotiable in our Republic.” Such a display of paranoia and hysteria is not surprising from the reactionary clown Estrosi, whose secular fervor is otherwise well known, but considering what Pap Ndiaye was before he plunged body and soul into the political cesspool [Pap Ndiaye was a Professor at the School for Advanced Studies in the Social Sciences, focusing his research on the compared history of racially discriminatory practices in France and in America, and the Director of the French national museum of immigration], one can only feel a bitter mixture of disgust and pity[2].

Christian Estrosi’s uncompromising crusade for secularism: “Defending our Christian traditions also means defending the heritage of our elders, who also built our Nice countryside”.

 

An Eternal Flame

The deep-seated motivations behind such Islamophobic outbursts are well known and have unfortunately become a constant in the discourse of Emmanuel Macron and his minions. Having faced massive popular opposition with the pension reform, they now resort to a despicable strategy of scapegoating, reminiscent of the darkest hours of France’s history. In a notorious debate with Marine Le Pen, President of the Far-Right Party “Rassemblement National” (National Rally), Macron’s Interior Minister Gérald Darmanin accused her of being “too soft” on Islam and refusing to “name the enemy”: “You say that Islam isn't even a problem... You need to take vitamins, you're not harsh enough!”

During a special evening dedicated to Samuel Paty [French teacher who was beheaded by a radicalized Islamist for showing his pupils derogatory Charlie Hebdo cartoons depicting the Prophet of Islam], Darmanin also denounced “communitarianism” and the “baser instincts” of “separatism” related to clothing or food (again, no kidding). He criticized clothing stores offering “community outfits” and the “halal sections” of supermarkets, portraying these as shocking practices. His aim was to link these cultural practices, which are perfectly harmless and consensual, to terrorism—a despicable process of amalgamation, stigmatization, and the appropriation of far-right discourse that is increasingly overt in the discourse and practices of Macron and his ministers.

Far from deterring the Rassemblement National’s electorate, this trivialization has only served to consolidate and grow it, providing a vigorous “vitamin” treatment regularly administered to hate speech by those in power and their media echo chambers.

The infamous Charlie Hebdo contributed on this ominous issue with a cartoon (“School reinvents itself” – “We bring our homework to school”) and a comment: “The question is how to deal with these cases, which involve particularly young children. The ten-year-old boy who incited his classmates to observe a minute's silence for the Prophet was the subject of 'worrying information' sent to the Alpes-Maritimes departmental council, as the Nice education authority told Charlie Hebdo. An alert was also issued to the prefecture for 'suspicion of radicalization'. 'The child doesn't become flagged as a serious threat to national security,' we're told. The idea is for the intelligence services to rule out any threat and check that the parents are not dangerous.' In the meantime, the schoolboy has been excluded from the school canteen and has taken an early vacation. 'We can't afford another Samuel Paty,' says a member of the Rector's entourage.”

In any case, it wouldn't be the first time that alleged TikTok “cyber-attacks on secularism” or other unverified gossip causes an uproar in the services of the Ministry of the Interior and the Ministry of National Education. Let us mention the controversies surrounding the wearing of the abaya and the deployment of the Orwellian concept of “improvised religious clothing,” promoted during the dubious “laïcité” training courses imposed on all teaching staff throughout France. These courses provide instructions and even rhetorical and legal tools to track down alleged intentions behind the “suspicious” dresses of presumably Muslim girls. A dress bought at H&M could thus fall under the “law banning ostentatious religious signs” (which really only targeted the Islamic veil) and earn the targeted schoolgirls summons, reprimands, or even threats and exclusion if they refuse to dress in a “republican” manner: a “morality police” doubled with a “thought police” in short. And it seems that the French authorities have just introduced a “children's games police.” Are we soon to see SWAT teams in primary school playgrounds? The degree of insanity is such that a sneeze from a swarthy pupil that sounds vaguely like “Allahu Akbar” would be enough to trigger such an intervention.

Extinguishing the fires or fanning them?

At a time when violence, including far-right terrorism targeting our fellow Muslim citizens, is reaching worrying proportions, the government persists in fanning the flames of hatred with its pyromaniac actions, exacerbating the real dangers threatening civil peace. The government's approach involves all-out repression, police and security abuses with total impunity [the French police are lately becoming seditious and openly rebellious, literally demanding a license to beat up and even kill without being bothered by any kind of justice procedure], and over-instrumentalizing trivial facts to raise the specter of fantasized threats. These tactics only serve to pit citizens against each other and divide the French society.

The republican school urgently needs resources, not diversionary strategies, artificial tensions, or a perpetual call into question of the status and fundamental rights of users and staff. The “non-negotiable” secularism promoted and ardently defended by the CGT Educ’action aims to ensure the serenity and cohesion of the educational community, not to transform staff into zealous police auxiliaries or confine an entire population to the status of suspect or “enemy within,” to be constantly monitored and held at bay.

The Republic guarantees freedom of worship and equal treatment for all its citizens. Anyone committed to republican ideals must protest against this frenzied desire to ignite bonfires from the most microscopic twigs, and against stigmatizing and discriminatory practices that tarnish France's image abroad and regularly elicit condemnations from human rights associations like Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch. National Education staff, in particular, must oppose these practices and report them to local union sections, which must vigorously defend all members of the educational community (staff, pupils, parents…) who fall victim to them.

Endnotes

[1] The minute's silence isn’t precisely a well-known practice in Muslim liturgy. As for the spelling “Mahomet,” we can only deplore the fact that despite the presence of the first name Mohammed in the top 10 of most given names in the current French population, and its position in the top 50 of names on French war memorials from the First World War, this backward-looking and contemptuous name dating from an era of antagonism between Christianity and Islam, and felt as an insult by millions of Muslims, remains in use.

[2] Like a downsized version of Voltaire fighting fanaticism in the days of the Inquisition, Pap Ndiaye has also taken to TV to denounce these “manifestations of religious proselytism in schools,” gargling in big words, notably BFM WC (“These facts are not acceptable in the School of the Republic... It is only natural that the Nice Academy, the Nice Rector, and the Nice Mayor should react firmly to ensure respect for the principles of secularism, which is why I have signed this joint declaration with the Nice Mayor... The parents have been summoned... The pupils have been reminded of their obligations with regard to religious neutrality, and they have been given training, because we're talking about children after all... In secondary schools, [for similar acts] there can be sanctions [or even] temporary or permanent exclusions...”). Pap Ndiaye did not hesitate to spread false Islamophobic information, namely that these children all belonged to the Muslim faith, which was denied by Eliane's testimony to BFM Côte d'Azur, whose non-Muslim grandson took part in these children's games: “He should check his sources because my grandson was part of the group playing and imitating prayer. There was no intention, no religion in the middle, it was really just a game... The stigmatization of children is really lamentable... That's why we no longer have confidence in politicians, because everything is blown out of proportion to unbelievable proportions, and this harms solidarity and life together.”

[3] Let us remind that to be valid, Muslim prayer (especially in congregations) requires the age of puberty, a precise timetable, ablutions, specific clothing, orientation towards Mecca, etc.; so many conditions that it is simply impossible to meet in an elementary school playground during the lunch break.