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French parliamentarian convicted for justifying Amsterdam attacks on Israelis

Online Niel November 10, 2024

French Interior Minister Bruno Retaileau reported France Insoumise Deputy Marie Mesmeur to the Prosecutor of Paris, after posting on X/Twitter in which he accepted the situation on Thursday. violent attacks on Israelis in Amsterdam.

In the original post, made on November 8, Mesmeur wrote: “These people here were not lynched because they were Jewish, but because they were racist and advocated genocide.”

This came after several Israeli Maccabi Tel Aviv fans were beaten, thrown into canals, chased with knives and targeted by attackers in vehicles on Thursday night.

Mesmeur’s comments caused outrage among politicians and Jewish groups, with the International League Against Racism and Anti-Semitism (LICRA) accusing Mesmeur of justifying “pogromist violence”.

Mesmeur, who is a member of the French National Assembly, later posted a statement on social media condemning the “vile campaign of harassment and insults from far-right networks” she claimed she was subjected to following the post.

French Interior Minister Bruno Retailleau gives a speech during a handover ceremony at the Interior Ministry in Paris, France September 23, 2024. (Credit: REUTERS/Stephanie Lecocq)

However, the French left also condemned Mesmeur’s words. The Socialist president of the Occitan region, Carole Delga, said: “Each of your words damages the (French) Republic a little more. This advocacy of violence and anti-Semitism is destructive.”

Similar sentiments were echoed by Senator Laurence Rossignol, who said: “When we confuse terrorism with resistance, mass rape and heroism, it’s no wonder we end up justifying lynching!”

Loïg Chesnais-Girard, the president of Brittany, said: “To justify a lynching is to support the methods of those you claim to be fighting. Against racism and anti-Semitism, the Republic must never respond with violence!”.

Later on Saturday night Minister Retaileau said he reported the comments to the Paris prosecutor under Article 40 of the Criminal Code on the grounds that Mesmeur condoned a crime.

Mesmeur justifies the post

Responding to Retaileau and the conviction, Mesmeur said her “mistake” spoke to “Maccabi Tel Aviv fans who stood out with clearly racist slogans and violent provocations before some of them were then attacked in Amsterdam”.

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“Did I say that their acts of violence and slogans justified the assaults they suffered? Obviously not”.

Le harcèlement et la defamation, aussi violent soient-ils, n’entammeront jamais mon engagement contre le racisme et l’antisémitismeMon communiqué pic.twitter.com/eqtZXzPL2S

— Marie Mesmeur (@MarieMesmeur) November 9, 2024

Calling her critics “propagandists”, she added that she had “no lessons to learn from those who fight the necessary battle against anti-Semitism with their dirty political tactics or their racist agenda”.

When contacted by Le Telegramme, Marie Mesmeur justified her post by saying that the Israelis “called for the killing of Arabs in public and accepted genocidal and pro-Netanyahu songs.”

“What is equally insufferable is that politicians and journalists suggest that these organized criminal Israeli hooligans who committed and chanted atrocities were attacked because they were Jewish,” she added.

“However, this is not the case. They were attacked as a result of this chain of violence. Some people consider us anti-Semitic because we refuse to say that these people were attacked because they were Jewish,” she wrote.