They denounce remarks which, according to them, constitute “the apology for war crimes”Each on their side, the deputy of La France insoumise (LFI) Aymeric Caron and the general delegate of the French Council of the Muslim Faith (CFCM) Abdallah Zekri announced that they were filing a complaint against the Chief Rabbi of France Haïm Korsia, following his comments on the Israel-Gaza war.
The offence of condoning a crime is a speech offence provided for by Article 24 of the law of 29 July 1881, which punishes the public praise or justification of crimes, so that their future commission finds justification in the mind of their perpetrator, explains the specialist website Village Justice.
“A fact of war that is the responsibility of Hamas”
Invited on BFMTV on Monday August 26, two days after the attack on the synagogue of La Grande-Motte, the Chief Rabbi of France Haïm Korsia estimated that the civilian victims in Gaza are “an act of war that is the responsibility of Hamas, which does not return the hostages (…), who continues to send missiles into Israel, who refuses all proposals to stop the fighting.” “I have absolutely no reason to be ashamed of what Israel is doing in the way it conducts the fighting.”he continued, assuring that he was not “uncomfortable with a policy that consists of defending its nationals”.
In the same interview, Haim Korsia also refused to draw an equivalence between the October 7 attack – in which Hamas terrorists killed some 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and took 251 hostages – and Israel’s military response, whose stated goals are to destroy the terrorist group and free the hostages. An estimated 40,534 people have been killed in Palestinian territory since the start of the war with Israel, according to the latest tally from the Hamas government’s health ministry in the Gaza Strip.
During this interview, the Chief Rabbi of France also noted the absence of denunciation of the Abraham Accords – which normalize relations between certain Arab countries and Israel – despite the military response of the Jewish state, deducing from this that “Everyone would be very happy if Israel finished the job, and we could finally build peace in the Middle East without people who only want one thing, all the time: the destruction of Israel.”
“Chief Rabbi Haim Korsia calmly declares that he supports the ongoing genocide in Gaza, that it is deserved, and makes clear his hatred of the Palestinians, whose flag he claims is offensive to show.”protested in reaction the deputy of France Insoumise Aymeric Caron, vice-president of the France-Israel friendship group in the National Assembly.
“No empathy”
Abdallah Zekri said to himself, “deeply shocked” by the comments made by Haïm Korsia on the BFMTV channel. “Despite the journalist’s numerous reminders, the Chief Rabbi of France had no empathy for the innocent civilian victims, in particular the thousands of Palestinian children who are, every day, amputated without anesthesia, orphaned, terrorized, abandoned, starved and massacred indiscriminately by the Israeli army.”lamented the rector of the mosque of peace in Nîmes, to the website Algérie patriotique.
Haim Korsia’s position on the legitimacy of the Israeli response to Hamas is not new. In June, in a conversation with The Cross The Weeklyhe already judged that Hamas alone held “the keys” to end the conflict by releasing the hostages. Asked about the proportionality of the Jewish state’s response, the Chief Rabbi judged that, “In reality, it took a lot of force for a country as moral as Israel to wage this type of war.”
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