At the Institute of Political Studies in Paris, pro-Palestinian activists exhibited their hands painted red and have since been accused of using an anti-Semitic symbol. Contacting CheckNews, the students assure that they were not aware of this historical reference.
Friday April 26, as part of the blockade of Sciences-Po Paris started the evening before by pro-Palestinian students, several demonstrators made a symbolic gesture: that of raising their red-painted hands to the sky. An initiative which is now causing heated controversy. The same evening, publications comparing images of the Parisian demonstration and the photo of a man with bloody hands were distributed on social networks by pro-Israeli accounts. Which accuse the students of using “a symbol which has a history and a symbolism of call to murder” of Israelis.
The next day, the designer Joann Sfar published a series of sketches on his Instagram account. The first of them shows a man posted at a window, overlooking a crowd and showing his two red, bloody hands. In the caption, it states: “This symbol dates from October 12, 2000. It is not a call for peace, it is a sign of the bare-handed massacre of Yosef Avrahami and Vadim Norznich.” A drawing immediately shared by the writer and columnist Raphaël Enthoven, who then wrote: “For the attention of the uneducated. The red hands symbol is a direct reference to the massacre of two Israelis by the population of Ramallah. Not a call for a ceasefire.”
As they explain in their respective publications, Joann Sfar and Raphaël Enthoven are therefore referring here to an event which took place in the Palestinian city of Ramallah, on October 12, 2000. That day, two Israeli reservists were killed by members of a Palestinian crowd who manage to break into the police station where the soldiers are being held. One of them shows the crowd his bloody hands through the window, before the bodies are, one thrown into the crowd, the other hanged. These events take place in the context of the start of the second intifada. At the time, Libé devoted its front page to the event and the shocking photo of the murderer haranguing the crowd.
During the Oscar ceremony, several personalities wore a pin representing a red hand and sparked a similar controversy, with pro-Israelis linking the symbol https://twitter.com/RavSchluss/status/1767155973012046045. On March 11, 2024, a forum in the Times of Israel detailed “what the red hands on the ceasefire pins mean to many of us who love Israel.” And its author remembers the discovery of the image of the lynching, more than twenty years earlier: “His hands, these two hands with five fingers each, like mine, like yours, covered in the blood of another man… a Jew. Jewish like me. So when I see artists’ ceasefire pins with red hands on them, that’s what I think of. I can’t not think about it.”
“Every Israeli remembers it”
For his part, Hubert Launois, member of the Palestine Committee and student of Sciences-Po, tried to defend himself on the set of BFM TV, at the end of the day, against the Renaissance MP for Hauts-de-Seine Maud Bregeon who denounced students “questionable positioning”, sporting “slogans and symbols that flirted with anti-Zionism and anti-Semitism.” Student’s response, about red hands : “It is a symbol which can be shocking, which is controversial, it refers to tragic events, indeed, if it refers to this event, then it is an anti-Semitic drift that must be committed…” Before hastily correcting yourself: “That we must fight, sorry.”
Near CheckNews this Sunday, he clarified his thoughts: “The red hands symbol is a common symbol to denounce the fact that someone, or an institution, has blood on its hands. It means that we denounce complicity in crimes, a laissez-faire approach, and that was our whole point. This symbol is widely used in Western demonstrations, notably by environmental activists, or even at the UN, by diplomats. It is true that we often find this gesture during climate actions. For example, it was used by Friends of the Earth to warn of the release of the IPCC report, in February 2022. Red hands are also used by activists of the Black Lives Matter movement, the same year. Or again, from the period 1998-1999, i.e. before the lynching of Ramallah, by the anti-Pinochet in Chile.
Icham, also a member of the Palestine Committee of Sciences-Po, explains that “several members of the committee campaigned in the collective against climate inaction Extinction Rebellion, hence the resumption of this mode of action”. He adds with CheckNews that “on April 23, 2024, the families of Israeli hostages also used this symbol”. In fact, we find images of families of hostages, lying on the ground in Tel Aviv, their hands painted red raised in the air to mark two hundred days since the Hamas attack. In the Israeli press, it is indicated that these red hands represent blood. Contacted by CheckNews, a colleague from the Israeli newspaper Haaretz said he did not know whether or not this specific gesture was an explicit reference to the lynching in Ramallah. However, one thing is certain according to him: “As an Israeli this image reminds me of lynching. Every Israeli remembers it.”
Criminalization
Tal Bruttmann, historian of anti-Semitism, struggles to be convinced by the argument of Sciences-Po students according to which this gesture is taken up by other protest movements: “For me, these images took me directly back to the lynching in Ramallah. It is true that this gesture can be used in other circumstances, notably by environmental activists, but here, we cannot put aside the context. On such a tense subject, we cannot get rid of the context by saying that this gesture simply referred to something else. he judges from CheckNews.
But above all – and this is a point that Huber Launois, guest on BFMTV, did not develop on set – certain Sciences-Po students concerned assure CheckNews that they were not aware of this historical reference. Hubert Launois continues as follows: “I understand that it may be shocking. We later learned that this could refer to the image of a lynching in Ramallah in 2000. Personally I did not know it, I did not have this reference, nor did my comrades. I was born in 2004. In 2000, many were not born, or were 1 or 2 years old. It’s not an image that speaks to our generation.” Hubert Launois says to himself “Sorry” and ensures that in the future, “you will have to pay attention to this symbol. If we had the reference, we certainly would not have used this symbol. We clearly need to be careful not to use clumsy references.” And to add: “We must fight against anti-Semitism, and this subject must be dealt with criminally. But we must not misdirect it. Accusing students who use this symbol of anti-Semitism, when they did not know its reference, is characteristic of the desire to criminalize and exclude activists for Palestine.”
