The former Charlie Hebdo journalist notably compared Israel to a “terrorist state” and considered that Hamas was a “resistance movement” in “a concentration camp called Gaza”.
Interior Minister Bruno Retailleau announced this Tuesday, October 15, that he had referred the matter to the Paris prosecutor for acts of “apology of terrorism” targeting former Charlie Hebdo journalist Zineb El Rhazoui.
“I transmitted today to the Paris public prosecutor (Laure Beccuau) the report for the offense of advocating terrorism concerning the remarks of Zineb El Rhazoui made during an interview with the newspaper Nouvelle Aube published on 4 October,” he said on his X account, formerly Twitter.
Israel, “a successful Daesh”
Questioned by Nouvelle Aube, French version of the conservative Turkish daily Yeni Safak, Zineb El Rhazoui compared Israel to a “terrorist state”, “a successful Daesh”, refusing to condemn the bloody attack by Hamas on October 7, 2023, in Israel.
“There are no civilians in Israel since everyone does military service, since everyone is a settler,” she said in this interview, before assuring that Hamas was a “movement of resistance” in “a concentration camp called Gaza”.
War for over a year
On October 7, hundreds of Hamas operatives infiltrated southern Israel from the Gaza Strip, carrying out a bloody attack on civilians on a scale and violence not seen since Israel’s creation in 1948. In retaliation, Israel declared a war to “wipe out” Hamas, triggering intense bombardment of the Gaza Strip.
Hamas attacks resulted in the deaths of more than 1,206 people on the Israeli side, the majority civilians killed on October 7, according to an AFP count based on official Israeli figures and including hostages who died or were killed in captivity in the Gaza Strip. Of the 251 people taken as hostages on October 7, 97 are still detained in Gaza, of whom 34 are dead according to the Israeli army.
More than 42,344 Palestinians have been killed in the Israeli military campaign of retaliation on the Gaza Strip, the majority civilians, according to data from the Hamas government’s Health Ministry for Gaza, deemed reliable by the UN.
