“Shut your mouth”, ordered the rebellious deputy Thomas Portes to the address of the RN deputy Philippe Lottiaux this Wednesday during a question to the government on the war in Gaza.
“Shut your mouth”, “get out”, “we'll take care of you”… A question to the government provoked a lively exchange between the rebellious MP Thomas Portes and his counterpart from the National Rally, Philippe Lottiaux, this Wednesday 30 november. The far-right party, through its president Jordan Bardella, denounces “inadmissible” “threats”.
As LFI regularly does, an elected official from the group calls on the government on the war waged by Israel in Gaza, in response to the Hamas attack on October 7. It is the rebellious Nathalie Oziol who speaks in the hemicycle. And according to the report of the session, RN deputy Julien Odoul then quips: “Ah! It’s been a long time”.
“They are your friends, the terrorists”
The elected official from Hérault continues her remarks, returning more particularly to the ban on the activities in Israel of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Middle East (Unrwa), voted by the Israeli Parliament on Monday October 28. She warns: “To ban UNRWA is to condemn the Palestinian people and UNRWA humanitarian workers to death with abominable suffering.”
Comments from the far right in the hemicycle are pouring out: “They (the rebels) are hand in hand with Hamas”, accuses Julien Odoul; “They are terrorists,” adds Laurent Jacobelli. Philippe Lottiaux intervenes for the first time and repeats: “these are your friends, the terrorists!”
Nathalie Oziol then evokes Emmanuel Macron's implicit criticism of Benjamin Netanyahu, during the conference for Lebanon, organized last Thursday. “I am not sure that we defend a civilization by sowing barbarism ourselves,” declared the president.
“This has earned it the same infamous procedures as those suffered by La France insoumise,” judges the MP, while the party has sometimes been accused of anti-Semitism since the start of the war between Hamas and Israel.
“We’ll take care of you.”
“He would have done better to keep quiet,” denounces Philippe Lottiaux. Nathalie Oziol continues, evoking “the press release from the Representative Council of Jewish Institutions of France”, which denounced “excess” and “waste”, after the declarations of Emmanuel Macron. L'Insoumise asks if the government condemns this reaction, while Philippe Lottiaux “protests”, according to the Assembly report.
“Shut your mouth! We will take care of you”, “go ahead and get out”, returns the rebellious Thomas Portes. “We’re going to explain ourselves outside, you’ll see,” said the deputy for Seine-Saint-Denis. For her part, Nathalie Oziol tries as best she can to conclude and mentions these “more than 43,000 dead and more than 100,000 injured in Gaza” since the start of the conflict. “These are the statistics of your Hamas friends,” replies Philippe Lottiaux. Thomas Portes replies again: “Shut your mouth!”.
“Scum behavior, unfortunately common on this side of the Assembly…” denounced MP Philippe Lottiaux this Friday, while Jordan Bardella judged that this revealed “the true face of the extreme left”. President of the national observatory of the far right, Thomas Portes is a fervent opponent of the RN and regularly confronts Marine Le Pen's movement vigorously.
A political exercise that has already caused controversy in the past. In a different context, he displayed his foot on a balloon bearing the image of Olivier Dussopt, then Minister of Labor, during the debates on pension reform. The elected official was then excluded from the Palais-Bourbon and from the work of the Assembly for 15 sitting days. The strongest sanction provided for by the Regulations of the institution, accompanied by deprivation, for two months, of half of his parliamentary allowance.
