The President of the National Assembly Yaël Braun-Pivet was targeted on Friday by hostile tags and slogans from pro-Palestinian activists opposed to her coming to a university in Lyon, but finally exchanged calmly with students.
“I suggested to these young people who did not want me to come, to have a dialogue. They did not want it, they preferred violent action”she regretted at the end of her visit, stressing that she wanted “always favor dialogue”.
“We are in a democracy, as President of the National Assembly that I am, I must be able to go anywhere in the country (…) It is my role and I will never give up”she added.
“Yaël get out of there”, “genocidalists outside our universities”, « Free Gaza » or « Free Palestine »: several messages in large letters had been sprayed overnight near the campus. Some were quickly deleted.
In total, 53 tags were counted, according to a police source.
Around 200 demonstrators continued on the same register in the afternoon, before the arrival of the Macronist MP, chanting “Criminal Israel, Yaël complicit” or “Yaël, get out of there, Lyon 3 is not yours”.
Around 3:30 p.m., around a hundred people tried to access an amphitheater but were prevented, according to a police source.
The Minister of the Interior Bruno Retailleau denounced on “fascist drift of activists who exploit the tragedy experienced by the Palestinians”.
“Total support for Yaël Braun-Pivet, whom far-left demonstrators with anti-Semitic ideas want to ban from a university. The Republic is at home everywhere”wrote Minister Les Républicains (LR).
His colleague in charge of Higher Education Patrick Hetzel, for his part, condemned “with force the anti-Semitic insults uttered against Yaël Braun-Pivet and the unacceptable actions of groups of students that occurred in Lyon III”.
“My firmness against anti-Semitism and any form of political exploitation of the university is total”he reacted on X.
In a short press release, the Lyon 3 Jean-Moulin University condemned “with the greatest firmness the unacceptable and scandalous inscriptions which have been tagged”and announced that they had taken legal action.
According to the university team, video surveillance images show, shortly after midnight, five taggers, dressed in dark clothes, hooded and hooded, including a young girl.
“Cry of anger”
Yaël Braun-Pivet was traveling in the Rhône on Friday as part of the policy of opening Parliament.
Several left-wing organizations, including solidarity student unions and Unef or young local LFIs, had denounced her coming to Lyon 3, describing her in a press release as “prominent figure of unconditional support for the criminal actions of the Israeli state”.
“While the deaths caused by Israel’s operations number in the tens of thousands (more than 41,000 dead!) Yaël Braun-Pivet once again dared to defend the delivery of weapons to a criminal state”highlight the signatories of the press release.
On October 6, on BFMTV, she declared that he “Israel should not be disarmed”in reaction to statements by the President of the Republic Emmanuel Macron calling for an end to deliveries of weapons used to carry out fighting in Gaza.
The demonstration against his visit is “a cry of anger against the government’s support for Israel”explained Timothée Martin-Brossat, from the Student Union, who also came to express his dissatisfaction with the precariousness of students.
Pro-Israeli counter-protesters during a pro-Palestinian rally against the visit of the President of the National Assembly to Lyon 3 University, November 8, 2024 / OLIVIER CHASSIGNOLE / AFP
In a tense atmosphere, the local of the right-wing student union Uni was fractured.
Outside the university, around ten people showed up with signs displaying “Have you become accustomed to anti-Semitism? Not us! » or “Anti-Semitism is a crime”.
Ms. Braun-Pivet, who did not meet the demonstrators, spoke for a little over an hour with around 200 students.
In the amphitheater, Faustine Berges, 18, a law and political science student, was delighted to learn more about the career of the former lawyer.
“The university is a place where you can discover lots of things, where freedom of expression is present”she told AFP, not paying more attention to the « tensions » of the day.
