Israeli footballers and supporters “are welcome”, assured Tuesday the French Minister for Europe who also said he was in favor of measures on a European scale to combat anti-Semitism.
A France-Israel football match will take place on Thursday at the Stade de France, in Saint-Denis (north of Paris) with the fear of excesses after the violence against Jewish supporters last week in Amsterdam on the sidelines of the match between Ajax of Amsterdam and Maccabi Tel Aviv.
“Israeli footballers and supporters are welcome in Paris” as was the case for Israeli athletes and supporters during the Olympic Games in Paris last summer, Benjamin Haddad said in an interview with the French channel CNews broadcast also on Europe 1 radio.
He also welcomed the fact that France had “not given in to intimidation”, “blackmail” by maintaining the France-Israel match at the Stade de France and underlined the importance of the presence of President Emmanuel Macron and Prime Minister Michel Barnier, as a gesture of “friendship”.
Returning to “the explosion of violence and anti-Semitic hatred throughout Europe”, he considered that the Israeli-Palestinian conflict was “used as a pretext”, it is “instrumentalized to attack Jews in Europe”.
“When we attack Jews in France, we attack France, we attack the Republic,” he lamented, urging “absolutely not to let anything pass because ultimately, afterwards we gets used to it.”
Regarding measures to combat anti-Semitism, “I believe that we need to think about this at the European level,” he also said.
He cited the initiatives “a few years ago to provide transparency on foreign financing of radical Islam, the means to expel (radical) imams or to dissolve associations suspected of being linked to radical movements “.
“Why not actually take this type of measure to the European level? In any case, it is a reflection that we are having at the moment with the Minister of the Interior,” he explained, adding that “the fight against anti-Semitism, including online hatred, it is a fight that we have carried out (at the French level) but it must also be done at the European level.”
