Houria Bouteldja and Rima Hassan expected in French-speaking Switzerland

French women Houria Bouteldja and Rima Hassan, the popess of the decolonials and the LFI European deputy, both hostile to Israel, will participate in activist debates in Geneva, Friborg and Lausanne in January and February. A look back at their controversial comments.

“You cannot be Israeli innocently,” wrote Houria Bouteldja in a blog post published on Mediapart. It was in December 2020. His remarks were part of a wave of hatred directed against Miss Provence, April Benayoun, who participated in the Miss France competition and who had indicated in her television presentation that she had an Israeli father. Houria Bouteldja’s article had been unpublished as it gave the feeling of justifying the attacks targeting the Provençal competitor.

Public subsidies

On February 8, this figure of decolonial ideology, founder of the Indigenous Party of the Republic in 2005, in France, will be in Lausanne as a speaker invited by the Sud Global collective. The conference will be held in the premises of Pôle Sud, an association affiliated with the Union syndicale vaudoise, partly subsidized by the Foundation for socio-cultural animation in Lausanne (FASL), itself financed almost 100% by the City of Lausanne.

Maxime Benatouil, member of the French Jewish Union for Peace and TSEDEK, two decolonial Jewish movements opposed to Israel in its form as a Jewish, that is to say Zionist, state, will also be a speaker. Theme of the debate: “Against anti-Semitism and its exploitation”, title of a book written by a collective of authors, in which we find the reference figure of gender studies and American cultural leftism, Judith Butler, who had described the Hamas massacres of October 7, 2023 as an “act of armed resistance”.

Message of support for Hamas

For their part, the indigenous people of the Republic of Houria Bouteldja had welcomed the action of Hamas with a message published on Le Figaro:

The announced arrival of Houria Bouteldja has so far not sparked any comments from the Vaudois political parties. Joined by watsonthe head of the Security Department at the City of Lausanne, PLR Pierre-Antoine Hildbrand, says he has not received an authorization request from the organizers of the February 8 conference at this time.

Contacted by watsona member of Pôle Sud wishing to remain anonymous indicates that a previous conference, organized in December, in the premises of his association already focused on “the fight against anti-Semitism”. Its title – “Jewish anti-Zionist struggles, crossed perspectives” – however, denoted, here too, opposition to Israel. It was a question of denouncing “the instrumentalization of anti-Semitism (…) to legitimize Zionist colonization”. Let us remember that in the eyes of Switzerland and Western states in general, the refusal to recognize the right to self-determination of the Jewish people is an expression of anti-Semitism.

The “pearls” of Houria Bouteldja

Houria Bouteldja, these are often hurtful comments. In his essay Whites, Jews and us: towards a politics of revolutionary love, published in 2016, it exercised insidious blackmail on the Jews. They had to renounce Israel to live in security, their destiny being that of a dispersed people – at the mercy of pogroms? It exonerated homophobes in the suburbs and condemned homosexuals’ attempts to come out, on the grounds that virility is an essential fuel for the decolonial struggle. She understood that a black woman raped by a black man does not file a complaint to protect the black community. The anti-racist – and pro-Palestinian – Thomas Guénolé confronted her with her quotes in the show Tonight or never.????

Rima Hassan and her complaints for advocating terrorism

It is another sulphurous, the European deputy of rebellious France Rima Hassan, muse of the parades in support of Palestine, who is expected in Friborg on February 22 for a debate organized in Fri-Son by collective Ciné Résistance, before that the January 25 in Geneva for a discussion as part of the Black-Movie festival – Both Fri-Son and Black Movie benefit from public subsidies.

The MEP is the subject of several complaints in France for “apology of terrorism” – Hamas being a group recognized as terrorist by the European Union. At the beginning of January, the Jewish Observatory of France association filed a complaint against her after she considered that Franco-Palestinians should have the right to participate in the “Palestinian armed resistance” – as a mirror to the Franco-Israeli soldiers engaged in Gaza, she thinks.

Last August, Rima Hassan embarrassed the left by declaring on X that “outside Western hegemonic thought, no one considers October 7 as an act of terrorism.” In recent months, she has appeared, like other elected officials and leaders of La France insoumise, alongside Islamist activist Elias d’Imzalène, sentenced in December to five months in prison for “calling for the Intifada” .

In the columns of Freedomthe UDC deputy in the Friborg Grand Council Stéphane Peiry pleads for the banning of the debate in which Rima Hassan is to participate on February 22 in Fri-Son.

Guest professor from the University of Lausanne Joseph Daher, one of the leaders of the pro-Palestinian student mobilization last spring on the Lausanne campus, will be there.

Stéphane Peiry recalls that, faced with pressure from pro-Palestinian activists, Federal Councilor Ignazio Cassis, considered too close to Israel, canceled his visit to the University of Fribourg. He was to participate in a discussion with his Slovak counterpart on a subject unrelated to the war in Gaza.

Apart from the Friborg UDC national councilor Nicolas Kolly, who was surprised on reservations regarding this demonstration. “I have received messages of support from elected officials from other parties, but they are not public,” confides Stéphane Peiry to watson.

Is it because the toll from Israel’s bombings on the Gaza Strip looks terrible, perhaps more than 50,000 dead even though a truce would be imminent, that the political class prefers to say nothing about the invitations launched to Houria Bouteldja and Rima Hassan, leaving, to a panel of speakers, some of whom do not hide their hostility to the existence of Israel? Is it because Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is being prosecuted for crimes against humanity that we must remain silent in the face of declarations returning Jews to their former condition of landless people? It is not a question of prohibiting speech, but of situating it, without hiding.