Middle East: the poisons of a conflict

Score draw (0-0) disappointing for the Blues, Stade de France largely empty, leaden atmosphere: more than the match itself to the low sporting interest between the French football team and the Israeli selection, Thursday November 14, at Saint-Denis, within the framework of the League of Nations, we must be pleased that it took place.

A week after the clashes in Amsterdam between pro-Palestinian sympathizers and Israeli supporters of Maccabi Tel-Aviv, marked by shocking racist clashes and unbearable scenes of anti-Semitic manhunts, France showed, at the cost of an exceptional police deployment, that it did not give in to pressure tending to import the Middle East conflict into France and did not tolerate a sporting competition organized on its soil degenerates into a pitched battle.

The joint presence in the stands of the President of the Republic, his two predecessors as well as the Prime Minister sent a clear message in this regard. Just like, each in their own way, the absence of Jean-Luc Mélenchon, who places the Israeli-Palestinian confrontation at the heart of his strategy of conquering populations from immigrant backgrounds and had requested the cancellation of the match ; and that of Marine Le Pen, quick to use the Middle East conflict to fuel the anti-Arab rhetoric of the far right and whose party spokesperson, Julien Odoul, would have preferred that the match be relocated to Corsica.

Soothe

While, since the Hamas terrorist attack in Israel on October 7, 2023, the number of anti-Semitic acts in France has reached a level not seen since 1945 – Jews, who represent 1% of the population, are targeted by 57% of racist and anti-religious attacks – while the shelling of Gaza by the Israeli army at the cost of tens of thousands of civilian deaths can only arouse strong emotion and tensions, all the speeches and attitudes which tend to identify the Jews of France or the Israelis with the policies of Benyamin Netanyahu, or the Arabs of France with terrorists, are so many doses of acid poured on raw wounds. More than ever, no form of anti-Semitism, the matrix of all racism, can be tolerated.

If the exploitation of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict by French officials fuels the insecurity experienced on a daily basis by French Jews, it is impossible to conceal the devastating effects, well beyond the Middle East, of the war led by Mr. . Netanyahu in Gaza whose purpose is beyond comprehension. The information coming from a territory ravaged by more than a year of deadly and devastating bombings, and to which the Jewish state has banned access to the international press for more than a year, fuels the greatest concerns. As evidenced by the denunciation by the Israeli peace organization B'Tselem and the respected daily Haaretz of a “ethnic cleansing” underway in northern Gaza. The formation, in the United States, of a future outrageously pro-Israeli Republican administration is also unlikely to reduce tensions.

In this deleterious atmosphere, everything must be done to limit the effects of the metastases which develop, particularly in countries like France where significant Jewish and Arab minorities coexist. Rather than political exploitation, the poisons of racism and anti-Semitism urgently need a clear and unifying counter-discourse from the highest authorities of the State capable of calming the competition of pain and fears.