A bill relating to the criminalization of anti-Zionism was tabled in the National Assembly by deputies from the Union of Rights for the Republic (UDR) group, Tuesday December 3, 2024.
The new legislation would amend the press freedom law of July 29, 1881 to add to the list of criminally punishable crimes the challenge to “the existence of the State of Israel by calling for its destruction.”
The penalties provided for in the bill are one year’s imprisonment and a fine of 45,000 euros. They amount to five years’ imprisonment and a fine of 75,000 euros for a “person holding public authority or entrusted with a public service mission in the exercise or on the occasion of the exercise of his or her duties.” functions or its mission”.
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In the explanatory memorandum, the deputies specify that “this bill in no way prohibits free criticism or contestation of the policy of the State of Israel, as of any State, but only the very negation of its existence”.
The UDR group was formed during the early legislative elections of July 2024 when the former president of the Les Républicains (LR) party, Éric Ciotti, chose to form an alliance with the far-right Rassemblement national de Marine Le Pen. Éric Ciotti was excluded from LR and formed his own group in the National Assembly.
The text, proposed by MP Charles Alloncle, adds to recent efforts by several other French elected officials to strengthen the fight against anti-Semitism, which has been sharply increasing in France since October 7, 2023, many of whom consider that anti-Zionism is a expression.
Last October, right-wing senators Stéphane Le Rudulier and Roger Karoutchi tabled a draft reform of the Penal Code aimed at making anti-Semitism “a crime in its own right” and no longer an aggravating circumstance.
For her part, the deputy for French people abroad Caroline Yadan tabled, at the beginning of November, a new law to fight more effectively against “renewed forms of anti-Semitism”, which she considers to be the apology of Hamas terrorism, the negation of the State of Israel with expressions such as “From the river to the sea”, and the comparison of the operations of the Israeli army in Gaza with the Holocaust are part of it.
The deputies of La France insoumise (LFI), a far-left party very critical of Israel since the start of the war with Hamas, recently expressed their plan to also modify the law on freedom of the press of 1881 to remove the offense of advocating terrorism.
-This reform project is justified by the fact that “the means of the fight against terrorism in France have regularly been diverted from their purpose by the governments in place to repress freedom of expression”, according to the LFI, whose president of the group at parliament, Mathilde Panot, was summoned by the police for advocating terrorism precisely, following a press release published by the party on October 7, 2023 speaking of “an armed offensive by Palestinian forces”.
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