This Saturday, December 7, during the Parisian demonstration in support of Palestine and Lebanon, a man came to threaten the demonstrators in the EuroPalestine procession. After tearing down a sign and insulting several demonstrators, he threatened them several times by showing a handgun. The weapon turned out to be an alarm pistol (category D weapon).
The man was finally arrested, and several threatened demonstrators immediately filed complaints. This Monday, however, the man was released under judicial supervision. According to information obtained by Off Investigationhe will have to appear in May 2025. An impunity denounced by Elsa Marcel, lawyer for the plaintiffs: “ We can only note with dismay the double standards at work in this decision. While supporters of Palestine are being tried immediately for tweets, the Prosecutor chooses to show leniency with regard to an armed provocation, targeting a demonstration against the genocide in Gaza in the heart of Paris. »
This treatment is part of the continuity of the reactions of the State and the dominant media since the resumption of demonstrations of solidarity with Palestine in October 2023. While many demonstrations of support for Gaza have been banned, and no one no longer counts criminal prosecutions in “apology of terrorism” for speeches or simple press releases opposing the ongoing genocide, the incredible violence of the State of Israel and its supporters is justified and tolerated.
Added to the complacency of justice is a deafening media and political silence, despite the seriousness of the facts. Let us remember that on several occasions, for weeks on all TVs and radios, the government and the media broadcast fake news fabricated to drag the pro-Palestinians through the mud. At Sciences Po, the entire political class and the media made people believe for days that a student had been banned from entering an amphitheater because she was Jewish. In this same school, while the students denounced France's complicity in the genocide, and displayed red hands to denounce the blood on the hands of the French government, a new media cabal: the students would have called for the massacre of the Jews! A gun threat against pro-Palestinian demonstrators will not have merited a single minute of airtime from any media, either public or private! Only a handful of independent media outlets reported on the effort.
By this blatant double standard, the French state wants to discourage and intimidate all those who take a stand for oppressed peoples, who denounce colonization and imperialist crimes. Because anyone who looks towards Palestine and protests against Israeli colonization cannot remain silent about France's colonial possessions and the domination it maintains in its former colonies. The silence that the ruling class wants to impose on Gaza is the same that it wants to impose on New Caledonia and the Caldoche militias who are hunting down the Kanaks fighting for their self-determination. The dehumanization of oppressed peoples and the justification of colonial violence become de facto invitations to take action.
Saturday's attack in Paris is only the product of the permanent criminalization of support for the Palestinian people and the habit of seeing editorialists regularly converse about the lower value of Palestinian lives and the legitimacy of Israel to raze the Strip. of Gaza, displacing millions of people, annexing the West Bank and massively bombing Lebanon and Syria. After the campaigns of intimidation against pro-Palestinian activists, harassment online and by telephone, publication of addresses and telephone numbers, and death threats, this attack on a demonstration marks a sudden leap in the decompression of activists. Zionists and supporters of the genocide carried out by Israel in Gaza.
The unwavering support of France and the imperialist powers for Israel is thus achieved on the military field but also on the domestic field through the repression of voices raised for Palestine, and the impunity of apologists for colonization and massacre. in progress. The old adage of the internationalist labor movement remains relevant: a people who oppress another forge their own chains. The fight against state authoritarianism, for our political and trade union freedoms are indeed inextricably linked to the fight for the liberation of Palestine and all the peoples oppressed by France and its allies.
