French center-right politicians are calling for the dissolution of hard-left parliamentary factions that are refusing to label Hamas as a terrorist organization following the atrocities committed in Israel over the weekend.
Les Républicains Senator Stéphane Le Rudulier penned an open letter to Prime Minister Élisabeth Borne on Tuesday urging the French government to dissolve hard-left Jean-Luc Mélenchon’s La France Insoumise (LFI) party for not condemning the terror activities of Hamas, a proscribed terrorist organization in the European Union.
Le Rudulier also called for the dissolution of the New Anti-Capitalist Party (NPA), the Indigenous People of the Republic, the Young Guard, and the Permanent Revolution.
In a statement, LFI described the slaughtering of Israeli civilians as an “armed offensive by Palestinian forces led by Hamas” and blamed the attacks on the “intensification of Israeli occupation policy in Gaza, the West Bank and East Jerusalem.”
The party’s leader, Jean-Luc Mélenchon, claimed that “all the violence unleashed against Israel and in Gaza only proves one thing: Violence only produces and reproduces itself.” Meanwhile, another LFI MP, Éric Coquerel, described Hamas as “a movement that practices a form of terror just as the Israeli army practices a form of state terrorism, in a situation where it is against UN resolutions because it continues to colonize, annex, and occupy a people.”
Critics of the party accused it of standing on the side of terrorism by refusing to unequivocally condemn Hamas terrorists who infiltrated Israeli territory over the weekend and murdered hundreds of innocent civilians, including a massacre of 260 partygoers at a rave near the Israeli-Palestinian border.
At a press conference on Tuesday, Mathilde Panot, president of the LFI parliamentary group in the National Assembly, was again accused of refusing to label Hamas a terrorist organization before abruptly ending the conference.
Center-right lawmaker Le Rudulier said that “while Israel was suffering its 9/11 under Hamas rockets and commandos, far-left political movements preferred to attack Israeli democracy than the Palestinian terrorists and Islamist aggressors.”
“By refusing to condemn these terrorist actions, by advocating terrorism, these far-left elected officials have become the little telegraph operators of Hamas, a terrorist movement that officially prescribes the destruction of Israel and the extermination of the Jews,” he added.
The right-wing Rassemblement National (RN) has also criticized left-wing factions across France.
“It is no longer about complacency, but much worse than that,” remarked RN lawmaker Laure Lavalette, while the party’s leader, Jordan Bardella, said that Panot’s continuous refusal to call Hamas a terrorist organization “anchors LFI outside the republican field and installs it in the camp of dishonor.”
“We must allow Israel to eradicate Hamas, in the same way that I want to eradicate Islamism in France, but we must ensure that we protect the Palestinian civilian population, some of which are hostages to Hamas: There are women and children there,” said RN’s parliamentary party leader Marine Le Pen during an interview with French broadcaster CNews on Tuesday.