France’s ‘Apologies for Terrorism’ Controversy Shows Shutdown of Public Debate on Palestine

The bill submitted on November 19 by Ugo Bernalicis, a member of the left-wing party France Unbowed (La France insoumise, LFI), to remove the criminalization of “apology of terrorism” from the criminal code, sparked a fierce controversy in country.

This provision has, in fact, been widely used ever since October 7, 2023 to criminalize supporting statements for Palestinians.

Critics immediately went crazy. “It must be fought with the greatest force,” said Justice Minister Didier Migaud. Interior Minister Bruno Retaileau was outraged, saying: “It’s hard to make (something) more despicable.”

Even within the ranks of the Socialist Party (Parti Socialiste, PS), an ally of France Unbowed, the regional elected Carole Delga denounced a “moral failure in front of the victims of terrorism and the bereaved families”.

Less severe commentators have criticized the LFI for a justified but solitary and ill-conceived initiative. However, no political leader and few TV debate hosts have deemed it necessary and legitimate to address the substance of the subject.

LFI MP Manuel Bompard commented saying he was “amazed by the Trumpification of the debate” and the “intellectual laziness of the media class”.

The intention of the bill was not simply to repeal the crime of apologia for terrorism, but to return it to the press law, from which it had been taken and integrated into the criminal code through the legislation adopted on November 13, 2014.

The urgent need at the time was to counter the propaganda of organizations claiming to be part of the so-called “international jihad” in the context of the proclamation of a caliphate by the Islamic State (IS) in Syria and Iraq in June 2014.

The group’s propaganda sought to seduce young Europeans by glorifying its fighters, with the aim of recruiting or mobilizing them to carry out attacks in Europe. The media law was totally inadequate to deal with this phenomenon.

The purpose of the 2014 legislative change was mainly to lift constraints that had slowed down investigations, authorize pretrial detention and immediate court appearances, allow the seizure of evidence, and mobilize anti-terrorism surveillance resources.

In the traumatic, if not hysterical, atmosphere generated in France by the attacks of January and November 2015, the number of reports – encouraged by the government – for comments made on social media, at work or even at school grew up from 1,500 to 35,000 in one year.

Criminalizing simple comments

But since the attack led by Hamas on Israel on October 7 last year, the use of the terrorism apologia qualification saw a new surge.

As early as October 10, the then Minister of Justice Eric Dupont-Moretti TRAINED prosecutors to pursue “public remarks praising (these) attacks, presenting them as legitimate resistance to Israel, or the public propagation of messages that incite a favorable judgment of Hamas or Islamic Jihad because of the attacks they organized.”

Hundreds of investigations have been launched. By the end of January 2024, Le Monde counted 626 such inquiries targeting ordinary citizens, influencers, students, members of civil society organizations, trade union activists, journalists, academics (such as Francois Burgat), political leaders, local elected officials and even two important members of the LFI: MP Mathilde Panot and future MEP Rima Hassan.

The vast majority of French political, media and intellectual elites have integrated the Israeli narrative. Those who deviate from it are treated as heretics, either “anti-Semitic Islamists” or “collaborators”

For equating Hamas’s “heroic” action with an act of “resistance,” an activist was ordered to pay 3,000 euros ($3,120) in damages to Jewish organizations that filed a civil lawsuit against him. He was also added to the national register of terrorist offenders, FIJAIT, for 10 years, requiring him to report his home address every three months and to inform the authorities at least two weeks before any international travel.

Among the most emblematic cases was that of a trade union leader, Jean-Paul Delescaut, who was sentenced in April to a one-year suspended prison sentence for a leaflet published by his organization which claimed that “the horrors have accumulated illegal occupation. Since Saturday, I have been receiving the answers they provoked.”

Simple reminder of historical context was considered a justification, as he failed to express sufficient moral disapproval, according to the terms of the judgment.

People with Arabic names were particularly suspicious, and the police paid close attention to signs of religious practice, as if such practices indicated a predisposition to terrorism – reducing the conflict to a sectarian clash devoid of any political rationality.

Warnings ignored

Critics of LFI’s proposed legislation have deliberately ignored years of warnings issued by various authoritative human rights organizations about France’s apologetics for the terrorism law.

In 2017, ombudsman Jacques Toubon expressed deep concern over “a vagueness incompatible with freedom of expression and information” and warned against “targeting a section of the population” (ie Muslims).

In a report issued in May 2019, the UN special rapporteur for the promotion and protection of human rights and fundamental freedoms in the fight against terrorism highlighted “the important effects of the crime of ‘apology of terrorism’ on the right to freedom of expression”.

The report stated: “The law is broadly drafted, involving significant legal uncertainty, allowing for discretionary overreach, and undermining the protection of free speech and the open exchange of ideas in a robust democracy.”

More recently, in April, the National Consultative Commission for Human Rights (CNCDH) explained to the Minister of Justice that its circular “may have generated confusion between the approval, praise of a crime and/or criminals and positions related to the context in which they have been committed. The latter are part of a debate of ideas and should therefore be able to enjoy freedom of expression.”

Even a former anti-terrorist judge, Marc Trevidic, who had recommended including the pardon for the crime of terrorism in the criminal code at the time, denounced“a totally perverted use of the law” last October.

“A mere tag in support of Palestine puts you at risk of prison,” he wrote, demanding “a return.”

Judges as guardians of dogma

In such an atmosphere, the LFI bill has little chance of being included on the parliamentary agenda. On the other hand, the irrational fury it sparked says a lot about the evolution of public debate in France.

The era in which Jean-Paul Sartre could say, the day after the hostage-taking of Israeli athletes at the 1972 Munich Olympics by the Black September organization, that “the Palestinians have no other option for lack of weapons, defenders than to resort to terrorism” seems far from today.

The philosopher’s statement, although not consensual, resonated with the still alive historical memory of the national liberation struggles.

One might even think that if two former presidents, Charles de Gaulle and Georges Pompidou, had been alive in our time, they could have been the subject of a denunciation for apologia for terrorism. In November 1967, Charles de Gaulle declared: “Israel is establishing in the territories it has captured an occupation which will inevitably involve oppression, repression and expulsions, and a resistance is forming to this occupation, which Israel, for its part, considers terrorism”.

After the events in Munich, Pompidou said: “We will not eliminate Palestinian terrorism unless we have some kind of solution to the Palestinian problem.”

Since September 11, 2001, US “war on terror” rhetoric has progressively globalized the definition of terrorism as the figure of absolute evil, abstracted from any historical context, for which only the perpetrator bears responsibility.

Attacks on European soil by IS have allowed Israeli leaders to popularize their narrative of terrorism as a global threat against the West and an ideology espoused by political Islam – or indeed Muslims as a whole.

Therefore, any attempt to rationally explain its causes is seen as a reprehensible way of justifying it. In the face of this vital danger, only the use of violence without limits is seen as the legitimate response.

The vast majority of French political, media and intellectual elites have integrated the Israeli narrative into Republican orthodoxy. Those who deviate from it are treated as heretics, if not “enemies within”, labeled either “anti-Semitic Islamists” or “collaborators” – a term loaded with historical significance in France, where it was used to describe Nazi allies in during the occupation from 1940 to 1945.

Judges, contrary to their traditional calling of “guardians of liberties”, are to become the guardians of dogma. Contrary to Clausewitz’s adage that war is the continuation of politics by other means, in France, law—or rather, the political use of law—has become the extension of war in the realm of public opinion.

The same trend is at work in Germany and the United States. The war waged by Israel accelerates the authoritarian and xenophobic drift of the states that support it.

The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the editorial policy of Middle East Eye.