Bulletin No46 mai 2024 Let’s decipher the language of repression
The proponents of the “apology of terrorism”
The very reactionary weekly “Le Point” , in an article dated May 24, amply cited the facts of the judgment pronounced against Jean-Paul Delescaut, secretary-general of the Union Départementale CGT du Nord, by the criminal court of Lille . clearly sees that these same judges consider that “apology for terrorism” is “a common law offense aimed precisely at fighting terrorism”. In the wake of the unfair law of 2014 and the no less scandalous circular from the Keeper of the Seals, the courts are supposed to punish people who would be tempted to pass a “ favorable judgment ” on such acts, their comments being able to exert “ an influence on individuals tempted to commit, in turn, violent actions of the same nature ", as the Lille class justice wrote. However, an essential point is obscured: the notion of terrorism is never defined. Who decides that any action is a “ terrorist act ”: the political leaders of a country? The media? The judges themselves? However, it seems that their writing justifying the conviction of Jean-Paul Delescaut does not provide any argument that would allow the attack by Palestinian fighters of October 7 to be classified as “terrorist”. In reality, for them, it goes without saying. The official consensus of power, the media and most politicians and “ specialists ”, organized by Big Capital around the fallacious concept of “ terrorism ”, serves as justification for them and they do not even need to mention it. Their judgment is therefore eminently political and sanctions a crime of opinion.
The Lille judges took the precaution of specifying that: “ The debate of general interest on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict must find its place in a democratic society [...] opinion on the policy pursued by Israel is perfectly free ” , in order to clear oneself in advance of the accusation of sanctioning a crime of opinion. But, it is to then show the complete opposite. The famous extract from the UD-CGT du Nord leaflet, “ The horrors of the illegal occupation have received since Saturday the responses they provoked ”, would not, according to the Lille judges, be part of either “ debate ” or “reflections”. complex geopolitics . Here again, we see that these positions are not only political, but contemptuous. Complex geopolitical reflections are part of the range of quibbles used by the proponents of shared wrongs, when we simply explain that we are facing a colonial conflict and that in reality the observation is obvious and the explanation quite simple. . When deciding what is a debate or not, is that really the role of judges? How would saying that the Zionist state is responsible for the October 7 attack through its colonial action since 1948 not be part of the debate? This point of view on the attack on Palestinian fighters is clearly increasingly in the public debate and the Communist Revolutionary Party continues to point out the responsibility of the apartheid colonial state.
The political position of the judges is clear: the debate is limited to the alternative between pro-Zionist positions and those of shared wrongs, within the limits of the official consensus that we mentioned above. There is no question of tolerating another point of view, which would denounce the colonial state, Zionism, or even simply like the leaflet of the CGT of the North, the full responsibility of Israel. We are even more clearly in the political delimitation of what can or cannot be said, and in the establishment of a crime of opinion.
This becomes even more luminous when we read this extract from the judgment: “ This writing seems, in fact, to consider the terrorists as those occupied, and therefore as the real victims .” However, were the Palestinian fighters who, on October 7, 2023, left the cage occupied by a colonial power? Were they not victims of the colonization and blockade of Gaza? For judges, the question should not be asked. Because the assertion incriminated by class justice is described in the same judgment as a “ thought trap ”.
However, it is based on undeniable facts. There is occupation and colonization and the Palestinians are victims. The judges therefore characterize the fact that denouncing the occupation constitutes an offense. They prohibit and thereby sanction any contextualization of the facts and establish the fundamental principle of the official consensus: everything started on October 7, 2023 and anyone who says the opposite is an apologist for terrorism.
The same article from “ Point ” addresses another situation. On October 8, 2023, Sophie Pommier, political scientist and former collaborator of the French Ministry of Foreign Affairs, published the following message on her Instagram account, illustrated by a Palestinian flag fluttering in the wind: “ Enough is enough! Decades of occupation and humiliation, injustice, provocation by settlers... The Western world, well established in its little comfort, is moved to see the Palestinians take up arms. But what other solution did we leave them with? The Resistance for us was magnificent, but when it comes to the Palestinians, is it terrorism? ". What hasn't she done, the unfortunate thing!
The “French Jewish Youth” association files a complaint against Sophie Pommier. For the association's lawyer, these comments are " not only inept but odious and extremely perverse " and, of course, constitute " the apology of terrorism ". The prosecution, in accordance with the requirements of Dupont-Moretti, declared the complaint admissible and did not delay in initiating proceedings. Sophie Pommier was referred to the criminal court to be tried on February 13, 2025, before the 30th criminal chamber of the Paris judicial court for “ apology of terrorism ”.
It would be in vain to remind these censors that the Nazi occupiers themselves described the Resistance (French or from Eastern or Southern Europe) as “ terrorists ”. The comparison is prohibited, as is the simple fact of qualifying the attacks of October 7, 2023 as acts of resistance. It is certain that the Zionists, the capitalist state of France which supports them, and all its special forces of repression cannot digest being brought back to the truth by speaking to them of occupation, humiliation, injustices. , and saying that armed revolt is the only solution left to the Palestinians.
These are therefore definitively the limits of the debate authorized by Macron and his judges, by the dominant ideology. It is forbidden to speak in favor of the Palestinian Resistance, to speak of occupation and colonization, to denounce the Zionist project and enterprise at work since at least 1948.
But this wall erected between what is tolerable and intolerable for Big Capital in France and in the countries of Western imperialism objectively places in the same camp the most fanatical pro-Israelis and the followers of shared wrongs, who do not hesitate not to justify or accept the placing on the same level of a colonized people and a colonizing state, that is to say the majority of left-wing political leaderships and all of the confederal union leaderships. The latter also have the right to speak, which is denied to defenders of the Palestinian Resistance, and are not prosecuted by the courts, nor worried by the police, and struggle to stand up against repression when they do not justify it.
Shared wrongs and “anti-Semitism”
What happened on May 21 at the University of Lille is very significant of the unease experienced by those who believe in shared wrongs.
Two students from the Jewish collective Golem, of which we have already spoken about their pro-Zionist accusations against the UJFP and which is clearly in the movement of shared wrongs, went to a round table on the situation in Gaza where several associations of solidarity with Palestine (“Free Palestine”, “Tsedek”, the UJFP and the AFPS) were present. In an article from May 24, “Le Parisien” gave the floor to one of the two, but did not think of asking the other organizations present. He specifies that he had come to “ denounce the political demonization of movements in support of the Palestinian people in the academic world ” as well as to “warn about the anti-Semitism which can emanate from certain slogans of these demonstrations of support. ". Obviously their balancing act did not convince the participants since, according to their statements, several activists from solidarity associations with the Palestinian Resistance publicly " pointed them out as being directly responsible for the misfortunes of the Palestinian people ", the two activists were the target of “ spontaneous howls from several students in the amphitheater ” and were called “ settlers, fascists, genocidaires ”, slogans taken up by part of the amphitheater. We understand that it is difficult for them to accept that Golem's position is objectively a defense of the Zionist state and that it is not pleasant to be treated as fascists or genocidaires. We mentioned in a previous article how what some describe as the insecurity of Jewish students in American universities is in reality a discomfort faced with the difficulty of defending Zionist positions. Here we have a new example.
What might seem surprising, but is not that much, is the qualification given by our Golem student to the events that occurred. Thus, being accused of being co-responsible for the misfortunes of the Palestinian people constitutes, according to him, an “ anti-Semitic amalgam ”. He adds that: “ These different sequences of humiliations have strongly affected us personally and constitute a public anti-Semitic lynching ”, and evokes an “ unbearable ‘ silence ’ of Jewish voices in academia ”. First, it is important to remember that “ Tsedek ” and the UJFP are Jewish organizations, but anti-colonialist. The accusation of anti-Semitism falls by itself. And it is not Jewish voices that have difficulty expressing themselves in the fight against the war in Gaza, but Zionist voices. But above all, how are words like “ settler ”, “ fascist ”, “ genocidal ”, which can rightly be considered insults, anti-Semitic?
They can only be so if we consider that attacking Israel and its accomplices is anti-Semitic, which has been the Zionists' stock in trade since the beginning of the resumption of the war. We understand that these “warn about the anti-Semitism which can emanate from certain slogans of these demonstrations of support. » are part of the dominant discourse which postulates that attacking Zionism is anti-Semitic. Moreover, the two students received the support of the very Zionist UEJF (Union of Jewish Students of France), the one which carries the dominant discourse in universities on the criticism of Zionism as an anti-Semitic expression and whose point of view is taken systematically taken into account in the media without ever being even discussed. We are sometimes betrayed by our supporters.
To shed definitive light on the position of these Golem students, who were finally exfiltrated through the rear of the university, the one who spoke to the “ Parisien ” ends with these words: “ We will continue to have a word revolted and committed to the ongoing war in Gaza, radically critical of Netanyahu's fascist government while perpetuating the memory of the civilian Israeli victims of 7/10 .
This is exactly the credo of the proponents of shared wrongs. Attacking Netanyahu's fascist government and rejecting the occupier and the colonized side by side means not wanting to denounce the colonial situation and the fact that it is, from the beginning, the result of the Zionist project. By attacking the fascist or far-right government we at the same time exonerate the Zionist left, which organized colonization in 1967 and which said in 1969, through the voice of Labor Prime Minister Golda Meir: “We are being demands to evacuate the occupied territories, but there is no such thing, because the Palestinian people do not exist. ".
The repression therefore targets exclusively defenders of the Palestinian Resistance; they are the only ones deemed dangerous by the dominant capitalist order.
About the decision of the International Court of Justice
The International Court of Justice, the highest court of the UN, ordered Israel on Friday May 24 to stop its military offensive in Rafah . The Zionist state must “immediately stop its military offensive, and any other action carried out in the Rafah governorate, which would be likely to inflict on the group of Palestinians in Gaza living conditions capable of leading to its physical or partial destruction” .
The ICJ also called for the immediate release of prisoners of Palestinian fighters. The Court “considers it deeply worrying that many of these hostages remain in captivity and reiterates its call for their immediate and unconditional release . ”
Finally, the court ordered Israel to keep the Rafah crossing open to allow “unrestricted” access for humanitarian aid.
Last week, we expressed our doubts about the requests for an arrest warrant from the prosecutor of the ICC (International Criminal Court), firstly because we do not know what will ultimately be decided, then and above all because also requesting arrest warrants for Palestinian fighters, whoever they may be, is to deny the right to armed revolt of colonized peoples, it is to put the occupation and the occupied on the same level and it is mask the colonial character of the conflict.
Let us remember that the ICC is a creation of the European Union, intended, according to a senior US official, in the words of the prosecutor Karim Khan himself "for Africans and thugs like Putin" and that the ICC's request is only a consequence of the international balance of power in solidarity with Palestine, the continued discrediting of the Zionist state among workers, youth and the people of the world, and their growing perception of the colonial nature of the conflict.
The ICJ is the legal body of the UN, which can issue injunctions to States but does not judge individuals. Its decisions are enforceable, but obviously the ICJ has no means of enforcing its decisions.
Of course, we should not be under any illusions about the ICJ's injunction. The UN is not a neutral body, influenced as it is by dominant imperialism and rival imperialisms; international law is nothing other than international capitalist law. Nevertheless, it also marks the balance of power and, above all, contributes to banishing the Zionist colonial state from nations. The notable difference with the ICC is that the ICJ reacted to the request of South Africa, supported by other countries such as Algeria, that is to say countries which are not part of the Western imperialist bloc and who have a historical position of support for Palestine, even if we must be careful not to make them heralds of anti-imperialism. South Africa clearly accuses Israel of genocide and has convinced the ICJ that there is a real risk.
It is not the decision of the ICJ which will stop the genocide in Gaza, but it can contribute to it. As proof, the defense of the Zionist state, in a joint statement from its Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the National Security Council in which it says it is "extremely aware" of the suffering of civilians in the Gaza Strip and assures that it had made “considerable efforts” to increase humanitarian aid. For the two pillars of the Zionist state, the Rafah offensive poses “ no existential risk for the Palestinian civilian population”. The statement finally certifies that "Israel has not carried out and will not carry out military operations in the Rafah area which create living conditions likely to lead to the destruction of the Palestinian civilian population, in whole or in part."
Of course, we know that all this is a web of lies, nevertheless, it is clear that Netanyahu and his people are keeping a low profile, which was not at all the case when the mandate request was announced. arrest of the ICC. It is not a question of drawing hasty conclusions, but of noting the fact.
In conclusion
Let us not forget that in Rafah, the Zionist army continues to bomb and massacre. The colonial machine continues to kill all those it considers dangerous, women and children included. Let us also not forget that, to put an end to the genocide, our only weapon is the scale of the international solidarity movement.
The Palestinian question, the national liberation struggle of its people must remain the major concern of the people, the youth and the workers of the world. Under these conditions, if it is urgent and fundamental to demand an immediate and permanent ceasefire, as well as free access for humanitarian workers throughout the Gaza Strip, or even the total withdrawal of the occupying forces from the enclave, that cannot be enough.
This is why the Communist Revolutionary Party intends to bring together all those who want an immediate ceasefire so that the massacre of the Palestinians stops and to speak out for peace. For us, this involves supporting the fundamental demands of the Palestinian national liberation movement: an immediate end to Zionist military aggression, the right of refugees to return and the formation of a Palestinian state on the territory of Mandatory Palestine.