The far-left deputies of La France Insoumise have just quietly proposed a bill in the French National Assembly to repeal the offence of apology for terrorism. Today, the end of this legal offence would mainly benefit these same MPs, who give unlimited support to organisations close to Hamas and Hezbollah. To mark the occasion, Le Figaro Magazine has devoted a major investigation to revealing the many links between the French far Left and Islamism—at the crossroads of electoral opportunism and ideological conviction.
The investigation was entrusted to a poet and journalist of Syrian origin, Omar Youssef Souleimane, who has closely followed the activities of pro-Palestinian groups operating on French soil by infiltrating them. Wearing sunglasses, make-up, and a Palestinian flag and keffiyeh, he has taken part in numerous anti-Israeli demonstrations, amply supported by the deputies of La France Insoumise (LFI). He reveals the extent to which the French far Left has fully endorsed the Palestinian cause by forging links with Islamists—a union cemented by antisemitism.
The discourse of the far Left in favour of the Palestinian cause is rooted in classic anti-colonialist rhetoric. This time, the settler is no longer the white French or European, but Israel, with the complicity of the West. Speaking of Israel, the anti-colonial motif is everywhere. They talk about “the genocidal colonial army” and “the tanks of the colonial army.” In the role of the oppressed, the Palestinian—but in his most radical form, i.e., the Hamas militant.
At the various demonstrations Souleimane was able to attend, he noted the unscrupulous use of the symbols and language of Muslim terrorist organisations. The members of the security staff were inspired by the green uniform of Hezbollah, and the language was borrowed from Hamas.
Souleimane notes that at a demonstration on November 3rd, LFI MPs Mathilde Panot and Clémence Guetté marched alongside Omar Alsoumi, director of Urgence Palestine, a former member of the Palestinian Youth Movement in Paris, and an activist with the Youth Movement, affiliated to the PFLP (Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, classified as a terrorist organisation in Europe). During the demonstration, he called on the world to “deluge al-Aqsa,” without the far-left MPs reacting in the slightest. The ‘flood of al-Aqsa’ is the name given by the Islamist movement to the massacres perpetrated on October 7th. A little later, Souleimane was able to observe MPs Thomas Portes and Mathilde Panot in happy company with Salah Hamouri, a Franco-Palestinian convicted in Israel of an assassination plot against the Chief Rabbi. Their company is not only open to criticism, but above all dangerous, politically assuming the violence and death of their opponents. The gallery of portraits painted by the journalist is chilling.
The dubious associations of French MPs have not gone unnoticed in the Arab world. The Al-Jazeera channel presents the representatives of La France Insoumise as heroes of the Palestinian cause in France. “No other European party has as much space on this most-watched [Muslim] Brotherhood channel in the region,” notes Souleimane. MP Mathilde Panot was even interviewed in July 2024. On the air, she promised recognition of the Palestinian state if her party came to power.
Support for the Palestinian cause from far-left MPs is accompanied by a second phenomenon, which feeds the pact between La France Insoumise and the far Left: antisemitism. Their defence of the Palestinians is not fuelled by a desire for justice and a concern to defend the interests of all communities, but by “the desire to see the destruction of Israel, but also the exclusion of other non-Arab ethnic groups from this region.”
In the course of his investigation, Souleimane collected a number of photos and videos which he intends to provide in support of a complaint lodged by the Lutte pour l’égalité dans l’antiracisme (LEA) association, a universalist and secular organisation.
The question that arises on reading this account is, of course, why. Why did these far-left MPs take up the cause of Palestinian terrorism against Israel? The answer lies in their own electoral interests. The French Left long ago abandoned the workers’ cause and the defence of the interests of the poorest, preferring instead the militancy of minorities, and in particular the community vote of immigrants of the Muslim faith, which represents an electoral base of several million voters. In certain parts of the country, such as the communes to the north and east of Paris, this community vote has become the Left’s guarantee of winning local elections and even seating parliamentary deputies. At pro-Palestinian demonstrations, the roadmap chanted by activists is clear. “Are we ready to bring the intifada to Paris? To the suburbs, to our neighbourhoods. To show them that the voice of liberation comes from us,” shouted Salafist preacher Elias d’Imzalène, who is on the ‘S list’—a list of people likely to threaten national security—at the beginning of September.
As Souleimane points out in his investigation, Mélenchon’s party and its left-wing coalition came out on top in most working-class communes with a high concentration of Muslim immigrant populations. For the 2024 European elections, an IFOP poll for La Croix showed that 62% of Muslims voted for LFI. For them, the equation is simple: Jean-Luc Mélenchon’s party is the only one that defends Islam against white French people. The socialists realised this a long time ago. Since the early 2000s, they, too, have chosen their electoral camp, a decision fuelled by the analyses of political scientist Pascal Boniface, who in 2002 published the following note: “In France, we have 500,000 Jews and 5 million Muslims. Stop supporting Israel because, from an electoral point of view, it doesn’t pay any dividends.”
The consequences of such a choice, with its unspeakable motives, are terrible, but the far-left MPs don’t care. It’s been quite a long time since they have stopped believing in France.
