Yanis Darras
modified to
9:22 a.m., November 2, 2023
The mayor of Béziers, Robert Ménard, was the guest of La Grande interview Europe 1-CNews this Thursday morning. At Sonia Mabrouk’s microphone, he returned to the rise of anti-Semitism in France in recent weeks, since the October 7 attack in Israel. He is now calling for a “sanitary cordon” to be placed around Jean-Luc Mélenchon, whom he considers “problematic”.
The video went viral on social media. In a Paris metro train, a group of young people were filmed singing “Damn the Jews, (…) We are Nazis and we are proud”. Anti-Semitic chants that shook the political class. While an investigation has been opened, anti-Semitic acts have increased in France since the Hamas attack in Israel on October 7.
“It’s the same madness”
Guest of La Grande interview d’Europe 1-CNews on October 10, Marine Le Pen presented herself as the “shield” of French Jews in the face of anti-Semitism. “It’s true! You can make 25 criticisms of Marine Le Pen on a whole bunch of things, but she is not a bit anti-Semitic”, judges Robert Ménard at Sonia Mabrouk’s microphone.
The various right-wing mayor of Béziers now believes that “Jean-Luc Mélenchon is the reverse mirror of Jean-Marie Le Pen. It’s the same madness, it’s the same taste for provocation.” Marine Le Pen’s father is no stranger to slip-ups, notably when he described the gas chambers used in concentration camps to kill Jews during the Second World War as a “detail of history”. A qualification for which he was convicted by the courts in the early 90s.
“Problematic” comments
For his part, Jean-Luc Mélenchon and the La France Insoumise movement maintain a position widely criticized by the political spectrum on the question of the conflict between Israel and Hamas, refusing in particular to qualify the Islamist movement as a terrorist group. A position that displeases within Nupes. “If for once, the moral left could apply its morality by saying ‘We criticize, therefore we have more relationship with him,’ that would be good, believes the former journalist.
Jean-Luc Mélenchon’s comments “are problematic”, he continues, calling for “a cordon santé” to be put in place around the founder of the left party. “I think that he is the bearer of a speech that is deadly. He is the bearer of a speech which deeply divides our society and he is the bearer of a speech which partly explains what you made me hear earlier in the metro”, he concludes.