Marine Le Pen judged on Sunday that the war between Israel and Hamas had revealed in France “complacency” with Islamism, calling into question in particular the fact that the AFP does not directly qualify the Palestinian Islamist movement as “terrorist”. “In the three weeks that we have just experienced, there has been a revealing effect of complacency and even sometimes compromise with Islamism from part of the political, journalistic, associative and cultural world,” said the head of deputies. RN in Sunday in politics on France 3.
“A form of complacency”
“For example, AFP, the major news agency, financed with public funds, refuses to indicate that Hamas is a terrorist group,” she added. Marine Le Pen refers to the fact that the AFP does not qualify movements, groups or individuals as terrorists, including Hamas, “without directly attributing the use of this word or without using quotation marks”, as explained the agency in a press release on Saturday.
Not using this word, “it is already a form of complacency with regard to an armed terrorist group”, launched the MP, after recalling the massacres committed on October 7 by Hamas on Israeli soil.
The position of Agence France-Presse
The editor-in-chief responsible for ethical and editorial principles at AFP, Eric Wishart, recalled on Saturday that “this is a long-standing provision at the Agency, in accordance with the editorial policies of other international press agencies and major media like the BBC.
“The AFP establishes its editorial guidelines in complete independence, outside of any political influence or consideration,” explained Phil Chetwynd, AFP information director, on Sunday. “We favor on-the-ground journalism, facts and the factual description of events, which includes things that are atrocious.” Regarding Hamas, the AFP specifies in its production that it is qualified as terrorist “in particular by the United States, the European Union, the United Kingdom and Israel”.
LFI criticized for its reluctance to use the word “terrorist”
In addition to the AFP, Marine Le Pen also pointed out the supposed “complacency” towards Hamas of “a certain number of associations”, “sportspeople” and France Insoumise. LFI executives were strongly criticized for their reluctance to use the word “terrorism” to designate the October 7 attack, preferring to speak of “war crimes”.
Insoumis leader Jean-Luc Mélenchon said on Saturday that he was “in agreement with the semantic rigor of the AFP”, on the social network “The word terrorism is a diversion to escape international justice and justify the right to massacre,” he said.