French far-left leader, long accused of antisemitism, backs Hezbollah ‘resistance’ over Israel’s ‘invading army’

Melenchon seemed to single out Israel for criticism, keeping in line with his vocal hostility toward the Jewish state and controversial comments about France’s Jewish community.

By The Algemeiner

The leader of France’s largest leftist coalition in government appeared to have declared open support for Hezbollah as the Iran-backed terrorist organization based in Lebanon continued to clash with Israel.

“Mass killing in Lebanon by Netanyahu’s invading army,” Jean-Luc Melenchon posted on X/Twitter on Monday, referring to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

“The toll is getting worse by the hour. Full support for the national resistance of the Lebanese.”

Then on Tuesday, Melenchon continued to attack Israel on social media, tweeting, “After the terrorist attacks in Lebanon, Netanyahu inflicts bombings on this country up to 130 kilometers deep! The so-called international community lets it happen. The Lebanese are despised and abandoned. Shame on Europe that looks the other way.”

Hezbollah has been pummeling northern Israeli communities almost daily with barrages of drones, rockets, and missiles from its stronghold of Lebanon, which borders the Jewish state, since the Palestinian terrorist group Hamas invaded southern Israel from neighboring Gaza on Oct. 7.

More than 60,000 Israelis have been forced to evacuate their homes in northern Israel and flee to other parts of the country amid the unrelenting attacks from Hezbollah, which wields significant political and military influence across Lebanon.

The conflict has escalated over the past week, with both sides increasing the scale and intensity of their strikes.

However, Melenchon seemed to single out Israel for criticism, keeping in line with his vocal hostility toward the Jewish state and controversial comments about France’s Jewish community.

France has experienced a record surge of antisemitism in the wake of Hamas’s Oct. 7 massacre across southern Israel.

Antisemitic outrages rose by over 1,000 percent in the final three months of 2023 compared with the previous year, with over 1,200 incidents reported — greater than the total number of incidents in France for the previous three years combined.

This year, anti-Jewish hate crimes in France have continued to skyrocket.

Amid the wave of attacks, France held snap parliamentary elections in July which brought an anti-Israel leftist coalition to power, leading French Jews to express deep apprehension about their future status in the country.

“It seems France has no future for Jews,” Rabbi Moshe Sebbag of Paris’s Grand Synagogue told the Times of Israel following the ascension of the New Popular Front, a coalition of far-left parties. “We fear for the future of our children.”

The largest member of the NFP, which gained the most seats of any political bloc but not enough for a majority, is the far-left La France Insoumise (“France Unbowed”) party, whose leader, Melenchon, has been lambasted by French Jews as a threat to their community as well as those who support Israel.

Melenchon has a long history of pushing anti-Israel policies and, according to Jewish leaders, of making antisemitic comments — such as suggesting that Jews killed Jesus, echoing a false claim that was used to justify antisemitic violence and discrimination throughout the Middle Ages in Europe.

Shortly after the NFP’s victory, Melenchon — who in a 2017 speech referred to the French Jewish community as “an arrogant minority that lectures to the rest” — called for France to recognize a Palestinian state.

Supporters of the hard-left coalition, which includes socialist and communist parties, poured into the streets of Paris waving Palestinian flags. French flags were largely absent from the celebrations.

In the wake of the Hamas atrocities of Oct. 7, Melenchon and his party issued a statement declaring the attacks “an armed offensive of Palestinian forces” as a result of continued Israeli “occupation.”

Melenchon also failed to condemn a deputy who called Hamas a “resistance movement.”

Melenchon’s rhetoric and policy proposals have seemingly been unaffected by the rise in French antisemitism, which in many cases has been fueled by anti-Israel animus.

Earlier this month, for example, a kosher restaurant in Villeurbanne, near Lyon in eastern France, was defaced with red paint and tagged with the message “Free Gaza.”

The incident came days after French police arrested a 33-year-old Algerian man suspected of trying to set a synagogue ablaze in the southern French city of la Grande-Motte.

Yonathan Arfi, president of the Representative Council of Jewish Institutions of France (CRIF), lambasted Melenchon at the time for denouncing an “intolerable crime” without mentioning antisemitism while condemning the attack on the synagogue.

“I do not believe in the sincerity of Jean-Luc Melenchon when he condemns this antisemitic act,” Arfi told the French broadcaster RMC, referring to the far-left leader as a “firefighter-arsonist” who incites hatred against Jews.

Arfi referred to the synagogue attack as a “symbol of the antisemitism which has struck French society” since October.

“It must be seen as such, as a tragic illustration of the new face that antisemitism has taken on in recent months,” he added.

“It misappropriates the Palestinian cause to designate Jews as legitimate targets. French Jews are today attacked in the name of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, in the name of Gaza, by guilty shortcuts but also by a certain number of actors who fan this fire, in particular the political leaders of La France Insoumise who have contributed to the fact that today, these issues are inflammable. This unfortunately results in the fact that Jews are attacked.”

The restaurant vandalism also came two months after an elderly Jewish woman was attacked in a Paris suburb by two assailants who punched her in the face, pushed her to the ground, and kicked her while hurling antisemitic slurs, including “dirty Jew, this is what you deserve.”

In another egregious attack that has garnered international headlines, a 12-year-old Jewish girl was raped by three Muslim boys in a different Paris suburb on June 15.

The child told investigators that the assailants called her a “dirty Jew” and hurled other antisemitic comments at her during the attack. In response to the incident, French President Emmanuel Macron denounced the “scourge of antisemitism” plaguing his country.

Around the same time in June, an Israeli family visiting Paris was denied service at a hotel after an attendant noticed their Israeli passports.

In May, French police shot dead a knife-wielding Algerian man who set fire to a synagogue and threatened law enforcement in the city of Rouen.

One month earlier, a Jewish woman was beaten and raped in a suburb of Paris as “vengeance for Palestine.”

Such incidents are part of an explosion of antisemitic outrages across France that has continued since Oct. 7. Last month, then-French Interior Minister Gérald Darmanin warned that incidents targeting the country’s Jewish community spiked by about 200 percent since Jan. 1.

“Two-thirds of anti-religious acts … are against Jews,” the interior minister added, according to French broadcaster BFM TV.

Darmanin appeared to call out the hard left for fostering a hostile environment for Jews during his remarks.

“There is hateful political speech against the Jews of France and it must be denounced,” he said, according to France Info. “We can clearly see that part of the left, unfortunately, is making this speech of encouragement of hatred toward our Jewish compatriots.”

Darmanin’s comments followed him stating earlier last month that antisemitic acts in France have tripled over the last year. In the first half of 2024, 887 such incidents were recorded, almost triple the 304 recorded in the same period last year, he said.

The now-former interior minister also called out Melenchon during his remarks, asking, “How can politicians think antisemitism is residual?”

Darmanin was referring to a blog post published in June in which Melenchon wrote that antisemitism in France was “residual” and “absent” from anti-Israel rallies. Critics argued that Melenchon was downplaying the significance of antisemitism in France.

Darmanin’s successor, newly minted French Interior Minister Bruno Retailleau, said on Monday that Jewish citizens in the country must be protected.

He made the comment during a speech about “restoring order to France’s streets,” referencing heightened crime in the country.

Criticizing what he described as the “laxity” of the Macron administration regarding public security, Retailleau said he was “speaking, and thinking especially, of our Jewish fellow citizens. We must let nothing pass.” He added that crime must not be tolerated against anyone including “women, children, and fellow citizens who, because of their origin, skin color, or faith, are threatened.”

However, the threat of antisemitism may continue to spike as Israel continues launching defensive military operations along its borders.

In recent months, as Israel has imposed devastating losses on Hamas in Gaza to the south, it has increasingly turned more of its attention northward to Hezbollah in Lebanon.

The Israeli military said it struck over 1,600 Hezbollah targets in southern Lebanon and the Bekaa Valley over the past 24 hours as part of Operation Northern Arrows.

Overnight attacks followed Monday’s massive Israeli aerial offensive to prevent the Iran-backed terrorist army from firing rockets across the border.

According to the Lebanese Health Ministry, 558 people were killed and 1,835 were wounded in the Israeli strikes. The ministry’s figures did not distinguish between combatants and noncombatants.

The strikes came after Hezbollah, which openly seeks Israel’s destruction, launched more than 100 rockets and drones at northern Israel in waves of attacks overnight on Saturday and Sunday morning.

The Hezbollah barrage was in response to the thousands of pagers and walke-talkies used by Hezbollah terrorists that exploded in Lebanon last week.

While Israel neither confirmed nor denied responsibility for the sophisticated operation, Iran and Hezbollah blamed the Jewish state and vowed revenge. Several experts and media reports said Israeli intelligence was behind the blasts.

Israeli leaders have said they seek a diplomatic resolution to the conflict with Hezbollah along the border with Lebanon but are prepared to use large-scale military force if needed to ensure all citizens can safely return to their homes.

FranceHezbollahJean-Luc Mélenchon