The alleged rape of a 12-year-old Jewish girl near Paris is transforming into an electoral issue 10 days before the legislative elections in France as members of President Emmanuel Macron’s government evoked accusations of antisemitism against radical leftist leader Jean-Luc Mélenchon and his hard-left France Unbowed party.
“Faced with such a tragedy … of course I imagine that all the major politicians condemn it, including Jean-Luc Mélenchon,” Prime Minister Gabriel Attal said at a press conference on Thursday. “But what I also want to say is that since Oct. 7, we’ve seen a form of unbridled antisemitism develop and break free. And I think that political leaders and political parties have a responsibility to put up barriers, to prevent a certain amount of rhetoric from becoming commonplace.”
According to reporting by multiple French media outlets including BFM and Le Parisien, three underaged boys have been accused of raping a 12-year-old girl on Saturday. Per BFM, one of the assailants asked the victim “questions about Israel” and “called her a dirty Jew.”
“Horrified by this rape in Courbevoie and all that it shows about the masculine conditioning to criminal behavior from an early age, and antisemitic racism,” Mélenchon posted on X, asking that “we not turn this crime and the suffering it causes into a media spectacle.”
Accusations of antisemitism against Mélenchon have intensified since the start of the war in Gaza as his France Unbowed movement became the most vocal critic of Israel’s military actions in the French political landscape and refused to qualify Hamas as a terrorist organization. The 72-year-old’s opponents accused him of using antisemitic dogwhistles or downplaying the presence of antisemitism in France.
On Oct. 22, Mélenchon said the French National Assembly’s President Yaël Braun-Pivet was “camping in Tel Aviv to encourage the massacre” as she visited Israel to pledge France’s “full support to Israel,” adding that “nothing should prevent Israel from defending itself.” Braun-Pivet accused Mélenchon of purposefully using the word “camping” due to her Jewish heritage, an accusation which the three-time presidential candidate called “absurd word policing.”
In a blog post published on June 2, Mélenchon wrote that antisemitism in France was “residual” and “absent” from pro-Palestinian rallies, which led to him being accused of downplaying the significance of antisemitism despite a surge in reported antisemtic acts since the start of the war in Gaza. “Echoes are coming from everywhere of Jewish communities in Europe and France saying ‘not in our name’,” he argued.
Macron’s Justice Minister Eric Dupond-Moretti accused Mélenchon more frontally during a demonstration against antisemitism on Wednesday. “Antisemitism is not residual in France,” he said. “Inflammatory words lead to fire.”
Manuel Bompard, a close Mélenchon ally and head of the France Unbowed party said the alleged assault showed the “existence of pervasive anti-Semitism and machismo.”
“To try to have people believe that there would be a link between what happened and France Unbowed’s political positions is disgraceful,” he said.
This however isn’t the first time M´élenchon has landed in hot water over accusations of antisemitism. In 2013, the firebrand made remarks about the country’s then-finance minister, who was born to Jewish parents, that provoked an outcry.
The post French PM lashes out at leftist leader Mélenchon after antisemitic assault appeared first on Politico.
