French police call in far-left leader for party’s incendiary October 7 comments
LFI probed for calling Hamas terror assault an ‘armed offensive’ and describing the Israeli response as genocidal
PARIS — The leader of far-left MPs in the French parliament was summoned on Tuesday for questioning by police in an investigation into suspected justification of “terrorism” over comments on the October 7 attack by Palestinian terror group Hamas on Israel.
Mathilde Panot heads the lower house of parliament faction of the France Unbowed (LFI) party, which has been repeatedly accused by opponents of failing to clearly condemn the attack by Hamas.
The LFI – which is now France’s strongest political force on the left – has in turn lashed out at what it sees as an erosion of free speech, and accused Israel of committing “genocide” against Palestinians in the Gaza Strip.
Panot said it was the first time in the history of modern France that a head of a parliamentary faction “was summoned on such serious grounds.”
“I am warning about this serious exploitation of justice aimed at suppressing political expression,” she said.
On October 7, the LFI group in parliament published a text that sparked controversy because it described the Hamas attack as “an armed offensive by Palestinian forces” that occurred “in a context of intensification of the Israeli occupation policy” in the West Bank and Gaza.
The LFI’s firebrand figurehead and former presidential candidate Jean-Luc Melenchon described the summons as an “unprecedented event in the history of our democracy,” accusing the authorities of “protecting a genocide.”
Last week, two conferences by Melenchon on the situation in the Middle East were canceled in Lille, first at the university, then in a private room.
The war between Israel and Hamas began with the shock Hamas assault on October 7, when thousands of terrorists invaded southern Israel, killing nearly 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and seizing 253 hostages.
In response, Israel vowed to eliminate Hamas and end the terror group’s rule of Gaza, launching an aerial assault and ground offensive to achieve its goals and return the hostages.
The Hamas-run Gaza health ministry has placed the Palestinian death toll since October 7 at over 34,000 people, although this figure cannot be independently verified and does not differentiate between civilians and combatants. Israel says it has killed some 13,000 Hamas gunmen in battle, as well as some 1,000 terrorists inside Israel on October 7.
Times of Israel staff contributed to this report.
