French publisher withdraws textbooks that called Oct. 7 victims ‘Jewish settlers’

Macron criticizes the books for ‘falsification of the facts’ as publishers launch internal investigation

By AFP 14 January 2026, 8:55 pm

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French President Emmanuel Macron (center) stands in front of members of the French Republican Guard holding portraits of French citizens killed in the October 7, 2023, Hamas atrocities, during a ceremony at the Invalides memorial complex in Paris, on February 7, 2024. (Photo by Ludovic MARIN / AFP)

PARIS, France — French publisher Hachette said Wednesday it was recalling three textbooks for high-school students that refer to the victims of the October 7, 2023, Hamas-led onslaught in Israel as “Jewish settlers.”

The worst attack in Israeli history saw thousands of terrorists from Gaza kill some 1,200 people, most of them civilians, and seize 251 hostages from communities close to the border and from a nearby music festival.

The study manuals for final-year students refer to all the victims as “Jewish settlers” — a term usually used to describe Israelis living in West Bank settlements, while the Gaza-area communities are within Israel’s internationally recognized borders.

“In October 2023, following the death of more than 1,200 Jewish settlers in a series of Hamas attacks, Israel decided to tighten its economic blockade and invade a large part of the Gaza Strip, triggering a large-scale humanitarian crisis in the region,” they state.

French President Emmanuel Macron criticized them as “intolerable.”

He said they were a “falsification of the facts” that amounted to revisionism, in a post on the social media platform X.

People look at images showing hostages held by terrorists in Gaza, on posters hung by the UEJF (Union of Jewish French Students), in Paris, France, October 16, 2023. (AP Photo/Michel Euler)

Yonathan Arfi, head of the French Jewish group Conseil Représentatif des Institutions Juives de France (CRIF), said the text amounted to “a falsification of history and an unacceptable legitimisation of terrorism by Hamas, which this work notably fails to describe as a terrorist organization.”

The chairman of Hachette, Arnaud Lagardere, issued a statement to “personally offer my apologies to all those who may rightly have felt hurt, to the teaching staff, to the parents of students, and to the students themselves.”

The company, France’s biggest publisher, has launched an internal investigation and is recalling an estimated 2,000 copies of the manuals.

Antisemitism in France has soared since Hamas’s attack sparked the war in Gaza. The country saw 1,570 antisemitic incidents in 2024, nearly four times the average level before the October 7 assault, according to CRIF.

Times of Israel staff contributed to this report.