Calling Macron’s decision to avoid antisemitism march a ‘wound,’ Manuel Valls claims most in France don’t support Palestinian recognition though Paris’s stance toward Israel a ‘paradox’
Anti-Zionism is equivalent to antisemitism, France’s former prime minister told The Times of Israel in Jerusalem on Thursday.
“We often combat antisemitism in the name of the past,” said Manuel Valls, 63, who served as France’s prime minister between March 2014 and December 2016. “But today, antisemitism is anti-Zionism. The hatred of Jews and the hatred of Israel is profoundly linked.”
“The best way to combat antisemitism and anti-Zionism,” Valls said, “is to support Israel. Clearly, without hesitating. Because it’s the same values that we share.”
Along with his wife Susana Gallardo, Valls was in Israel with ELNET, an organization working to build ties between Israel and Europe. He visited Israel’s northern border, met with senior IDF officers, toured the Gaza border, and was slated to sit with President Isaac Herzog and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu after speaking with The Times of Israel.
A centrist who served most recently as France’s Minister of the Overseas, a post he left in October, has emerged over the past decade as a leading crusader against antisemitism. The Spanish-born politician, who once cited his marriage to the French Jewish musician Anne Gravoin in proclaiming an “eternal bond” with her people, led a relentless legal assault on the antisemitic comedian and provocateur Dieudonne M’bala M’bala, and along with President Francois Hollande, deployed 12,000 troops and policemen to guard Jewish institutions while premier.
His approach made him something of a hero among France’s Jewish community of 500,000.
Paradox
Valls, who visited Israel days after the October 7, 2023, attack by Hamas, said that there is a “paradox” in France’s approach toward Israel throughout the ensuing conflict On the one hand, he said, France has shown solidarity with Israel in the face of terror, and has kept the hostage in Gaza on the public agenda. Four months after the attacks, French President Emmanuel Macron hosted a ceremony at the Invalides Memorial complex in Paris, paying tribute to the 42 French citizens of the October 7 massacre, decrying the attack as “barbarism… which is fed by antisemitism and propagates it.”