The Council of State promises to be, Tuesday, April 26, the theater of a very sharp debate on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and the inflamed phraseology that it sometimes arouses. The highest administrative court must look into the appeal filed by two pro-Palestinian associations against the dissolution to which they were subjected, following a decree issued by the Council of Ministers on March 9.
The measure had been announced two weeks earlier, on February 24, a few hours before the annual dinner of the Representative Council of Jewish Institutions of France (CRIF), by the Minister of the Interior, Gérald Darmanin. The associations in question, the Collectif Palestine Vaincra and the Comité Action Palestine, two small structures established in the south of France which profess radical anti-Zionism, are accused of calling for “hate, violence and discrimination”. Through the voice of their lawyers, they intend to challenge the closure order aimed at them, which they relate to a questioning of freedom of expression.
“It is an abject political maneuver, which exploits the fight against anti-Semitism, which is a necessary fight, in the same way as the fight against all forms of racism, to silence opponents of the Israeli government”claims Tom Martin, an unemployed thirty-year-old who is the main leader of the Collectif Palestine Vaincra. “There has been a temptation to criminalize anti-Zionism for several years, and Macron has taken action, for electoral reasons among others”argues Tayeb Al-Mestari, a 56-year-old civil servant, president of the Palestine Action Committee.
“Nazi Jewish State”
The Collectif Palestine Vaincra, created in 2019 in Toulouse, had around ten active members before its dissolution, one of whose main activities was to hold an information stand in the city center. Clearly marked on the extreme left, he makes no secret of his sympathies for the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP). This small organization combining Arab nationalism and Marxism is classified as a terrorist organization by the European Union – a legacy of its plane hijackings of the 1970s. But since the end of the second Intifada (2000-2005), it has mainly been active within Palestinian civil society.
The Palestine Action Committee, for its part, emerged in 2004, in Bordeaux, from a break with an association more at the center of the French pro-Palestinian galaxy, Palestine 33. Also of very modest size, it is positioned in purist of the cause, willingly critical of all those who do not share his line.
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