🇫🇷Weekly Dispatch - State of emergency
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🇫🇷Weekly Dispatch - State of emergency
15/10/2023 - Terrorist murders teacher in Arras, Emmanuel Macron calls for calm, and Marine Le Pen is condemned for defamation
The Weekly Dispatch is your weekly update on major events in French and European politics, published on Sundays to give you the ideal summary of current affairs.
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This week
🇫🇷Terrorist murders teacher in Arras
🇮🇱Macron calls for calm
👨⚖️Marine Le Pen Condemned for Defamation
🇫🇷Terrorist murders teacher in Arras
After the horrors we saw last weekend in Israel, it appears that it was France’s turn to bleed yet again as Islamic extremism once again targeted innocent civilians in an attempt to strike fear.
Three years after the assassination of Samuel Paty, yet another school was the centre of an abominable act of terrorism on Friday, 13 October, as a twenty-year-old former student, Mohammed Mogouchkov, took a knife into his former school.
Despite efforts to talk him down and keep him away from students, the twenty-year-old Chechen could not be stopped and killed a literature teacher who had attempted to defend himself with a plastic chair in front of the Gambetta-Carnot school complex.
Not only this but another three staff members were injured by the attacker, with one being wounded seriously with the knife. On the same day, another attack was foiled in Limay.
Due to the ongoing crisis and the risk of additional attacks, the French government has set the French state to its highest state of alert, with the French minister of the interior, Gerald Darmanin, having announced a need for vigilance, as well as more police:
“When we move to this level of vigilance, it is to tell all French people, all administrations, to be careful…A few thousand more men will help the police, the gendarmerie to monitor the shopping centers, to protect all French people”
🇮🇱Macron calls for calm
Hamas’ pogrom shocked the world this Saturday in its barbarity and it’s cruelty, causing pain and strife, striking fear in many, and filling others with a rage that has been hard to overcome.
Under this tension, the French government began to react, attempting to help manage the situation abroad and tensions and threats in France and ensure the safety of French citizens, Israeli citizens, and Jewish citizens
Just yesterday, Gerald Darmanin announced a systemic ban on pro-Palestinian demonstrations in France, having seen pro-Hamas and pro-Palestine demonstrations worldwide leading to violence and disturbances.
There have also been over 100 cases of antisemitism in France since Hamas launched its pogrom, including death threats that were sent to the President of the French Assemblée Nationale, Yaël Braun-Pivet, leading her to need police protection.
With France having the largest Jewish population in Europe, with almost 500,000 Jewish citizens, and the largest Muslim population in Europe, around 5 million, French President Emmanuel Macron clearly had a duty to attempt to calm tensions.
This led to his speech on 12 October, where he was clear on the need for humanity, patience, and unity in France and abroad.
Two key statements clarified the French position on the Israeli and Palestinian situation:
“We cannot resolve to endless war in this region. The fight against terrorism cannot replace the search for peace. The conditions for lasting peace are known: they are essential guarantees for the security of Israel and a state for the Palestinians. This is the line that France defends with constancy, which it continues to defend without changing and will continue to uphold.”
Here, Macron clearly focus on what many are increasingly focusing on: the existence of terrorism as the key disrupter on the Middle East and, notably, the key disruptor of peace between Israel and Palestine.
You would be forgiven for assuming that the conflict is itself one between Israel and Palestine. Still, if you look at the key information, and notably the key flashpoints in the conflict since the state of Israel was founded, you would see that Israel has typically been engaged in conflict against non-state actors such as Hamas and Hezbollah.
While there were shorter conflicts with state actors such as Egypt, Jordan, and Iran, these states often understood the limits of their abilities and instead focused on proxy warfare through non-state terrorist organisations.
and alongside this, Emmanuel Macron focused on restating France’s support for the two-state solution :
“We cannot resolve to endless war in this region. The fight against terrorism cannot replace the search for peace. The conditions for lasting peace are known: they are essential guarantees for the security of Israel and a state for the Palestinians. This is the line that France defends with constancy, which it continues to defend without changing and will continue to uphold.”
Despite the intensification of Israel’s military engagement, and despite the carnage wrought by Hamas in the attacks last weekend, it’s made clear that France is choosing not to support an unchecked Israeli retaliation against Hamas that will cost Palestinian lives, but is instead choosing to put its hope in a longer-term, peaceful solution
👨⚖️Marine Le Pen condemned for defamation
Of course, crises don’t mean French politics stops, and the bad times keep rolling for Marine Le Pen.
This Friday, she was sentenced to a suspended fine of €500 for defamation against Cimade, having accused the association of organising an “illegal immigration network from the Comoros” in Mayotte.
She had made these accusations during an interview on BFM TV in January 2022, claiming that humanitarian associations were “sometimes…accomplices of smugglers.”
When pressed on whether “humanitarian associations [were] complicit of the offense of entry?” the then-candidate replied that “Sometimes yes. They are even accomplices of smugglers, yes, sometimes.”
Which is bad enough, even for someone on the far right, but she ten went a step further and attacked Cimade with the following statement:
“Cimade actually organizes the illegal immigration network coming from the Comoros”
Which is a big no-no if you don’t have proof.
She then finished off this moment by calling for people to stop paying ‘subsidies’ “to people who organize something that is illegal.”
She was found guilty of public defamation against an individual, the courts considering that the remarks "exceeded the dose of exaggeration possible in the context in which they were uttered" and that "the limits of freedom of expression [have] been crossed . ”
She has also been sentenced to pay €2000 in court costs and €1 in damages, a sum that she will likely believe to be acceptable to reinforce her political statements.
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🇫🇷Weekly Dispatch - State of emergency
Le Pen being Le Pen aka racist and authoritarian. Are you going to write anything about Macron regarding Corsica?