Jean-Luc Mélenchon and Rima Hassan cancelled a conference at the University of Lille. Rafal Amselem says the cancellation is not only reprehensible on a moral level but also counterproductive.
At the heart of the discord, a logo, that of Free Palestine, the association initiating the invitation. We see the entire Israeli and Palestinian territory covered in the sole colors of the Palestinian flag. A symbol understood as the expression of an ambiguity, one more, as to the position of the rebels on the conflict in the Middle East, he says. The binational state, in fact, consists of placing Jews in a minority position within a geographical space which, as it stands at least, is fundamentally hostile to them. He is a research fellow at GénérationLibre, a think tank based in Lille, France, and a member of the European Council of Learned Societies (ECOS), which is based in Paris. The LFI uses anti-Semitism as a way to follow its positions internationally. The past declarations of each party cannot legitimize police measures a priori unless we accept the indefinite extension of authority on the basis of suspicion, by nature indeterminate and arbitrary. Let's take a bet: will we still need to recall the elementary principles which underpin freedom of expression? Who guide both the autonomy of the human person and the liveliness of public and intellectual debate? We could still talk about David Guiraud who used the anti-Semitic rhetoric of celestial dragons, of Danielle Obono unable to say whether the declaration of Houria Bouteldja, affirming that "the Jews are the shields, the riflemen of French imperialist policy, and of his Islamophobic policies" was anti-Semitic. But these facts are known to everyone, and to persist in not seeing the problem of anti- Zionism at LFI now amounts to frank complacency.