Already isolated within the left for his refusal to unequivocally condemn the Hamas attack, Jean-Luc Mélenchon opened a new political front on Monday evening, October 9 by attacking the Representative Council of Jewish Institutions of France (CRIF). "By forcing everyone to align themselves with the position of the Israeli far-right government, by agreeing to demonstrate with the RN, by insulting the futile elected representatives of the Socialist Party, the Crif has isolated and prevented the solidarity of the French people with the desire for peace and the demand for an immediate ceasefire. The dead on all sides deserve better and our full compassion," he wrote on X (formerly Twitter).
The post came in the evening, just hours after thousands of people gathered in a serious atmosphere to express their solidarity with Israel, nearly three days after the Islamist movement's offensive left at least 800 people dead. Jean-Luc Mélenchon's movement, La France Insoumise (LFI), has been at the center of a very lively controversy since Saturday, accused of ambiguities, even complacency on the attack on Hamas by its left-wing partners and by the government. Unlike the other parties of the New Ecological and Social People's Union (Nupes), LFI did not send a representative to the Paris march.
"We go to all the rallies that express solidarity with the Israeli and Palestinian victims and call for a ceasefire and the return of peace. This is not the case with tonight's rally," said the movement's coordinator, Manuel Bompard, in the morning. At LFI, only Paris MP Rodrigo Arenas had announced that he would be attending the demonstration. "The justness and justice of anti-colonial causes and the rejection of oppression lose their legitimacy the day they accept massacres of civilians and indiscriminate terrorism as acceptable military strategies," he said in a letter to his political group.
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In mid-July, Jean-Luc Mélenchon had already accused Crif president Yonathan Arfi of being part of the far right after being targeted by the latter. "The spokesmen of France Insoumise are more part of the problem than of the solution," said Yonathan Arfi, accusing the leader of the radical left of compromising himself "far from the republican pact".
In addition to Rodrigo Arenas, some LFI figures seem to want to mark their difference with Jean-Luc Mélenchon and with their party's initial communiqué, which drew parallels between the Hamas attack and the Israeli government's policies. For socialists, environmentalists and communists, the time could only be for an unambiguous condemnation of Hamas for the massacres and kidnappings of civilians.