LFI MP David Guiraud sparked a political storm on Saturday, accusing him of relativizing Hamas' atrocities on October 7 in Israel by appearing to draw a parallel with the Sabra and Shatila massacres in Lebanon in 1982, for which he wrongly attributed direct responsibility to the Jewish state.
In a video captured during a trip to Tunis, the rebellious MP can be heard pronouncing the following sentence: "The baby in the oven, it was indeed made by Israel, the disemboweled mother was made, it's true, by Israel." Then, after some hesitation, he said, "I think it was in Sabra and Shatila." Elected from the North, David Guiraud is, among the rebellious deputies, one of the fiercest defenders of the Palestinian cause and one of the most severe critics of Israel.
These statements provoked a volley of outraged reactions and threats to file a complaint against the MP. "There seems to be a contest in France Insoumise on who will be the most abject. For the moment, he has just climbed to the top step, but he could be dethroned, knowing him, by another of his colleagues," said Marine Le Pen, the leader of the National Rally (RN) deputies, during a trip to Pas-de-Calais. The remarks "shock everyone," she added.
"Dissolution of LFI"
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Unsubmissive France covers itself a little more every day with shame and dishonor. History will record that French deputies took the side of Hamas terrorists," the leader of the Les Républicains (LR) senators, Bruno Retailleau, said on platform X. The Macronist MP for the North Violette Spillebout announced at the end of the afternoon that she had referred the matter to the public prosecutor for these "negationist remarks".
Meyer Habib, LR MP for French nationals abroad, announced that a denunciation would be made "to the Paris prosecutor under article 40 of the Code of Criminal Procedure" against him "for apology of terrorism and incitement to racial hatred". The LR senator for Bouches-du-Rhône, Stéphane Le Rudulier, called in a statement for "the reactivation of the crime of national indignity and the dissolution of LFI".
The Sabra and Shatila massacres of 1982 were committed by Lebanese Christian phalanxes during an Israeli military intervention in Lebanon. But Israel was also held responsible for failing to prevent the massacres.
In a long series of messages on X, David Guiraud admitted that he had been mistaken about Sabra and Shatila and denied any minimization of the October 7 attack. "No, I wasn't 'relativizing' Hamas' war crimes, which we have clearly condemned. Let me be clear, I never doubted the massacre, nor the atrocity of the acts committed against civilians," he wrote.