In the National Assembly, impossible “unity” despite the challenge posed by the terrorist threat

2023-10-17 23:55:17
The tribute to Dominique Bernard held during the question session to the government, the National Assembly, October 17, 2023. JULIEN MUGUET FOR “LE MONDE”

Their black and white portraits adorned the walls of the Hemicycle for a few moments. At the National Assembly, the tribute paid to Dominique Bernard, teacher at the Gambetta-Carnot high school in Arras, murdered on Friday October 13 by a young radicalized Russian, was combined in a tragic way with another tribute, that given in the honor of Samuel Paty, another teacher killed three years earlier by a Chechen Islamist, in Yvelines. The national representation lent itself, Tuesday, October 17, to a new moment of contemplation, as a preamble to the traditional question session to the government.

“France is in mourning”, declared, with a serious face, the President (Renaissance) of the National Assembly, Yaël Braun-Pivet, then inviting all the deputies to observe a minute of silence “for our two professors and for all the victims of terrorism in Europe and elsewhere.” The day before, in Brussels, a terrorist attack left two dead – Swedish nationals – and several injured in the center of the Belgian capital. This attack itself falls within the context of the confrontation initiated by Hamas against Israel since October 7.

Read also: Article reserved for our subscribers Attack in Arras: the executive, criticized on the right and the far right, chooses to display its firmness

To the applause of all benches, the Prime Minister, Elisabeth Borne, expressed her “solidarity and that of France with Belgium and Sweden”reiterating in a solemn address to parliamentarians the need to preserve the “national cohesion”.

This call remained a wishful thinking in view of the tensions which subsequently manifested themselves through the interventions of the deputies, as in the responses of the members of the government, aimed at condemning the Arras attack.

Discomfort on the benches of the Nupes

“Once again, a teacher is murdered. Once again, obscurantism attacks the place where the light of knowledge is disseminated. lamented Mathilde Panot, president of the La France insoumise (LFI) group in the National Assembly, asking for more staff in schools.

Elisabeth Borne did not answer him. At least, not on this subject. The tenant of Matignon took advantage of the two minutes allotted to her to accuse the leader of the “rebels”, Jean-Luc Mélenchon, and his supporters of “exclude oneself from the republican field” by refusing to characterize Hamas as “terrorist” or considering it as a “resistance movement”following the bloody attack on Israel. “Since October 7, the voices of La France insoumise have failed to unanimously condemn terrorist barbarity. They lack national unity,” she lashed out.

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