The Israeli ultranationalist Bezalel Smotrich, minister of finance in the government of Binyamin Netanyahu and Jewish supremacist, took part, on Sunday March 19, in a gala evening, organized in Paris, by a French Jewish association close to the extreme right, “ Israel is forever”.
Although it was announced ten days ago, its arrival on the banks of the Seine was a surprise. In the middle of last week, following protests by pro-Palestinian movements and human rights organizations, Israeli media reported that the 43-year-old leader of the religious Zionist Party had given up on the trip.
Mr. Smotrich, who arrived from the United States, where he had no official interview, only stayed a few hours in Paris and did not meet any government official there either. The Quai d’Orsay had let it be known last week that it had no intention of receiving the sulphurous Israeli minister.
During the ceremony, Mr. Smotrich spoke behind a desk decorated with a map including not only the Jewish state and the occupied Palestinian territories but also the territory of current Jordan: the space of Greater Israel for the supporters of this expansionist ideology.
He gave a speech in which he urged the Jews of France to make their alya, that is to say to settle in Israel, a usual rhetoric for an Israeli leader passing through France. But the man who recently called “breeds” the Palestinian village of Huwara, in the West Bank, in retaliation for the assassination of two Jewish settlers, also made comments full of contempt for the Palestinians.
“There are only Arabs”
“Do you know who the Palestinians are?” asked Mr. Smotrich, at the start of his harangue, broadcast live on Facebook. “I am Palestinian, he replied to the cheers of the audience, a hundred or so people if we judge by the images posted on Facebook. My grandfather, who was born after the 13e generation in Jerusalem, he was Palestinian. The Palestinian people are an invention less than a hundred years old. Do they have a history, a culture? No they have not. There are no Palestinians, just Arabs. »
The evening took place in the Salons Hoche, a luxurious reception center near the Champs-Elysées, decorated for the occasion with Israeli flags. The event was dedicated to the memory of the founder of “Israel is forever”, Jacques Kupfer, a controversial figure in French Judaism. This former leader of the Likud of France and former member of the leadership of the World Zionist Organization, died in 2021 in Israel.
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