His arrival in France does not pass. The far-right Israeli minister Bezalel Smotrich, expected on a private visit to Paris on March 19, “is not welcome” in France, was indignant on Tuesday by the League for Human Rights (LDH). She castigates an “Arabophobic, homophobic, ultra-colonialist” personality.
The Israeli Minister of Finance, openly racist, is invited to Paris for an evening in tribute to Jacques Kupfer, a radical Zionist militant, former president of Likud (the party of Israeli Prime Minister Benyamin Netanyahu). The event is relayed by radical groups, such as the Jewish Defense League.
Bezalel Smotrich, who is also in charge of civil affairs in the occupied West Bank, is an ardent defender of “greater Israel” and is himself a settler, underlines the LDH in its press release, before recalling the “racist and homophobic” protrusions of the minister.
“Fanatical Racism”
At the end of February, Bezalel Smotrich called for the “annihilation” of the Palestinian village of Huwara, in the occupied West Bank, after two young settlers were killed there. Their deaths had led to violent reprisals from settlers who had attacked the village and burned down buildings.
His remarks had aroused indignant reactions in Washington, Paris or at the UN, pushing the minister to concede that he had “poorly chosen” his words. “Smotrich is fundamentally opposed to a Palestinian state and wants to submit the Israeli legal system to the Torah. Faced with this surge of fanatical racism and denial of fundamental rights, the LDH here expresses its indignation and condemnation of everything that this character represents, ”according to the press release.
Bezalel Smotrich’s private visit comes in an extremely tense context in the occupied West Bank. But also in Israel, where a controversial judicial reform examined by Parliament has sparked unprecedented opposition in the country, and large-scale demonstrations to denounce an anti-democratic drift.
No contact with the Quai d’Orsay
In an editorial Monday, the president of CRIF (Representative Council of Jewish Institutions of France) Yonathan Arfi denounced the “populist, stigmatizing and hateful speeches in the Israeli public debate, even in the words of certain ministers in office”.
Asked about this private visit, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs replied that there would be no contact with the minister.
In the United States, his visit sparked protests by hundreds of people at the foot of his hotel in Washington on Sunday. Almost all American Jewish organizations have refused any contact with him. According The worldthe State Department had even studied the possibility of not granting him an official visa, before giving it up.