France: ‘Apologism for terrorism’ offence used to ‘criminalise’ Palestine solidarity
On 9 July, François Burgat, an eminent French specialist of political Islam and pro-Palestine activist, spent eight hours in custody at the police station of Aix-en-Provence, in the south of France.
Burgat, whose expertise is widely sought out, was awaiting to be heard in connection with a complaint for “apologism for terrorism”, an offence consisting of defending or presenting in a positive way a terrorist act.
The complaint was filed by the European Jewish Organization (OJE), a French NGO made up of around 60 volunteer lawyers that fights against anti-Semitism and anti-Zionism.
Burgat is accused of having reposted on X, last January, a statement by the Palestinian group Hamas refuting allegations of sexual violence against Israelis during the 7 October attacks that were made in a New York Times article.
Following an outcry caused by the retweet, the former research director at the French National Centre for Scientific Research (CNRS) wrote in another post that he had “infinitely more respect and consideration for the leaders of Hamas than for those of the State of Israel”.
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A few days after his summon by the police, Burgat, now retired, told Middle East Eye that “the reading [he] make[s] of the phenomenon of terrorism is the same as the one made in his day by General de Gaulle”.
In November 1967, Charles de Gaulle, then president of France, declared: “Israel is setting up in the territories it has captured an occupation that will inevitably involve oppression, repression and expulsions, and a resistance to this occupation is forming, which Israel in turn classes as terrorism.”
Burgat told MEE he had known for a long time that he was “in the crosshairs of various French-Israeli Zionist associations”.
“Still, I was surprised to see this kind of nightmare, contemplated in a joking manner, become reality,” the academic confided.
According to his lawyer, Rafik Chekkat, the prosecution must now analyse the facts that justified the hearing and decide to uphold or drop the accusation.
“This is the first time that a university professor is investigated for having given his political opinion about a foreign conflict,” the lawyer said in an interview, denouncing “an attack on the freedom of research.”
‘Bad wind blowing in France’
In a column published on 12 July, a group of academics expressed their dismay at Burgat’s police custody.
“Until recently, François Burgat’s expertise on questions relating to ‘terrorism’ was sought by institutions such as the National Assembly, the Senate, the NATO military command and even the anti-terrorism court in Paris,” the authors wrote.
“This transition from expert to suspect testifies to the bad wind blowing in France against rights and freedoms. In particular against the freedoms of research and expression.”
Among them, social scientist Hicham Benaissa expressed his concerns to MEE.
“We must be extremely vigilant because academic freedom says a lot about the democratic state of a society, its capacity to accept contradiction and disagreements, even the most radical ones,” he said.
“History has taught us that when a society moves to a more authoritarian regime, it quickly attacks academia, and particularly social sciences, which are not sciences like others since their mission is to produce critical discourses on society.”
A threat to freedoms
According to the sociologist, the threats to academic freedom manifested well before the 7 October attacks, with “the instrumentalisation in recent years of baseless theories such as wokeism and Islamo-leftism”.
The Woke movement, which denounces discrimination against minorities, has been accused of being sectarian and intolerant by the right and the far right, while the designation of “Islamo-leftism” has been used to allege an alliance between left-wing ideologies and Islamist circles.
In 2021, then Higher Education minister Frederique Vidal stated that “Islamo-leftism [was] corrupting the whole society” and asked for a national inquiry on the phenomenon within French academia.
‘It is not just about François Burgat or researchers in general, it is about the democratic state of a society, and therefore the possibility or not for each citizen to enjoy free speech’
– Hicham Benaissa, social scientist
For Benaissa, the “contamination of public debates by far-right rhetoric” represents a danger for freedom of expression in general.
“It is not just about François Burgat or researchers in general, it is about the democratic state of a society, and therefore the possibility or not for each citizen to enjoy free speech,” Benaissa said.
In the open letter supporting the academic, Burgat’s colleagues pointed out that the proceedings against him “follow dozens of others against activists, students, union leaders and politicians.”
Nearly 400 investigations for complaints linked to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict were launched between October and December 2023, according to investigative website Mediapart. The majority of the cases are still being processed.
As with Burgat, some complaints came from the OJE. One of them was filed in November against humourist Guillaume Meurice over a joke about Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu that led to his dismissal from public radio France Inter in June, even though the court had abandoned the charges.
Mathilde Panot, the leader of France Unbowed MPs, and Rima Hassan, recently elected for the same left-wing party in the European Parliament, were also summoned in April by the judicial police, as part of investigations into “apologism for terrorism”.
Both had been accused by OJE of legitimising the actions of Hamas in their statements.
The pro-Israel NGO was also behind the conviction, around ten days later, of the secretary general of a departmental trade union, Jean-Paul Delescaut, who received a one-year suspended prison sentence for distributing a leaflet stating that “the horrors of the illegal occupation ha[d] accumulated [and were] receiving the responses they provoked”.
In this case too, several organisations reacted to condemn the “criminalisation” of solidarity with Palestinians, judging “intolerable that a conflation is made between solidarity with Palestine and support for terrorism or anti-Semitism, in order to discredit anti-racist unions, associations and political parties.”
Great anger was also expressed in April, following the hearing by the anti-terrorism services for a group of students from the School of Advanced Studies in Social Sciences who had organised demonstrations to support the people of Gaza.
“Today, whistle-blowing exposes you to considerable risks. We hardly dare to recall that there was a time when showing support for Palestine was, especially on the left, a kind of banality that no one noticed,” Benaissa told MEE.
Right after the attacks in October and the start of the Israeli war on Gaza, French Interior Minister Gerald Darmanin banned pro-Palestine gatherings – a ruling rejected five days later by the Supreme Court.
Contemporaneously, Justice Minister Eric Dupond-Moretti addressed a circular to the public prosecutors stipulating that “public remarks praising the attacks” of the Palestinian group, “by presenting them as legitimate resistance to Israel”, should be prosecuted.
Dupond-Moretti also called on prosecutors to provide “a firm and rapid criminal response” in the face of anti-Semitism and the “apologism for terrorism”.
Similarly, the Higher Education Minister Sylvie Retailleau sent a letter to the presidents of universities asking them to punish “actions and remarks” falling within the offences of “apologism for terrorism, incitement to hatred or to violence”.
Punishable by up to seven years in prison
While the “apologism for terrorism” offence has existed in France since the press law of 1881, its enforcement was restricted and subject to various safeguards until a new legislation in November 2014 transferred it to the Penal Code.
Since then, Penal Code Article 421-2-5 specifies that this crime is punishable by up to five years in prison and a fine of up to 75,000 euros. Offences committed online can lead to seven years in prison and a 100,000 euros fine.
Although the new article was designed to fight acts directly linked to terrorism, such as enlisting recruits online, the practice has been quite different, Chekkat explained to MEE, while rights organisations have condemned the increase in proceedings unrelated to terrorism since then.
“This approach can create an environment in which people are afraid to question or challenge prevailing opinions, express unpopular views, or even make controversial jokes,” Human Rights Watch stated in 2018.
‘There are constantly new laws on terrorism that extend the scope of prohibitions. These texts with vague outlines […] repress and point out opponents, researchers, activists, trade unionists and so on as delinquents’
– Nathalie Tehio, president of the Human Rights League
“The irony that the fervour for these prosecutions is in part a reaction to the January 2015 attack on Charlie Hebdo, a publication that became a symbol of freedom of expression because it insisted on its right to be irreverent and insensitive, seems to have been missed by France’s Constitutional Court.”
Chekkat concurred, saying: “The fact that these comments are punishable in France for ‘apologism for terrorism’ reveals the worrying repressive slope in which the country is engaged.”
As the trend has exploded since last October, especially targetting pro-Palestine individuals and organisations, the lawyer lamented that their “fate depends on the understanding that prosecutors and judges have of the term ‘terrorism’, for which there is no stable legal definition”.
“The term terrorism serves to draw a political line between violence deemed legitimate and violence not deemed so, while making invisible the eminently political and subjective origin of this demarcation,” Chekkat said.
For Nathalie Tehio, lawyer and president of the Human Rights League, a major French NGO, the “apologism for terrorism” offence serves as a tool for the government to gag freedom of expression and repress support for the Palestinians in France.
“There are constantly new laws on terrorism that extend the scope of prohibitions,” she told MEE.
“These texts with vague outlines give free rein to political interpretation in order to repress and point out opponents, researchers, activists, trade unionists and so on as delinquents.”
The prosecutors, who control police custody, also depend hierarchically on the justice ministry and could receive instructions from it to prosecute, Tehio added.
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