Images of the massacres perpetrated by Hamas on Israel in early October were broadcast to the National Assembly on Tuesday. “We can ask ourselves what the goal is: is it a question of convincing ourselves that the event took place?” asks historian Christian Delage.
The screening at the National Assembly of images of the massacres committed by Hamas was organized on Tuesday November 14 at 5:30 p.m. at the Palais Bourbon. A broadcast at the initiative of Mathieu Lefèvre, Renaissance MP and president of the France-Israel friendship group. The latter invited the 120 MPs who are members of this friendship group. A projection which questions Christian Delage, historian and director, author of Film, judge. From World War II to the invasion of Ukraine, guest of franceinfo Tuesday November 14. He recalls that this type of video is generally projected in “judicial precincts”as in Nuremberg in 1945.
franceinfo: What is your opinion on the projection of these images at the National Assembly today?
Christian Delage: I was a little surprised by the fact that this screening took place in the National Assembly, probably without debate after this screening. One might wonder what the goal is: is it to convince oneself that the event took place? I think there have already been a lot of images that have been shown in the media, and articles that have been made. Do MPs need to have some sort of common test, to be together to view these images? Do they fear that there will be a negation of the event and therefore that they will attest, through this projection, to the truth of the crime? We can wonder.
The debate exists within the deputies themselves: some said that they would not attend the broadcast, in particular so as not to come away only with a feeling of hatred, of revenge?
I don’t know if that’s the first feeling viewers will experience. There have already been screenings in many countries, in front of the international press: we know that there are people who left before the end, people could not bear to see these images. They are unbearable, because you see people being killed, children injured; but then because more than 50% of these images, according to the description made by the newspaper Releasewere made by the criminals themselves, as accompanying the act of this criminality.
“Putting the spectators, at the National Assembly or elsewhere, in this position of the criminal carrying out his crime, that seems extremely difficult to me”
Christian Delage, historianat franceinfo
Are there historical precedents, other events comparable to this debate?
Yes, there is case law regarding showing images linked to crimes committed, but this case law takes place within the legal framework. This is what happened in Nuremberg in 1945, when images of the Nazi camps were shown for the first time, at the very beginning of the trial, on November 29. But these images were shown in a very constrained framework: the judges had already seen them before, and their function was to gauge the reaction of the accused, and above all to confront them with their crimes.
There have also been these debates since the Merah trial: concerning the images shot with a GoPro camera by Mohamed Merah, the president of the Assize Court did not want to show them, saying that it only added to the horror to horror. Regarding the attacks of January 2015 and November 13, it is a little different because it was the civil parties who requested that the images be shown. Some civil parties wanted, by showing these images a few minutes long, a sort of certification of the fact that the crime had been committed. And that, for parents who have lost a child, this is a way of contributing to the mourning of these parents.