The Prime Minister also said that “the security of the State of Israel is not and will never be negotiable”, one year to the day after the Hamas attack against the Jewish state.
:quality(50)/2023/07/06/64a68815cd1a7_placeholder-36b69ec8.png)
Published
Updated
Reading time: 1 min
:quality(50)/2024/10/07/000-36jg8vx-67043ee22209b300090350.jpg)
“We will not let anything go” And “We will continue to fight anti-Semitism by all means.”promised Prime Minister Michel Barnier on Monday October 7 during a ceremony organized by Crif in Paris in tribute to the victims of Hamas, October 7, 2023. “You can count on the President of the Republic, on the Prime Minister (…) on all members of the government to protect our compatriots of the Jewish faith,” he added, while anti-Semitic acts in France almost tripled in the first half of the year.
The mention of Head of State Emmanuel Macron sparked boos from a few rows of the public. Some in the room shouted “weapons” after the French president called on Saturday for a halt to arms deliveries to Israel. After the tensions generated by this call with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Michel Barnier once again assured that “the security of the State of Israel is not and will never be negotiable” and that this country was “in self-defense.”
“France will never abandon its children in the face of the horror of this terrorist attack, of this barbarity that France has condemned from the first day in the face of the incessant attacks by Hezbollah and Iran,” he insisted. “On October 7, in the early morning, life gave way to distress, to tears, to horror, to carnage, to emptiness, to despair too. We will not forget (…) we will not forget Never”, declared the Prime Minister who had received in the afternoon, after Emmanuel Macron in the morning, the families of the two French hostages.
The head of government also mentioned “the situation of Palestinian civilians in Gaza and the West Bank (which) also shocks our conscience”, and deplored the “victims” including civil “on both sides of the border with Lebanon”. He reiterated that France would support “any initiative allowing, with strict respect for the existence and security of Israel (…) to move towards a two-state solution, which is the key to lasting peace”.