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PARIS — The left’s anti-Semitism problem has taken center-stage in France.
The summer jamboree of the French Green party and the hard left was supposed to be an opportunity to discuss climate change, wealth inequalities and next year’s European elections in a festive, holiday vibe.
Instead the meeting has been overshadowed by a spat over a rapper’s alleged pun about the Holocaust that now threatens drive a wedge between the parties in the Nupes coalition of the hard left and Greens, which is leading polls in France.
The French left’s troubles with anti-Semitism are more subtle than those on the far-right — former National Front leader Jean-Marie Le Pen both played down the Holocaust and defended France’s collaborationist Vichy regime in World War II — but they are still palpable, and stand to further deepen political rifts that have been brewing for months.
Several high-profile Green mayors have decided to boycott the annual “Summer University” get-together, which starts on Thursday in the port city of Le Havre, over the organizers’ decision to invite the polemical rapper Médine.
No stranger to controversy, Médine sparked a row this month when he accused Jewish former athlete and writer Rachel Khan of being a “ResKHANpée,” a pun on on the word “rescapée” (“survivor”) that has been widely understood as a reference to her grandparents who survived the Holocaust. The jibe has been condemned by Jewish organizations and the political establishment in France amid calls for Médine’s appearance at a high-profile debate in Le Havre to be cancelled.
The row has sparked a debate over whether the left is soft on anti-Semitism, particularly the hard left France Unbowed party that has been faced with accusations of complacency on the subject in recent years.
“Inviting Médine is a political error and it is a political error that has been going for a while now. Political leaders can’t see that — with the increase in attacks against Jews in France — a large majority of Jewish voters are turning their backs on the left,” said Jean-Yves Camus, an expert in French political extremism.
Allegations of anti-Semitism
The French-born rapper of Algerian descent, who is from Le Havre, has drawn fire in recent years for his songs “Jihad” and “Don’t Laïk” in which he sang that “staunch secularists should be crucified like at Golgotha.” He has also been accused in the past of homophobia, and of miming an anti-Semitic gesture.
In an interview on Wednesday, Médine said he had apologized for his tweet against Khan. “It’s a mistake, I recognize it. It was a clumsy tweet, I had forgotten the history of her family … anti-Semitism is a poison and I’ve been fighting it for years,” he said.
Far-left leader Jean-Luc Mélenchon has defended Médine, whose real name is Médine Zaouiche, and denied accusations of anti-Semitism. “Médine is not a racist. Why make him admit beliefs that are not his?,” he asked on X, formerly known as Twitter.
In a previous controversy in 2018, Médine was forced to cancel performances planned at the Bataclan theater in Paris, three years after the venue was the target of an Islamist attack that left 90 dead.
Meanwhile, the leader of the Green party Marine Tondelier, who is set to debate with Médine on Thursday, has argued that Médine suffers from “a creeping [form of] anti-Semitism” due to “either clumsiness, lack of culture … foolishness but also ignorance.”
For Simone Rodan-Benzaquen, Europe director of the American Jewish Committee, the incident is an illustration of the left’s “self-deception” when it comes to new forms of discrimination in France.
Violence against Jews in France has risen steadily since a low point in the 1990s, reaching 400 to 800 verbal and physical attacks per year in recent years, according to figures from the ministry of the interior.
“We hear France Unbowed, the Communists protest loudly against far-right anti-Semitism. But they turn a blind eye to anti-Semitism…when it expresses itself in their own ranks, and sometimes by minorities,” Rodan-Benzaquen.
Rodan-Benzaquen argues this is partially motivated by a “vote-catching attitudes” towards Muslim voters who may buy in to anti-Israel rhetoric that can also carry anti-Semitic clichés.
A coalition in tatters
The row over Médine is the latest blow to the leftwing coalition Nupes that has been struggling to hold together despite recent successes in elections. The alliance of the France Unbowed, EELV (Greens), the Communists and the more moderate Socialist Party scored big wins in the parliamentary elections last year, depriving Macron of a majority in parliament.
But the past year has been marked by personal squabbles and policy differences on the left, despite a show of unity against Macron on his controversial pensions reforms. Most recently, the hard-left Mélenchon refused to call for calm in the wake of the fatal shooting of a 17-year-old by a police officer — unlike most of the leftwing leaders.
According to political analyst and academic Benjamin Morel, the left is split on strategies to widen their appeal beyond their political base.
“The left’s core base is only 25 percent of the French electorate. They need people who abstain to go and vote. So for some, that means speaking to the banlieues and inviting Médine,” he said.
But for others, such as the Communists, said Morel, it means speaking to mostly white working class populations in the suburbs “who are tempted by abstention or a far-right vote,” as he noted the varied, and sometimes contradictory, strategies to gain new voters within the left.
Splits are already appearing ahead of Senatorial elections in September and the European elections next year. Neither the Green party nor the Communist party want to join joint lists with France Unbowed ahead of the European elections, even though Mélenchon came third in the 2022 presidential election in France, with 22 percent of the vote.