Sanctioned following controversial comments about the Israeli Prime Minister, comedian Guillaume Meurice is due to return to France Inter on Sunday from 6 p.m. in the show “Le Grand Dimanche soir”. This will exceptionally take place without an audience, for security reasons due to the death threats hanging over him. After having suggested for Halloween a “disguise” of Benyamin Netanyahu, “a sort of Nazi but without a foreskin”, in a sketch on France Inter at the end of October, Guillaume Meurice, who refused to apologize for it, received a “warning” from the radio station that uses it.
In an interview with La Tribune on Sunday, the CEO of Radio France, Sibyle Veil, said she did not want to send a “signal” against “freedom of expression” by choosing a call to order rather than a dismissal of the comedian.
“I didn’t want to send a signal that some would have hastened to exploit,” explains the boss of the public radio group. The value of freedom of expression, to which we are very attached, is much more important than a problematic sentence from a comedian, which fortunately is an exception. »
According to information from Le Figaro, not confirmed by Radio France, Guillaume Meurice benefits from the status of protected employee after having presented himself on the SUD list in the last professional elections of staff representatives.
Ms Veil also downplayed internal tensions. “In reality, it doesn’t create as much of a stir as you say (…) This week has been relatively calm,” she said. She also deplored “a spiral of controversy that crushes everything. For ten days, we’ve only been talking about that, to the detriment of the 99.99% of other things we do on our airwaves, including in-depth coverage of the conflict in the Middle East.
In a context of high tensions around the war between Israel and Hamas, Guillaume Meurice’s joke earned him numerous and severe criticisms, as well as death threats. On Monday, the host claimed to have “no fault”. “I practice humor, caricature, political satire, and excess is part of it,” he pleaded in Le Monde, he who intends to “challenge in court” the warning he received.