During a ten-minute speech, broadcast on French television, Thursday October 7, Emmanuel Macron spoke about France’s position regarding the war between Israel and Hamas, six days after the attack against the Jewish state launched from the Gaza Strip by the Islamist movement.
“Israel experienced the most tragic terrorist attack in its history on Saturday,” noted the Head of State in this address to the French, broadcast at 8 p.m. “Hundreds of infants, children, women and men were hunted down, kidnapped, murdered, taken hostage. Kibbutz massacres. Entire villages decimated,” he listed.
The head of state said that thirteen French people died in the attack launched by the Palestinian Islamist movement which controls the Gaza Strip. Seventeen others are still “missing and undoubtedly, some of them, held hostage,” he added.
In a press conference in Tel Aviv, French families of hostages had, a few hours earlier, expressed their distress. “France is doing everything possible alongside the Israeli authorities and with our partners to bring them back safe and sound,” the president replied. A first special Air France flight to repatriate the most “vulnerable” French people from Israel arrived in Paris from Tel Aviv in the evening.
“Israel has the right to defend itself.”
“The only response to terrorism, the only possible one, is always a strong and just response, strong because it is just,” Emmanuel Macron also said in his speech. “Israel has the right to defend itself by eliminating terrorist groups, including Hamas, through targeted actions but by preserving civilian populations, because that is the duty of democracies,” he insisted.
Faced with terrorism, “there can never be a ‘yes, but’,” said the head of state. He considered that “those who confuse the Palestinian cause and the justification for terrorism are committing a moral, political and strategic mistake.”
In the last part of his speech, the president considered that “our duty, in this moment that we are experiencing, is to remain united as a nation and as a Republic. It is this shield of unity that will protect us from all excesses, all excesses and all hatred.” Before adding: “Let us remember all the serious crises we have gone through together. Let us remember how we stood together each time in the face of terrorism. » The Head of State also called on the French to remain “united to carry a message of peace and security for the Middle East”.
Addressing the Jews of France, the President of the Republic spoke of “the fear of our compatriots of the Jewish faith that this resurgence of anti-Semitic violence [in Israel] will be the pretext, here [in France], for words, insults, acts which would target them”, then continued by also saying to measure “the concern of our compatriots of the Muslim faith, that the amalgamations prevail over reason. »
“We are fighting and will always fight so that no one on our soil is afraid. Neither suspicion nor division should exist within the nation. Let us keep in mind that anti-Semitism has always been a prelude to other forms of hatred. One day towards Jews, the next towards Christians and Muslims,” says Mr Macron. “Our first duty is to ensure [the] security (…) and not to allow any words, any anti-Semitic acts, any stigmatization” of “our compatriots of the Jewish faith,” declared the head of state.
He also recalled that as of “Saturday, [he] asked the government to strengthen [the] protection measures for schools, places of worship and culture; 582 of them saw their security increased; 10,000 police and gendarmes are mobilized,” while mentioning the mobilization of the army as part of Operation Sentinel. He also communicated on the instruction received by the public prosecutors to pursue with “the greatest severity anti-Semitic acts and apologias for terrorism”.