LFI MP David Guiraud sparked a political storm on Saturday, November 11, accused of relativizing the atrocities of Hamas on October 7 in Israel by appearing to draw a parallel with the massacres of Sabra and Chatila, in Lebanon in 1982, to which he wrongly attributed direct responsibility to the Jewish State.
In a video captured during a trip to Tunis, we can hear the “rebellious” MP pronounce the following sentence: “The baby in the oven was made, in fact, by Israel, the disembowelled mother, it was made, it is true, by Israel. » Then, after a hesitation: “I think it was in Sabra and Shatila. »
Elected from the North, David Guiraud is, among the “rebellious” deputies, one of the fiercest defenders of the Palestinian cause and one of the harshest detractors of Israel. These statements sparked a flurry of indignant reactions and threats of filing a complaint against the MP.
“Who will be the most abject?”
“There is a competition, it seems, at La France insoumise over who will be the most abject. For the moment, he has just climbed onto the first step, but he could be dethroned, knowing him, by another of his colleagues,” declared Marine Le Pen, the leader of the deputies of the National Rally (RN). These comments “shock everyone,” she added.
“Rebellious France covers itself with a little more shame and dishonor every day. History will record that French deputies took the side of Hamas terrorists,” said the leader of Les Républicains (LR) senators, Bruno Retailleau, on the X platform.
Macronist MP from the North Violette Spillebout announced in the newspaper La Voix du Nord that she was going to refer these “negationist comments” to the public prosecutor.
Meyer Habib, LR deputy for French people abroad, announced that a denunciation would be made “to the Paris prosecutor under article 40 of the code of criminal procedure” against him “for advocating terrorism and inciting racial hatred.”
The Sabra and Shatila massacres in 1982 were committed by Lebanese Christian phalanxes during an Israeli military intervention in Lebanon. But Israel was also held responsible for not having prevented these massacres.
In a long series of messages on X, David Guiraud admitted to being wrong about Sabra and Chatila and denied any minimization of the October 7 attack. “No, I was not “putting into perspective” Hamas’ war crimes, which we have clearly condemned. Let me be clear, I never doubted the massacre, nor the atrocity of the acts committed against civilians,” he wrote.