In November 2019, journalist and essayist Zineb El Rhazoui received the Simone-Veil prize from the Elles de France Trophies, which “rewards a Ile-de-France resident for her dedication to defending a cause.” Four years later, Valérie Pécresse (Les Républicains), president of the Ile-de-France region, announced that she was withdrawing this prize, Sunday December 10, for one of her posts on X which compared the genocide of the Jews by the Nazis with Israel’s current offensive against Hamas.
“The courage and fight against Islamism” of the former Charlie Hebdo collaborator led the region to award her the prize in 2019, wrote Valérie Pécresse on Facebook. “But his recent statements” since October 7 and the attack carried out by commandos of the Palestinian Islamist movement infiltrated in Israel, “including his retweet of a parallel between Auschwitz and the Israeli response against Hamas terrorists in Gaza, are outrageous and shocking,” she continues. They have “terribly bruised our compatriots who experienced the barbarity of the Shoah”, adds Ms. Pécresse, who therefore chose, “in the name of the region”, to withdraw this prize, awarded each year “to a particularly Parisian woman. deserving.”
“Consternation” by Aurélien Veil
Aurélien Veil, grandson of Simone Veil, who was deported to Auschwitz, had previously expressed his “dismay”. “Among my grandmother’s struggles are the transmission of the memory of the Shoah and the refusal to trivialize the genocide committed by the Nazis,” he wrote, adding: “Everyone is free of their ideas and their declarations , and Ms. El Rhazoui like any other.”
Zineb El Rhazoui replied: “If the Simone-Veil Prize means being outraged only by the innocent victims of October 7, and not those of October 8, October 9, October 10, October 11… until day, well I don’t want it. » “By denouncing the mass crimes committed by Israel in Gaza, as well as the crimes of Hamas against Israeli civilians, I am honoring the legacy of Simone Veil more than ever,” the ex-collaborator also defends. of Charlie Hebdo, whose editorial staff was decimated by a jihadist attack in early 2015.
On Sunday, the health ministry in the Hamas-administered Gaza Strip announced a new death toll of 17,997.
