The environmental mayors of Bordeaux, Pierre Hurmic, and Strasbourg, Jeanne Barseghian, will not participate in their party’s summer days this week in Le Havre, due to the arrival of rapper Médine, Agence France-Presse has learned ( AFP), Monday, August 21, with their relatives, confirming information from L’Express.
Ms. Barseghian considers that “Medine has a too ambiguous position on anti-Semitism,” a spokeswoman for the mayor of Strasbourg told AFP. An allusion to the artist’s recent tweet, which revived accusations of anti-Semitism against him for calling essayist Rachel Khan, Jewish and granddaughter of deportees, “resKHANpée”, in a message on X (ex -Twitter). The rapper had apologized for this “unsuitable formula, which must have offended people”.
The Alsatian councilor “had pleaded for the cancellation of the participation” of the rapper in the summer days of the environmentalist party, “but this is not the option that was chosen”, added this same source.
On the Gironde side, Mr. Hurmic announced in a brief press release that he would “stay[t] alongside the people of Bordeaux this week” due to the heat wave, while affirming: “Anti-Semitism, from where it come, is an infamy to be combated. “(…) We have too many challenges to overcome to disperse ourselves in futile controversies,” said the mayor. His entourage confirming that this decision is “particularly linked to the controversy that arose” from the rapper’s tweet.
“Not an act of vindication”, says the party
For the party leadership, these two absences are “not at all an act of claim or opposition [internal]”, told AFP the organizer of the summer days, Léa Balage El Mariky. “Everyone has the right to express a different sensitivity,” tempers a relative of Marine Tondelier, the secretary general.
Green MP Sandrine Rousseau said Tuesday that her party “could have thought about the fact that Medina does not come” during the summer days. “The tweet he made was a game-changer,” she explained on BFM-TV – RMC. “Now he is invited, we have to go all the way,” she continued, judging that “we will have to test” Medina to find out if he is really anti-Semitic. “He apologized, I think that’s a first step, now we have to work with him to find out if he understood the anti-Semitic nature of this tweet, which he didn’t say,” said developed the deputy of Paris.
She also recalled that the rapper “has evolved on homophobia” in the past, Ms. Rousseau wished “that he evolves on the anti-Semitic question”, affirming that “everyone has the right to evolve on his positions”.
Despite the dissension within the party, Ms. Tondelier maintained her debate with the artist late Thursday, while warning that she would be “extremely attentive to what Medina will say” on this occasion and “the days that follow”. .
