It was supposed to be a private meeting, an evening of tributes to Jacques Kupfer, a leading figure in French Judaism who died in 2021. In the end, the Paris ceremony, which took place on Sunday, March 19, with Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich in attendance, turned into a far-right anti-Palestinian forum. It provoked heated reactions in several Arab capitals but total silence on the French side.
During the ceremony, Smotrich, a far-right Jewish nationalist, spoke behind a lectern adorned with a map encompassing not only the Jewish state and the occupied Palestinian territories but also the territory of present-day Jordan: the outline of Greater Israel, for the proponents of this expansionist ideology.
In his speech, the man who recently called for the "razing" of the Palestinian village of Huwara in the West Bank in retaliation for the murder of two Jewish settlers, was full of contempt for the Palestinians.
"There is no such thing as Palestinians because there’s no such thing as the Palestinian people," he said, according to a video widely shared on social media. "The Palestinian people are an invention of fewer than 100 years ago. Do they have a history, a culture? No, they don't. There are no Palestinians. There are just Arabs."
'Racist' and 'unacceptable' remarks
On March 20, these remarks caused an uproar in the Middle East. Palestinian Prime Minister Mohammad Shtayyeh called them "inflammatory" and said they were "irrefutable proof of the racism of the extremist Zionist ideology" of the Israeli government led by Benyamin Netanyahu.
Reacting to the map of Greater Israel displayed at the event, the spokesman for the Jordanian Foreign Ministry condemned "a dangerous provocation and a violation of international norms as well as the Jordanian peace treaty." Cairo also called Smotrich's remarks "racist" and "unacceptable."
Although it was announced about 10 days ago, the presence in Paris of the champion of fundamentalist Zionism was a surprise. Last week, following protests by pro-Palestinian movements and human rights organizations, Israeli media reported that the 43-year-old leader of the Religious Zionist Party had abandoned the trip.
The evening took place in the Salons Hoche, a luxurious reception center near the Champs-Elysees, decorated with Israeli flags for the occasion. The event was dedicated to the memory of the founder of Israel is Forever, the very controversial Jacques Kupfer.
This former leader of the Likud Party in France was a supporter of the annexation of the West Bank. Kupfer distinguished himself after the assassination of Yitzhak Rabin, in November 1995, by declaring that he regretted that the late Israeli prime minister had not been tried by a military tribunal for high treason, as a signatory of the Oslo peace accords.
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