Jean-Luc Mélenchon, leader of the far left La France Insoumise party. Photo: Gwendoline Le Goff/Reuters.

French politicians from left to right have angrily condemned the reaction of France’s main far left party to the invasion of Israeli territory by Hamas terrorists from Gaza over the weekend.

In a statement released on Saturday as Hamas terrorists overran dozens of Israeli communities in the south of the country, La France Insoumise (LFI — “France Rising”) blamed the attacks on the “intensification of Israeli occupation policy in Gaza, the West Bank and East Jerusalem.”

The party — which occupies 74 of the 577 seats in the French National Assembly — described the onslaught on Israeli civilians as an “armed offensive by Palestinian forces led by Hamas.” It notably did not condemn terrorism nor acknowledge the depraved nature of much of the violence meted out.

“For a just and lasting peace to emerge, UN resolutions, starting with the end of colonization, must be actively implemented,” the statement from LFI continued.

LFI’s leader, Jean-Luc Mélenchon, who has frequently crossed swords with French Jews in the past over his antagonism towards Israel, also received criticism after he tweeted that “all the violence unleashed against Israel and in Gaza only proves one thing: violence only produces and reproduces itself.”

Another LFI MP, Éric Coquerel, claimed that Hamas “is a movement that practices a form of terror just as the Israeli army practices a form of state terrorism, in a situation where it is against UN resolutions, because it continues to colonize, annex and occupy a people.”

Among those who responded forcefully to the LFI statement was the Socialist Party parliamentarian Jérôme Guedj, who is also vice-chair of the France-Israel parliamentary friendship group.

In a post on X/Twitter, Guedj lashed out at the “useful idiots of the Hamas terrorists, who exonerate them by putting things into perspective in the name of the political impasse of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, of the continuation of colonization, of [Israeli Prime Minister] Netanyahu.”

“You disgust me,” he added.

Another Socialist Party MP, Valérie Rabault, stated that “it disgusts me that some on the left should refer to Hamas as ‘the Palestinian armed forces.’ Hamas is a terrorist organization.”

France’s Prime Minister, Elisabeth Borne, strongly echoed Guedj’s statement. Offering her solidarity to Israelis under attack, Borne condemned what she described as LFI’s “revolting ambiguities in the face of the drama of these last hours.” In a later television interview, Borne argued that “you cannot put Israel and Hamas back to back,” adding that LFI’s anti-Zionism was “sometimes also a way of masking antisemitism.”

In a response to Borne, Mélenchon accused the premier of “taking advantage of the war in the Middle East to wage her own war against LFI.”

Former French President Francois Hollande also weighed into the dispute, declaring that “anti-Zionism, that is to say the eradication of Israel, can necessarily lead to antisemitism,” in comments quoted by Le Figaro.