Bezalel Smotrich

The PSG incident is the type of pseudo-scandal on which France’s media and political class thrive. But for all the uproar caused by the decision by French football fans to condemn the Israeli state from the bleachers, there has been a noted silence on the possible visit of an actual genocide apologist to the French capital, a man who the Israeli daily Haaretz has itself referred to as a “war criminal.”

Israeli finance minister Bezalel Smotrich is slated to be the guest of honor at a pro-Israel gala in Paris on Wednesday. One of the extreme-right pillars of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s governing coalition, Smotrich has made no mystery of his ideological commitment to the destruction of the Palestinian people, the torpedoing of the two-state solution by the colonization of Palestinian land, and the expansion of Israeli state sovereignty even into Lebanon and Syria. A self-declared “fascist homophobe” who resides in an Israeli settlement, Smotrich is the de facto governor of Israel’s colonies in the West Bank as head of the Settlements Administration, making him a key figure in an occupation that stands in flagrant violation of international law.

The host of Wednesday’s gala is a group called “Israel Is Forever,” a relatively obscure NGO dedicated to building support for Israeli colonization, notably among the French far right. The purpose for the gathering as advertised by the event’s poster is to support the “mobilization of French-speaking Zionist forces” for Israel’s invasion of Gaza, and now Lebanon — a war that poses a “plausible” risk of genocide, according to the preliminary ruling from the International Court of Justice this past January. Israel Is Forever was founded in 2015 by the late Jacques Kupfer, president of the French branch of Likud, according to a Charlie Hebdo portrait of the organization.

Kupfer’s daughter, Nili Kupfer-Naouri, is a Franco-Israeli attorney and the group’s current president.  She has claimed that “there is no such thing as an innocent civilian population in Gaza” and praised the blocking of humanitarian aid into the besieged enclave. In October 2023, she called for a “great Jewish reimplantation” of the Palestinian territory after its “obliteration” by the war. At a March 2023 Israel Is Forever gala in Paris, Smotrich said that “the Palestinian people are a one-hundred-year-old invention. Do they have a history and a culture? No, they don’t.”

France’s Palestine solidarity movement has been joined by leading civil society groups and left-wing figures in calling for the banning of the gala — and for state authorities to block the arrival of the Israeli minister. “It is unacceptable that a minister responsible for the massive intensification of Israeli colonization of occupied Palestinian territory, and known for his repeated calls for the violation of human rights and international law, participates in an event organized in France,” the Human Rights League and French Jewish Union for Peace, alongside other NGOs, wrote in a joint press release on November 1.

“Minister Smotrich doesn’t belong at a gala, his place is at the bar in front of an international tribunal,” Mathilde Panot, president of the left-wing France Insoumise caucus in the National Assembly, said during government questions last week. Last Thursday, hundreds likewise attended a rally in Paris to oppose the event.

Otherwise, Smotrich’s visit has barely caused a peep out of French authorities, who’ve decided to play dumb on the scandal. “We are not welcoming this Israeli minister with open arms,” Prime Minister Michel Barnier deflected during last Tuesday’s government questions at the National Assembly. “It’s possible, and within the confines of international law, that Mr. Smotrich . . . makes the trip to Paris of his own private volition.”

On Sunday, Laurent Nuñez, the police prefect of Paris, said on BFM TV that he was reinforcing police presence in the French capital for the event, which he refused to ban. Nuñez went on to say that he had heard that Smotrich would in fact no longer be present — disavowed by a report from Agence France-Presse later that same evening. On Friday, the Paris administrative tribunal refused the plea to block the Israel Is Forever gala brought by NGO EuroPalestine, a private plaintiff.

Muzzles for Some

French authorities’ refusal to intervene is not owed to any lack of precedent. French law allows the state substantial leeway to bar the organization of an event, or to refuse the free movement or entry on French soil of a non-French national associated with certain political and ideological causes, and therefore susceptible to disturb public order in France. Wednesday’s gala, to say nothing of the presence of Smotrich personally, seems to fall well within those criteria.

In fact, these powers have been put to ample use over the last year. In October 2023, then interior minister Gérald Darmanin placed Mariam Abudaqa, an elderly Gazan activist on a speaking tour in France, under house arrest and ordered her expulsion from French territory. More broadly, French authorities have, since October 2023, led a concerted effort to muzzle pro-cease-fire and pro-Palestine organizing. This has taken the form of blanket bans on demonstrations, administrative dissolution of NGOs, and the banning of public speaking events.

The French government’s refusal to confront the Israel Is Forever gala boils down to the lopsided delineation of what’s allowed to be said in public space. Civil society figures from journalists to union leaders have been tried on trumped-up charges of “apology for terrorism” because of statements made in support of the Palestinian liberation movement. That legal clampdown has also seen criminal summons of figures of the political opposition, notably France Insoumise’s own Panot and Rima Hassan, a Franco-Palestinian member of the European Parliament. University administrators have even handed off their own students to the police for terrorist-apologism investigations.

Yet French and European authorities may soon be forced to make a decision on the status of leading Israeli dignitaries. In May, International Criminal Court (ICC) prosecutor Karim Khan filed a request for arrest warrants against Netanyahu and former defense minister Yoav Gallant, sacked in a cabinet reshuffle last week. To the dismay of many, Smotrich is not a target of those warrant requests, which are still pending. As parties to the ICC, all twenty-seven member states of the European Union would be treaty-bound to uphold and enforce any warrants issued by the court. Doing so still seems far off.