Villainous Laws

The crime that the state is attempting to prosecute Kazib for is called “apologia for terrorism.” The current regime rendering it illegal to “directly incite or publicly commit apologia for acts of terrorism” was introduced in 2014 by François Hollande’s government, updating previous laws. Although this is a relatively recent law, Kazib’s lawyer Elsa Marcel argues that the situation in which activists are regularly finding themselves accused of committing a crime through their support of the Palestinian cause has been long in the making.

“There were several steps in constructing this as an infraction,” she tells me. “It has its origins at the end of the nineteenth century in the ‘villainous laws’ which were introduced to repress the anarchist movement because it was the moment that first saw the regulation of people’s impulses, it was not the same as apologia for terror, but to celebrate or have a positive impression of a “terrorist act” would qualify you as a terrorist.” The 2014 shift, she added “was particularly striking because it made what was written in the press a much more serious offense, and repressed opinion with the threat of prison.”

The case against Panot, leader of France Insoumise’s parliamentary group, was dropped on January 30. Kazib’s, meanwhile, is going ahead. He considers it an experiment by the French political authorities, seeing how far they can go. He argues that this is because he is a public figure

without being part of an organization that’s part of the institutions. I am also a racialized person, of the Muslim faith, etc., and I think the system recognizes that through me they can hit the most radical layers of the working class, the youth of the working-class neighborhoods.

The reality is that the authorities recognize the role that I play in the class struggle, whether that’s during the gilets jaunes, the antiracist movement, or during strikes. I think I have the ideal profile for the state to send a strong message which also targets the activist milieu, the radical left, and the racialized people in France because they can see themselves in me. I am a worker, I’m a railwayman, I work, I live in the banlieue, in the working-class neighborhoods.

Even beyond my activism I’ve been known in the community for a while. I have the impression that for the system, attacking me is a test. If they can repress me with ease, next time why not attack other personalities? Not necessarily [parliamentarians like] Mathilde Panot or Rima Hassan, but it could be [leading Trotskyist figures like] Olivier Besancenot or Philippe Poutou.

Pro-Israel Lobbying

Kazib’s initial summons was provoked by an association called French Jewish Youth (JFJ). It was created after the events of October 7, supposedly to combat the rise of antisemitism in France. The opaque pro-Israel lobby group began making complaints of apologia for terrorism against various figures on the Left not long after October 7. By January 2024, their team of fifty lawyers had issued forty-one complaints including several toward La France Insoumise MPs and pro-Palestine organizations such as the Nouveau Parti Anticapitaliste and the Palestine Vaincra [“Palestine Will Win”] collective. When Kazib was summoned, the group tweeted “This is just the beginning Anasse Kazib, we always keep our promises.”

Although posing as a neutral NGO working on anti-racism, JFJ’s activities demonstrate a political bias toward Israel and the far right. Of the complaints that JFJ initially claimed to have made, just one was about a figure on the Right, the convicted racist and Holocaust denier Alain Soral. The rest concerned figures of the Left who, despite continuous waves of lawfare, have not been found guilty of racism or antisemitism (with exception of Franco-Algerian journalist Taha Bouhafs who was convicted after calling a policewoman an “Arab de service” — a term similar to “coconut” in English). JFJ’s Twitter account claimed that the Palestinian flag was equivalent to the swastika and regularly shares content from figures on the far right such as Génération Identitaire lawyer Gilles-William Goldnadel and former candidate for Éric Zemmour’s Reconquête party, Guillaume Bensoussan.

Perhaps the most obvious indication of the JFJ’s political orientation comes from its spokesperson Raphael Attia, one of only two public faces of the group, which counts fifty lawyers in its ranks. One month after October 7, Attia wrote an article in the libertarian magazine Contrepoints arguing: “An observation as implacable as it is disturbing for many of us is the following: today, the largest far-right party [an unmistakable reference to Marine Le Pen’s Rassemblement National] is the main opposition to the established government, and it is also this ideological current which is most at the forefront of the fight against antisemitism.”

That this same party fielded candidates for parliament in 2024 that claimed “the gas rendered justice for the victims of the Shoah”; that “Hitler did not kill enough [Romani people]”; and who were pictured wearing the hat of an SS officer is apparently of no import to JFJ because Meyer Habib, the MP for expats living in Israel, described by Attia as “a great friend of [Benjamin] Netanyahu,” claims that the Rassemblement National has “entered into the Republican arc” of respectable parties.

Attia told Jacobin that it was not that “JFJ wanted our complaints to be mainly targeted against figures on the Left” and pointed this writer to a poll that found that 92 percent of French Jews consider La France Insoumise to be the main threat to Jews in France. The poll was conducted after the publication of a report by the Service for the Protection of the Jewish Community in France and the Representative Council for French Jewish Institutions (CRIF), whose political alignment with Likud is well documented. It found that antisemitism in France accelerated massively after October 7. The report claims that it is antisemitic to accuse Israel’s supporters of being pro-genocide and that the claim that Israel is committing genocide is a lie.

The report — which heavily criticizes France Insoumise for supposedly acting as the “electoral organ” of French antisemitism — conflates French Jewry with support for the state of Israel, writing: “The intertwined relationship between a political body, which instrumentalizes the theme of Palestine for electoral purposes, particularly among young people in the banlieues, and anti-Israeli organizations, which call for resistance to Zionism in France, predicts a worrying future for Jews in France.” Attia also told Jacobin that JFJ is “funded entirely by the donations and contributions of its members and receives no foreign funding.”

Kazib argues that JFJ’s activities simply reflect a “continuity between them and the policy of the state. . . . By arresting people like me, the state is giving them opportunities. Because it is the prosecutor of the republic — the justice minister — who could have listened to their story and said no, we are not going to prosecute an activist over a tweet. They could have done that! But no, they decided to opt for repression.”

Arbitrary Rule

The maximum penalty for online “apologia for terrorism” is seven years’ jail time and a €100,000 fine — meaning Kazib risks becoming a political prisoner if found guilty. Marcel describes the law as entering into “the realm of arbitrariness” and that the law covers such varied behavior as to be worthless. “It could,” she remarks, “easily target children or drunk people who say any old thing after a glass or two. What’s important to note is that this vagueness has been used in an ultrabrutal way since October 7 to condemn, sometimes with the threat of prison, almost systematically with the threat of suspended sentences, individuals who have taken positions on the events in the Middle East which differ from the official French government position.” “It is important to note,” she adds, “that the European Court of Human Rights denounced France for the use of this law.”

There have been some attempts in the political sphere to try and repeal the apologia for terrorism law so that it is a matter of “press” law and not part of the penal code, notably by La France Insoumise. Its members have often found themselves victims of intimidation attempts through the selective application of the law. The France Insoumise MP Ugo Bernalicis submitted a motion to repeal the law in November, citing its use against the CGT trade unionist in Lille, to no avail.

Even if parliament does support maintaining the law that has been used to target him, Kazib doesn’t just want to contest the trial on a legalistic basis. He calls this a political trial that must be contested politically. Révolution Permanente has contacted intellectuals and public figures supportive of the Palestinian cause and critical of the Macron government’s authoritarianism — and intends to make the trial into a political tribune. “The best weapon we have is the biggest possible solidarity to show what the powers that be are doing — trying to discipline and domesticate militants here in order to continue the policy of support for the state of Israel and imperialism more generally.”

The Tribunal de Paris did not respond to Jacobin’s questions.