Nupes never stops being talked about. After the skirmish between LFI and the other members of the left alliance over the qualification of Hamas, a new controversy this time affects Marine Tondelier, the national secretary of the EELV group.
The environmentalist had in fact reacted, at the microphone of France Info, to the pro-Palestinian demonstration which took place in Paris, Place de la République, on Thursday October 19. That evening, a crowd of demonstrators chanted “Allah Akbar” for long seconds. This cry, which means “God is greatest”, was also used by the Islamist terrorist who killed French teacher Dominique Bernard on October 13 in Arras and whose funeral also took place on Thursday.
Marine Tondelier lamented, the day after the demonstration, on the set of our colleagues at franceinfo: “I dream of a world where I could demonstrate for the Palestinian people, the Israeli people and for peace without being lumped in with people who shout “Allah Akbar”, Place de la République yesterday, which is stupid and shocking in the context. “There are a lot of people who are discouraged from going” to demonstrations, she continued.
In a few hours, the tweet of the video had been viewed by a few hundred thousand and today has nearly 2.7 million views. It was perhaps in the face of the massive circulation of her remarks that the elected environmentalist finally decided to withdraw her comments a few hours later.
“I should never have let any confusion interfere in my words,” she first published on X, specifying: “Allah Akbar is the prayer of 1.5 billion Muslims and they must be respected”. Marine Tondelier continued her mea culpa by sending her apologies to “all the people” who her comments would have hurt.
Under the initial video, numerous comments, sometimes insulting, denounce an “insult” made to Muslims. The “Young Environmentalists” group even reacted directly to X: “Allah Akbar is an expression recited during Muslim praise meaning that “God is the greatest”,” he argued. Before deciding: “Assimilating it to terrorist acts is extremely shocking and legitimizes violence and the stigmatization of Muslims.”
Marine Tondelier then doubled her first apology with a second tweet in which she specified: “Being a political leader also means apologizing when you are wrong. The way the question was asked to me, this video clip that I had not seen before on news that I had not followed… without the sound, all of this misled me. I deeply regret it.”
While a new pro-Palestinian demonstration takes place this Sunday, October 22 afternoon in Paris, several right-wing political figures have, on the contrary, reaffirmed their discomfort with the fact that “Allah Akbar” is chanted in these circumstances.
“That day, to hear Allah Akbar resound, when that is what the Arras terrorist shouted… (…) Those close to Dominique Bernard must have said to themselves: what indecency!” , for example, was moved by Hauts-de-France LR boss Xavier Bertrand, guest of the Grand Jury-RTL-Le Figaro-M6 this Sunday.
The president of the RN, Jordan Bardella, for his part protested at the microphone of Europe 1: “Hamas is already on French soil and the barbarians are already among us”. “We saw it again in these pro-Palestinian demonstrations where, in our country which has seen 273 deaths from Islamist fundamentalism, we let Allah Akbar scream 500 meters from the Bataclan,” he finally decided.
