La France insoumise’s dangerous drift toward antisemitism

France’s radical left is walking a dangerous line. La France insoumise (LFI), once a force that claimed to defend universal rights and social justice, is now flirting openly with antisemitism. 

What began as strident criticism of Israel’s actions in Gaza has evolved into a troubling pattern of rhetoric and behavior that targets Jews, blurs moral boundaries, and corrodes the credibility of the French left.

The latest episode unfolded this weekend, after the detention of four LFI representatives — MPs François Piquemal and Marie Mesmeur, and MEPs Rima Hassan and Emma Fourreau — who were among 30 French citizens arrested aboard the “Global Sumud,” a flotilla attempting to reach Gaza in defiance of Israel’s blockade. According to fellow MEP Manon Aubry, the detained politicians began a hunger strike “in solidarity with the Palestinian people.”

There is nothing inherently wrong in calling for humanitarian support for Gaza. 

But LFI’s approach has long gone beyond humanitarian concern. Its leadership has built a political identity that fuses anti-Zionism, conspiracism, and a growing hostility toward French Jews who refuse to disavow Israel.

A calculated posture

Jean-Luc Mélenchon, the movement’s founder and still its dominant voice, has spent years nurturing this posture. He once accused Jewish organizations of “communitarianism” and suggested that Jews “vote as a bloc” — echoing classic antisemitic tropes. 

He has portrayed Israel as a uniquely malevolent power and dismissed reports of antisemitic attacks in France as media manipulation.

More recently, Mélenchon has amplified the idea that expressions of solidarity with Israel amount to support for oppression — a narrative that allows antisemitism to hide in plain sight. 

His denunciations of “the cowardice of the French government” for not securing the release of LFI’s detained activists are telling: outrage is reserved for the treatment of his own, never for the threats faced by French Jews under rising antisemitic violence.

This shift is not accidental. In France’s large urban areas — from Marseille to the suburbs of Paris — LFI increasingly depends on voters from working-class communities of North African heritage. 

By turning radical anti-Israel rhetoric into a moral badge, the party signals allegiance to these groups’ frustrations and resentments. It is an electoral strategy dressed up as principle.

When anti-imperialism becomes intolerance

LFI’s defenders claim that its anti-Israel stance is simply anti-imperialist. But anti-imperialism that singles out one state — and one people — while turning a blind eye to repression elsewhere loses all moral credibility.

When LFI members describe Hamas as a legitimate “resistance movement” but call Israel a “terrorist state,” they flatten the moral landscape of a conflict that deserves honesty, not slogans. 

They also give implicit permission to those in France who now shout “Death to Jews” at pro-Palestine rallies while insisting they are only “anti-Zionist.”

The left’s historical duty was to confront hatred in all its forms — not to excuse it when it serves electoral convenience.

The silence of complicity

The moral silence of LFI’s leadership on antisemitic violence in France is deafening. When Jewish schools require police protection or when synagogues are vandalised, there is no indignation, no solidarity — only evasion.

Meanwhile, party figures such as Aubry or Mélenchon invoke “human rights” when their own are detained, but not when Jewish citizens feel unsafe in their own country. The hypocrisy is striking — and dangerous.

This is not just about LFI. It is about the moral direction of the French left as a whole. Will it reclaim its universalist tradition — one that defends every minority, including Jews — or will it sink into a new sectarianism where solidarity depends on identity?

The radical left once stood for equality and human dignity. Today, parts of it are indulging a new form of exclusion, dressed in the language of liberation. 

France’s Jews have seen this pattern before. The left must decide whether it still has the courage to break it.