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VU DU DROIT - The French Judiciary's Pro-Israel Drift: A Damning Indictment - le 5.04.2026

The French Judiciary's Pro-Israel Drift: A Damning Indictment

Rima Hassan's Detention : A New Low

Regis de Castelnau

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LIRE DANS L'APP

The police summons of Rima Hassan — ordered by a prosecutor, followed by her detention, the search of her handbag, and the immediate leak to the media of an alleged drug “discovery” — offers stunning proof that the French justice system has lurched into openly fascistic territory.

Let us be clear: Rima Hassan, as a Member of the European Parliament, is shielded by parliamentary immunity, which explicitly prohibits any measure infringing on her freedom. This foundational principle exists to protect MPs from the reach of the executive branch and judicial authority. It is not absolute, but it can only be lifted exclusively by the parliamentary assembly to which the MP belongs. What we witnessed was not one violation but three, stacked on top of each other: the custody itself, the search of her bag, and — perhaps most brazenly — the leak of confidential investigative information by the very authorities sworn to uphold the law. And on what grounds did the prosecutor justify the arrest? A post shared on social media, flagged by an RN deputy acting as Netanyahu’s errand boy, was invoked as a case of flagrante delicto — eight days after the fact.

Could it have been more contemptible? More farcical? This prosecutor has demonstrated, beyond any reasonable doubt, that he has no place in the magistracy.

Mass Repression by Conviction, Not by Order

One might assume this relentless targeting of a pro-Palestinian activist under the banner of “apology for terrorism” was executed on orders from above. It was not — and that is precisely what makes it so chilling.

Yes, former minister of justice Dupond-Moretti’s notorious post-October 7th circular, dispatched to magistrates the very day after the Hamas attack, set the tone. What followed was a wave of over 700 prosecutions, with convictions — some carrying actual prison sentences — handed down across France. But the magistrates, both prosecutors and judges, needed no puppeteer. They applied the law with zeal and by personal conviction.

That law itself — former Prime Minister Manuel Valls’ infamous legislation stripping “apology for terrorism” from the 1881 press freedom law and embedding it in the general penal code — handed them the weapon. They used it with surgical selectivity: not a single one of the countless expressions of support for Israeli military action, Israeli war crimes, Israeli crimes against humanity, or Israeli genocidal conduct generated so much as a ripple in any French prosecutor’s office. The double standard was not incidental. It was the point.

The Court of Cassation: A Political Actor in Judicial Robes

This bias does not begin with overzealous local prosecutors. It flows from the top — from the Court of Cassation, one of France’s four supreme courts, and the body responsible for producing the jurisprudence that shapes how the law is read and applied across the entire country.

The court’s record on Israel is not ambiguous. It is a record of sustained, deliberate, and ideologically driven protection of Israeli state interests at the expense of fundamental freedoms.

On BDS: From the early 2000s onward, French courts criminalized calls to boycott Israel, classifying them as incitement to discrimination. The Court of Cassation confirmed these rulings repeatedly — in 2004, 2007, 2012, and most notably in its October 2015 ruling upholding the Colmar Court of Appeal’s conviction of BDS activists. For the French judiciary, protesting Israeli policy toward Palestinians was, by definition, antisemitic. Political protest and freedom of expression were simply not part of the calculation. Notably, no comparable proceedings were ever brought against those who supported the boycott of apartheid South Africa — a boycott that helped free Nelson Mandela and bring down a criminal regime.

It took a European Court of Human Rights ruling in June 2020 — Baldassi and Others v. France — condemning France for violating Article 10 of the European Convention on Human Rights, to finally force the Court of Cassation into a grudging, half-hearted reversal in October 2023. Fifteen years of legal combat to establish that supporting Palestinian rights does not constitute hate speech. Fifteen years in which freedom of expression simply did not apply when Israel was the subject.

Criminalizing Opinion: The March 31st Ruling

The Court of Cassation has just delivered another blow. In a ruling dated March 31st, it upheld the conviction of an individual who had shared a tweet by a former Tunisian minister describing the October 7th attack as an act of resistance linked to Israeli occupation — with the author criticizing Europeans for accepting only the terrorism framing. The court confirmed the lower court’s classification of this act as “apology for terrorism.” The sentence: four months suspended prison term and two years of ban to stand for election.

This ruling is alarming on multiple levels. First, it cements a France in which words alone carry prison sentences. Second, it renders certain nouns legally dangerous. Third — and most perversely — it establishes that merely sharing someone else’s opinion online, without adding the requisite “nuances,” is not treated as complicity but as co-authorship of that opinion.

The substance of what was shared was a political view: that the October 7th attack constituted an act of resistance. Historians and honest observers know perfectly well that an act of resistance can simultaneously be an act of terror. The French Resistance itself offers the proof. Calling something “resistance” is no more an endorsement of its most violent forms than saying — as every serious commentator does — that “it didn’t start on October 7th.” The judicial acrobatics required to pretend otherwise would be almost comic if their consequences weren’t so severe. Would France prosecute for “apology for terrorism” those who celebrate Nelson Mandela and the ANC, who openly embraced armed struggle and terrorist tactics? The question answers itself.

The fight against terrorism is being used as cover. What is actually being criminalized is support for the Palestinian cause and criticism of Israeli state policy.

The Georges Ibrahim Abdallah Coda

The court’s political character was on display once more with its recent annulment of the Paris Court of Appeal’s decision granting conditional release to Georges Ibrahim Abdallah — one of the longest-held prisoners in French history, incarcerated for over 40 years, eligible for release for more than 20. The Lebanese militant had been convicted as an accomplice in the killings of Israeli and American intelligence agents on French soil — at a time when his country was being devastated by an Israeli invasion that produced the Sabra and Chatila massacres.

The ruling will have no practical consequence: Abdallah has been freed, expelled, and has returned to Lebanon at 75. But the Court of Cassation saw fit — precisely as Israel launched a new assault on Lebanon, complete with fresh war crimes — to issue a symbolic reminder of where its loyalties lie.

No one should take satisfaction in watching France’s highest judicial institution conduct itself as a political actor. And no one should be surprised by the contempt in which the public holds it.

Avant de partir, merci de m’offrir un café.