In 2009, CRIF has intervened on very many occasions, addressing political leaders and other decision makers.
In March, CRIF was informed about a motion put forward by a major teachers’ union calling for a boycott of Israel. In a protest letter, CRIF wrote to the union, saying: “Over and above the confusion stoked by such a motion, it speaks above all of flagrant prejudice and lack of information… The issues facing education are many and sufficiently acute to justify your energy being poured into issues for which you have a certain competence, which is not the case when it comes to the complex conflict in the Near East. The agreements between France and Israel on educational matters should please you and be an incentive to support similar agreements with the Palestinians. You would then indeed be fulfilling your role, rather than censuring opportunities for openness and exchange, which are the only path to the peace and the creation of a Palestinian state that CRIF supports”.
Richard Prasquier, President of CRIF, has drawn the attention of the Minister of Justice to texts and videos posted on an Internet site seeking to prevent the sale of Israeli products and/or protest against such sales in large retail stores. “Let it be said once and for all that such operations are illegal,” insists Richard Prasquier. “Israel is a legally recognised state. These actions are always carried out against this same State and for me such a fixation is just plain anti-Semitism,” he says. The Minister of Justice’s Chief of Staff informed the President of CRIF that the calls for a boycott published on the Internet are liable for prosecution.
In April, the President of CRIF, Richard Prasquier, welcomed Bernard Accoyer, the President of the National Assembly (France’s lower house of parliament), who was accompanied by Eric Giraud-Telme, a diplomatic advisor. During that meeting, Richard Prasquier spoke at length about the boycott against Israel.
In May, an action boycotting Israeli products was carried out in a hypermarket in the Paris region by some pro-Palestinian militants together with Senator Boumediene-Thiery, a Green. Following these protests by CRIF, the government spokesperson said that the “commando” boycott actions against Israeli products undertaken for the past several months in large retail stores were “absolutely unacceptable” and shocked him “deeply”. Responding to questions about these actions, Luc Chatel said that “since the beginning of the year, police services have recorded about twenty operations of this kind in large retail stores”. These “commando operations” carried out by “about twenty activists from the far left, are absolutely unacceptable”. “It isn’t a question of physical violence, but rather a form of symbolic violence and intimidation. In these matters, the borderline between anti-Zionism and anti-Semitism is often a very fine one,” he added.
In June, tired of these repeated violent, hate filled actions by anti-Zionist organisations, a group under the banner “Anti boycott and proud to be Zionist” met in front of a hypermarket in the Paris region, to express their solidarity with the Israeli people. After some introductory statements by Gilles Taieb, the organiser of the gathering, and Richard Prasquier, President of CRIF, over 200 people made their way into the store to buy Israeli products.
In July, the President of CRIF met with the junior minister in charge of trade, small business, SMEs, tourism and consumer services, to express the concerns of all those who fear that Israeli products could disappear from stores or be relegated to the backs of shelves.
Sylvain Pastor, a Green sitting on the Regional Council of the Languedoc-Roussillon region in the south of France, referred to some of the politicians on the Council as “collaborators of the State of Israel”, because of a project setting up the Israeli company AGREXCO in the harbour zone of Sète. CRIF responded saying it was “scandalised by such unacceptable statements that suggest a parallel between France’s wartime Vichy government and the present-day French Republic’s politicians, not to mention the parallel between the 3rd Reich and the State of Israel. CRIF deplores such a sinister confusion and asks Mr Pastor to recant his purported statements.”
More recently, Richard Prasquier sent a new letter to protest the fact that some twenty militants went to a hypermarket in Mulhouse, removing Israeli products from the store’s shelves before discarding them.
CRIF has therefore not been inactive in the face of these attempts to boycott Israeli products.
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