Paris, 15 October 2023

Mr Chairman of the Board of Directors of France24,

The Simon Wiesenthal Centre and myself have followed France24 in English since its inception. Over the years, there have been mistakes, but the recent presentation of the murderous attack by Iran-backed Hamas has been deeply biased.

On Saturday 7th October, a Jewish holiday, Hamas launched at least 3,000 rockets into Israel, blindly targeting the civilian population. Meanwhile, thousands of heavily armed terrorists assaulted the border defence posts and unleashed unprecedented mayhem on an open-air music festival, on small towns, villages, kibbutzim and isolated farmhouses.

They killed over 1,300 youngsters, elderly, children and babies, some were decapitated in front of their mothers, others were burned to death, women and teenagers were gang-raped, their husbands and boyfriends shot in cold blood.

Such horror is reminiscent of the Kristallnacht (the Night of Broken Glass) perpetrated by the Nazis on the Jews, exactly 85 years ago...

Last Saturday, approximately 126 – mostly women, children and elderly – were kidnapped and deported to Gaza, hostages to be further abused, paraded as spoils of war, used as human shields and bargaining chips.

France’s Foreign Affairs Minister, Madam Catherine Colonna, flew to Israel to meet the families of French Jewish victims and to note the evil of Hamas. She understands Israel’s calling Palestinian mothers, with their children and babies, to move to the south of Gaza, to be safe from air strikes targeting the terrorists and their armouries...

Of course, those mothers and children will not be safe from Hamas, until it is consistently incapacitated to exercise its terror.

While Israeli civilians have the IDF, a people’s army, to protect their survival, on the other side, Hamas uses its civilian population as a shield behind which to hide, as well as hospitals, schools and residential buildings for its military operations...

Despite these simple facts, France24 correspondent, Douglas Herbert, seems to have not read both sides of the story... When relaying the pro-Palestinian narrative, marches in favour of Hamas are a danger, especially towards the French Jewish community... and also trigger apparent Jihadist violence, such as the past week's killing of yet another teacher, this time in Arras.

We would appreciate your attention to the evils of Hamas and remind you that its own Charter calls for the murder of Jews worldwide.

Respectfully,

Dr Shimon Samuels
Director for International Relations
Simon Wiesenthal Centre

AM YISRAEL HAI - May the People of Israel Survive

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