Thomas Portes, a deputy for far-left La France Insoumise (LFI) stated on Saturday that “Israeli athletes are not welcome to the Olympic Games in Paris.” Speaking at a pro-Palestine demonstration, Portes said, “We are a few days away from an international event which will be held in Paris, which is the Olympic Games. I am here to say that no, the Israeli delegation is not welcome in Paris. … we must use all the levers we have to create mobilization.”
Multiple reactions and condemnations quickly followed.
Yonathan Arfi, with the Representative Council of French Jewish Institutions, said the LFI deputy put “a target on the backs of Israeli athletes”:
1972: 11 Israeli athletes are murdered by Palestinian terrorists at the Munich Olympics. 2024: LFI calls for the exclusion of Israeli athletes from the Paris Olympics. Since October 7, Thomas Portes has legitimized Hamas. He is now putting a target on the backs of Israeli athletes, already the most threatened at the Olympic Games. Irresponsible.
The Mayor of Nice, Christian Estrosi, even called for the dissolution of LFI.
“I call for LFI to be dissolved and, in the meantime, for all public aid to be withdrawn from this party and its members, who have definitively ostracized themselves from the nation,” Estrosi wrote on X.
Lawyer Muriel Ouaknine-Melki, president of the European Jewish Organization (OJE), used the platform to announce that her association would file a formal complaint against LFI.
Already on Friday, LFI’s Portes had called for Israel to be banned from the opening ceremony.
“Israel must not march at the opening ceremony of the Olympic Games,” he declared on X. “The Israeli flag must not fly on Olympic stadiums and arenas. Israeli athletes must participate, individually, in a white uniform, under the Olympic flag and anthem,” he stated.
Other LFI elected officials made the same request earlier in the year. The party has not condemned Hamas’s October 7th terrorist attack on Israel and its rhetoric has continually called Israel a “genocidal state.”
