8 May 2025
We issue this statement as Gaza faces a humanitarian catastrophe. Over two million people are being starved under a total blockade imposed by Israel, denied not just fuel and medicine, but food and water. This is not collateral damage; it is a deliberate policy, the weaponization of starvation, and crime under international law.
France, which claims the mantle of human rights defender, has failed to act. France continues to supply arms to Israel, opens its airspace to Israeli leaders wanted by the International Criminal Court, and remains silent as famine threatens Gaza. This silence and inaction, in the face of the most urgent humanitarian blockade in recent memory, is complicity and effective support by France for Israel’s genocide of the native Palestinians.
History’s Lessons: Occupation, Resistance, and the Cost of Appeasement
When Nazi Germany occupied France during World War II, the world recognized it as a brutal military invasion, a denial of sovereignty and human dignity. The French Resistance, armed and underground, was hailed as heroic, not terrorist. Their right to resist fascism, occupation, and ethnic persecution was never in question.
Today, Palestinians resist an occupation of strikingly similar character: land theft, siege, collective punishment, home demolitions, military rule, and mass displacement. Yet Palestinians are branded as terrorists for doing what the French did in 1940 – refusing to bow to occupiers.
The Israeli annexation of Palestinian land, especially in the West Bank and East Jerusalem, mirrors the Anschluss Nazi Germany’s annexation of Austria in 1938. In both cases, the annexing power claimed historical entitlement, dismissed the rights of the population, and acted unilaterally in violation of international law. The world’s hesitation to act in both cases enabled aggression, not peace.
France remembers Vichy – the shameful era of collaboration and appeasement. It remembers Munich, when Britain and France allowed Hitler to carve up Czechoslovakia, believing it would buy peace. Appeasement did not stop aggression; it led to war. Today, appeasement, complicity and support of Israel by France, the EU, and the US prolongs a genocidal war in Gaza and a century of colonial domination in Palestine. Moreover, Israel continues to destabilize the Middle East, attacking neighboring states, killing thousands of civilians, destroying cities, assassinating political leaders and is a major threat to world peace.
Israel’s government now openly declares there will be no Palestinian state, no right of return, no withdrawal, no equality. It speaks the language of racial supremacy and denies international law. Yet France continues to shake its hand, arm its soldiers, and protect its leaders from justice.
Let us be clear:
● If resistance to Nazi occupation was just, then so is Palestinian resistance.
- If annexation in Europe was criminal, so is annexation in Palestine.
- If appeasement of fascist regimes was a historic error, then appeasement and support of Israeli apartheid and genocide is an historic and shameful political and moral failure today.
France must choose. Will it stand with the oppressed, as it once demanded for its own people under Nazi occupation? Or will it betray the legacy of its own resistance by siding with the genocidal colonial occupier and support “Liberty, Equality and Fraternity” for all?
History will judge France and all those who support oppression. It always does.
We Demand Immediate Action from the French Government:
- Immediate support for and participation in air and sea humanitarian corridors to Gaza.
- A firm stance to break the food blockade through coordinated international efforts, including French-led aid drops and maritime deliveries.
- An arms embargo on Israel.
- Full cooperation with the ICC, including enforcement of international arrest warrants.
- Legal action against French citizens and corporations complicit in illegal settlements and annexation.
Palestine does not need more symbolic gestures. It needs food, medicine, and justice. France has the power and the obligation to act.
Break the blockade. Stop arming apartheid and genocide. Stand on the right side of history.
Issued by the Palestine Solidarity Campaign (PSC) 8 May 2025