It is a deeply divided National Assembly that adopted this evening (December 3) the "Maillard resolution" supposed to "fight against anti-Semitism", by 154 votes in favour, 72 against and 43 abstentions out of a total of 577 MPs. Of the 303 MPs of the LREM Group, who carried the resolution, only 84 voted in favour, while 26 voted against, 22 abstained and all the others were absent. The Modem group (center) was divided. The Socialist, La France Insoumise and Gauche Démocrate et Républicaine groups unanimously voted against.
The National Assembly adopted this resolution with less than half of the MPs present. The "pro" votes represent just over a quarter of the National Assembly’s members.

This narrow vote, despite the overwhelming majority of the LREM group, is not a surprise. By seeking to put on trial anti-Zionism, which is first and foremost a political opinion, and by "approving" the highly questionable definition of anti-Semitism proposed by the IHRA, a weapon promoted by Netanyahu and Trump against civil society and law defenders, this resolution has become the instrument of the Israeli policy rather than a sincere contribution to the fight against anti-Semitism in our country.

Should we recall, as several speakers have done, that the State of Israel violates international law and United Nations resolutions every day, and that it totally denies the rights of the Palestinian people ? Should we recall the Israeli Parliament’s vote in July 2018 on the "Nation State of the Jewish People" law, a supremacist and racist law that is the subject of numerous appeals in Israel itself ?
By isolating the fight against anti-Semitism from other anti-racist struggles, which are not mentioned once in the resolution, by ignoring the warnings of the CNCDH to the point of not even hearing it, the bearers of this resolution proved detrimental to the fight against anti-Semitism they claimed to promote.

Various announcements were made during this parliamentary debate.
AFPS approves the establishment of a parliamentary fact-finding mission on the fight against racism and intends to testify before it. But it is clear that it would have been necessary to wait for the conclusions of this parliamentary mission to put to the vote another resolution taking them into account.
MP Sylvain Maillard, the bearer of the resolution, stated in his official address to the National Assembly that this resolution "excludes the examples of the IHRA to illustrate the definition". AFPS takes note of this important statement, while regretting that it was not included in the text of the resolution.

Let us keep in mind that a parliamentary resolution cannot "adopt" anything, and that the IHRA examples have been excluded from the scope of approval of this definition. Anticipating propaganda, AFPS calls on the government and the DILCRAH to review with the utmost rigour the article on their website concerning an alleged adoption by France of the "IHRA definition", by mentioning in particular the exclusion of the IHRA examples, and by recalling that a parliamentary resolution does not have the power to adopt anything.

Faced with attempts at disinformation by the State of Israel, real resistance has emerged in our country, as well as a genuine desire to see the fight against anti-Semitism regain its essential but not exclusive place in the fight against racism, rid of all attempts at manipulation. This is an important factor that should be widely publicized. AFPS will continue to defend relentlessly the rights of the Palestinian people, condemning rigorously all forms of racism, while determined to refuse all forms of intimidation.

AFPS executive board, December 3, 2019