France Leading Public Opinion In Europe Against Islamist Terror: Macron's Bluntspeak After Country Banned Pro-Palestine Demonstrations

France on Thursday (12 October) banned pro-Palestinian rallies, saying they were "likely to generate disturbances of public order".

Despite the ban, several hundred pro-Palestinian demonstrators gathered in central Paris on Thursday night in separate groups and raised anti-Israel, anti-Macron slogans.

However, they had to face police action, as the law enforcement agencies used teargas and water cannon to try to keep them from merging.

In a televised address after the ban was announced, French President Emmanuel Macron said that Hamas was a terrorist organisation which wanted the death of Israel's people.

"Hamas is a terrorist organization. Above all, its seeks the destruction and death of Israel. It exposes, in a criminal and cynical way, the people of Gaza," he said in a post on X, formerly Twitter.

He added that the only way to resolving the current crisis in the Middle East was by providing security guarantees for Israel along with the creation of a state of Palestine.

With tensions rising in France which has large Jewish and Muslim communities, Macron said 582 religious and cultural facilities in France were receiving stepped up police protection.

"Those who confuse the Palestinian cause and the justification of terrorism commit a strong moral, political and strategic error," he said.

Further, French anti-terror prosecutors on Thursday also launched a terrorism probe into the attack by Hamas on Israel, into murder, attempted murder and kidnapping, including of minors, by a "terrorist organisation".

This comes as France has been leading the public opinion in Europe against Islamist terror.

The law came in the wake of the murder in October 2020 of Samuel Paty, a junior high school teacher who was attacked by a radical Islamist in the street and beheaded after showing cartoons of the Islamic Prophet Mohammed in a civics class.

The legislation made it easier to stop mosques from receiving foreign financing, and offered protection to moderate community leaders who are in danger of being toppled by an extremist "putsch".

The law also enables stricter criteria for authorising home schooling of children over three years old in a bid to prevent parents taking their children out of public schools and enrolling them in underground Islamic structures.

Paty's death is one in a string of jihadist-inspired attacks in France which include the 2015 shooting sprees at satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo and the Bataclan concert hall; and the stabbings at a church in the Mediterranean city of Nice the same year.

Nice was also the scene of a 2016 attack that killed 86 people when a man rammed a truck into Bastille Day revellers.

Acknowledging that Islamist radicalisation can be homegrown as well as imported, the French government targeted associations and mosques in France that it suspects of spreading jihadist ideology.   

In December 2020, France launched a crackdown on 76 mosques and prayer halls suspected of links to Islamist extremism.

In January 2021, French Interior Minister Gerald Darmanan announced the closure of nine prayer halls and mosques that were "specially monitored" in France.

Later in December 2021, French authorities ordered the closure of a mosque in the north of the country because of the radical nature of its Imam's preachings.