Anti-Semitism: Jérôme Guedj, willingly or unwillingly in the fray

"I'm starting to get a bit fed up with the protests," Jérôme Guedj told AFP ironically.

On Thursday, May Day, he was targeted and insulted by left-wing and far-left protesters. On Sunday, he was forced to leave a rally in tribute to the murder of a young Malian man in a mosque after being greeted with chants of "Zionist, get out!"

A climate that "stinks of anti-Semitism," according to him.

His detractors accuse him of overly timid support for Palestine, a support that has become a core value for a large part of the left under the leadership of La France Insoumise after the Hamas attacks of October 7, 2023, and Israel's devastating response. Or his refusal to use the term "Islamophobia"—contested by a section of the political class—to describe acts hostile to Muslims.

He, who comes from a Sephardic Jewish family and is a fervent defender of secularism, feels as if he is being brought back to his "Jewishness," a subject he does not normally discuss.

"I reject the terms 'colonial state', 'apartheid' and 'genocide' because three points make a line, and if we allow these terms to become entrenched, then the very question of the legitimacy of the State of Israel is raised," he explains.

The 53-year-old MP defines himself as "Zionist and pro-Palestinian," a defender of the two-state solution. He regularly recalls his opposition to Benjamin Netanyahu's government and the fact that he traveled to Gaza in 2009 to support the Palestinian cause.

However, this is not enough for part of the left.

The Insoumis thus accuse him of having treated them as "useful idiots of Hamas" after October 7.

Jean-Luc Mélenchon made some very harsh and ambiguous comments about him, calling him "a coward of that human variety we all know, the informers." "The interesting thing is to see him fussing around the stake where the leash of his memberships holds him," he added.

Anti-LFI but pro-union

It was in Essonne, a suburb of Paris where Jérôme Guedj spent his entire political career, that he met the leader of LFI, then a member of the Socialist Party.

The latter quickly took him under his wing - he even made him his parliamentary assistant in the Senate - and used to tell how his young protégé came to his ministerial office to revise for his ENA exam.

But the two men fell out when Jean-Luc Mélenchon left the PS in 2008.

Yet in 2022, at the time of the creation of the left-wing Nupes alliance, Jérôme Guedj was a fervent supporter of the union. The self-described "most rebellious of the socialists" reunited with his former mentor, before breaking off relations again after October 7.

"What really pisses me off is that my entire life has been shaped by my relationship with Mélenchon," he admitted to AFP in 2024.

From his years with him, Jérôme Guedj has retained a real rooting on the left of the PS.

Having joined the General Inspectorate of Social Affairs after graduating from the ENA, he became a member of parliament in 2012. He was then one of the socialist rebels who, in April 2014, refused to give their confidence to the socialist government, denouncing its liberal drift.

His political opponents are also quick to point out that, for next month's congress, he has joined forces with former ministers of François Hollande within the right wing of the Socialist Party, behind the mayor of Rouen, Nicolas Mayer-Rossignol, Olivier Faure's main opponent.

Willingly available in the media, he made a name for himself after his return to the National Assembly in 2022 by demanding, during the pension reform, documents from the Social Security system on the reform's consequences. With figures to back it up, he then began a battle in the chamber against Labor Minister Olivier Dussopt.

More recently, he has established himself as one of the paragons of non-censorship of the Bayrou government within the Socialist Party, in the name of "responsibility", after voting for the censure of Michel Barnier.