Sued by LFI, will Raphaël Enthoven turn the trial into an accusation of anti-Semitism?

"La France Insoumise is a detestable, violent, conspiratorial, and passionately anti-Semitic movement": this is how Raphaël Enthoven railed in a message published on May 1, 2024, on the social network X, reacting to the exfiltration of a procession in Saint-Etienne by Raphaël Glucksmann, who was pelted with paint and cans.

Five weeks before the European elections, the man who led the Place publique list - supported by the Socialist Party - had then pointed to "hotheads" belonging to La France insoumise as his attackers, notably spurred on by the testimony of a local activist, LFI flag on his shoulder, who had admitted "having been one of those who expelled" the social democratic leader.

The Mélenchonist party had rejected the accusation: "an incident that he himself is blowing up to accuse (us)," deplored the leader of the LFI deputies, Mathilde Panot. La France Insoumise filed a complaint against Raphaël Enthoven's tweet and is demanding €10,000 in damages, noting two other passages that it considers insulting: "They are so stupid" and "We can't take any more of this club of deficient people."

But it is precisely around the term "anti-Semite" that Raphaël Enthoven's defense wants to focus the debates on Tuesday before the 17th chamber - the one that judges press offenses.

"It will be a matter of establishing that LFI is the first party since the end of the Second World War to take up anti-Semitic clichés, even the most medieval ones, and to want to prevent the denunciation of the explosion of anti-Semitism," argues the philosopher's lawyer, Richard Malka.

He called three witnesses: the president of the Representative Council of Jewish Institutions of France, Yonathan Arfi; the director of the Museum of Art and History of Judaism in Paris, Paul Salmona; and the political scientist Rudy Reichstadt, founder of the website Conspiracy Watch - The Observatory of Conspiracy Theory.

The fact remains that the radical left party has no intention of allowing a lawsuit it is bringing to a standstill. "Our opponents who come with witnesses to supposedly put anti-Semitism on trial, that's not the point," observes LFI's lawyer, Mathieu Davy, pointing out that while the truth of the alleged fact exonerates the perpetrator in matters of defamation, the same is not true of the offense of public insult.

"We cannot bear that Mr. Enthoven would say such serious, violent words: it is neither funny, nor legitimate, nor justified," continues the lawyer, according to whom "the tweet is a pretext to slip up on LFI." This trial is taking place in the context of ambiguous accusations regularly made by detractors of the Insoumis since the Hamas attacks of October 7, 2023.

October 7, breaking point?

MP Jérôme Guedj, who was long a close friend of Jean-Luc Mélenchon but broke with LFI after the attacks of October 7, notably called the unsuccessful three-time presidential candidate an "anti-Semitic bastard" at the Socialist Party congress in June. LFI had demanded an apology from the Socialist Party for "unacceptable remarks."

Jean-Luc Mélenchon was also criticized for writing on his blog in 2024 that "contrary to what official propaganda says, anti-Semitism remains residual in France." The Insoumis also created controversy in the spring by publishing a visual on social media targeting the presenter Cyril Hanouna and using the codes of certain anti-Semitic posters from the 1930s.