Jewish students condemn antisemitic tweets about French PM Gabriel Attal

Photograph: Eric Tschaen/Sipa/Rex/Shutterstock

The French Union of Jewish Students has called for sanctions against people who have written antisemitic and homophobic comments about France’s new prime minister, Gabriel Attal, on the social network X.

Attal, 34, who was appointed by the president, Emmanuel Macron, this week, is France’s youngest prime minister and also the first out gay politician in the job.

His father, a lawyer and film producer who died in 2015, was Jewish and his mother is Orthodox Christian. He was baptised as Christian but Attal has said his father told him he would feel Jewish all his life and would always face antisemitism because he had a Jewish name.

The UEJF posted a message on X saying: “The nomination of Gabriel Attal as prime minister is the object of a new wave of antisemitic and homophobic hatred on X. It’s no longer the moment for condemnation but for action.”

The union called for sanctions against anyone writing hate speech on the platform. They said there should be prison sentences for those promoting hatred and fines against X itself, which it said “refuses to moderate hatred”.

After Attal’s appointment this week, Yonathan Arfi, the head of the Crif umbrella group of Jewish organisations, complained of “a wave of homophobic and antisemitic commentary on social media”. Arfi said that for those driven by hatred Attal was being reduced to his sexual orientation and the origin of his surname.

The French government delegation tasked with fighting racism, antisemitism and anti-LGBTQ+ hatred said it would report any hate comments to the interior ministry’s Pharos platform, which monitors illicit content online.

This week, LGBTQ+ groups in France welcomed Attal’s appointment, saying it sent a strong message about equality and acceptance in French society. Just over a decade ago, as France prepared to legalise same-sex marriage, there were massive street protests as more than 150,000 people demonstrated against the law change across France. There was also a vicious seven-day slanging match in parliament and a sharp rise in homophobia.

Some figures who have served in government under Macron opposed same-sex marriage in 2013, including the interior minister, Gérald Darmanin, who as mayor of a northern French town had said he would not marry same-sex couples. Darmanin said last year he had been wrong. Only 17 years ago, in 2007, France had a prime minister, François Fillon, who had voted against the decriminalisation of homosexuality in 1982.

“Gabriel Attal’s nomination is going in the right direction. It shows that in 2024 in France it’s possible to be a gay prime minister,” Joël Deumier, the head of the organisation SOS Homophobie, told Agence France-Presse. “The change in mentalities has made his appointment possible.”

But SOS Homophobie said there was still hatred and discrimination and what counted was government action on equality issues.

Attal was in a civil partnership with Stéphane Séjourné, a member of the European parliament for Macron’s Renaissance party, but their relationship is believed to have ended. Séjourné was made foreign minister on Thursday night.

Attal told French TV last year that he had faced homophobic bullying when at school in Paris. He said a student had set up a website where homophobic comments were made about him but he did not dare tell his family what he was going through. “It was suffering, and I think the worst is when you think that suffering will never end,” he said.

When aged 29 he became the youngest member of a French government since the second world war, he said he had been outed in a book. Attal said his sexual orientation had never been a secret but he would have preferred to have spoken about it on his own terms.

He said last year that as education minister he had made a police complaint over a threatening, hate-filled letter sent to him decorated with a yellow star and a pink star. He said his message at the time was that people should always go to the police over antisemitic or homophobic acts.

There have been several gay members of government in France in recent years, including Sarah El Haïry, who served as junior minister for health and biodiversity, who was considered in the French media to be the first out lesbian member of a modern French government. El Haïry and her partner are expecting a baby through assisted reproduction, which was only legalised for lesbians and single women in France in 2021.

Several other European countries have had gay prime ministers, among them Leo Varadkar in Ireland, Elio Di Rupo in Belgium, Xavier Bettel in Luxembourg and Ana Brnabić in Serbia. In 2009, Jóhanna Sigurdardóttir became both Iceland’s first female prime minister and the world’s first out gay prime minister.