The Paris region has stripped a French journalist and anti-Islamism activist, Zineb El Rhazoui, of an award after she shared a post comparing Israel’s bombardment of Gaza to the Holocaust.
El Rhazoui was in 2019 awarded the Simone Veil Prize, named after the French Holocaust survivor and trailblazing feminist politician, for her work “defending secularism, fighting against all forms of obscurantism, and for equality between women and men.”
The Moroccan-born writer and television commentator on Saturday reposted a statement on X, formerly Twitter, appearing to accuse Israel of “genocide” and describing its policies against Palestinians as similar to those of the Nazis against Jews during World War II.
Simone Veil’s grandson, Aurelien Veil, in a reply to Rhazoui’s retweet, said he was concerned that it was contributing to “the trivialisation of the genocide committed by the Nazis” and called on the Paris region to act.
Valerie Pecresse, the head of the Ile-de-France region, said on Sunday she would take back her award because the comments she shared on X had “terribly hurt” French people who had lived through the Holocaust.
Rhazoui on X replied that she believed that to honour Veil’s memory was to rise up against all civilian deaths, whatever their nationality or religion.
