This week, the French parliament unanimously approved a bill to elevate Alfred Dreyfus to the rank of Brigadier General.
Since Dreyfus died in 1935, this is a symbolic act, intended to rectify the historical injustice he suffered due to Antisemitism by acknowledging his dedication to the French Republic.
The bill, which former Prime Minister Gabriel Attal introduced, now awaits approval from the Senate to become law.
Although the timing seems odd, the attempt to give Dreyfus a posthumous promotion is overdetermined by current political events.
For those not familiar with the vicissitudes of French political history, the Dreyfus Affair was a political and judicial scandal that unfolded between 1894 and 1906. It centred on the wrongful conviction for treason of Captain Alfred Dreyfus, a Jewish officer in the French Army.
Dreyfus was accused of passing military secrets to the Germans. Tried on the basis of circumstantial and largely fabricated evidence, he was publicly humiliated and sentenced to life imprisonment on Devil’s Island.
At first, the case appeared to confirm the loyalty of the French military and the sanctity of the state. But cracks began to show after evidence emerged implicating another officer, Ferdinand Esterhazy. Despite this new information, the military and political establishment initially refused to revisit the case, fearing institutional embarrassment.
The Dreyfus Affair soon became a national crisis, polarising French society along ideological, political, and religious lines.
On one side were the anti-Dreyfusards, composed of conservatives, monarchists, nationalists, and many members of the Catholic Church, who viewed Dreyfus’s conviction as necessary to preserve state authority and military honour.
On the other side were the Dreyfusards—liberals, republicans, socialists, and secular intellectuals—who saw the case as a grave miscarriage of justice and a symptom of deep-seated Antisemitism.
Émile Zola, outraged by the gross injustice of the proceedings against Dreyfus, gave vent to his feelings in a famous open letter to Félix Faure, President of the French Republic, entitled J’accuse…! (I Accuse…!).
“I accuse General Billot,” he wrote, “of having held in his hands the unquestionable evidence of Dreyfus’s innocence and of suppressing it, guilty of this crime that injures humanity and justice, with a political aim and to save the compromised Chief of the High Command. I accuse General De Boisdeffre and General Gonse as accomplices of the same crime, one undoubtedly by clerical passion, the other perhaps by this spirit of body which makes offices of the war an infallible archsaint.”
The letter galvanised public opinion and drew international attention to the case.
The Dreyfus Affair was a watershed in the history of modern Antisemitism in France. It showed that Jews, despite their legal emancipation and integration after the French Revolution, remained vulnerable to racialised suspicion and scapegoating.
Even as exculpatory information about Dreyfus became more readily available, the defensive French state refused to change course. Zola was nearly jailed for his advocacy of Dreyfus’s case and was forced to spend a year in Great Britain in self-imposed exile.
It wasn’t until 1906 that the Court of Cassation exonerated Dreyfus. Later, he was awarded the Légion d’honneur. However, the scandal surrounding the false accusations against him and the French government’s willingness to convict him left a lasting scar on the French political landscape for decades.
The virulent Antisemitic rhetoric in the press, particularly from publications like La Libre Parole, revealed that nationalist and clerical factions saw Jews as fundamentally alien to the French state. Not only did the Dreyfus Affair highlight the fragility of republican institutions. It also contributed to the rise of political Antisemitism in Europe more broadly.
Today, prejudice against those viewed as “other” is concentrated on North Africans, the demographic reflux of the French colonial project. Although there have recently been efforts to reassess the role of Antisemitism in France, the status of North Africans remains a wound that will not heal, and is part of a larger rejection of Islam.
42% of the country’s Muslim population feels discriminated against, according to a 2019 study, while a 2017 survey reports 39% of French citizens believe Islam is incompatible with French society.
It’s hard not to perceive a connection between the return of the Dreyfus Affair and the war in Gaza. Since 7 October, there has been a significant rise in Antisemitic incidents in France. The French government has attempted to navigate its way through the crisis with varying degrees of success.
On the one hand, it has forcefully condemned Israel’s actions in Gaza, particularly the significant civilian casualties resulting from airstrikes on refugee camps and UN facilities.
President Emmanuel Macron and the French foreign ministry have described these actions as “outrageous” and “unjustifiable”, emphasising Israel’s obligation to adhere to international humanitarian law and calling for an immediate ceasefire.
France has also criticised the prolonged blockade of humanitarian aid into Gaza, highlighting the severe humanitarian crisis affecting the Palestinian population.
In addition to diplomatic condemnations, the French government has taken concrete steps to improve the situation, contributing €200 million to humanitarian efforts in Gaza.
Several French political parties have publicly supported the recognition of Palestinian statehood, particularly in light of the ongoing humanitarian crisis in Gaza and the broader Israeli-Palestinian conflict. The most prominent among them is La France Insoumise (LFI), led by Jean-Luc Mélenchon.
LFI has consistently advocated for the immediate recognition of a Palestinian state and has been critical of Israel’s actions in Gaza, describing them as “genocide”. The party has also called for sanctions against Israel and the suspension of EU-Israel agreements.
French-Palestinian activist Rima Hassan, a member of the European Parliament for La France Insoumise (LFI), has been a prominent voice in advocating for Palestinian rights in Brussels. Hassan was deported from Israel in February, after previously being granted entry as the head of an EU parliamentary delegation visiting the country.
The Socialist Party (PS) and the French Communist Party (PCF) have also expressed support for Palestinian statehood. In 2014, the French National Assembly passed a non-binding resolution urging the government to recognise Palestine, with backing from the Socialist majority and left-wing allies.
More recently, the PS has reiterated its support for a two-state solution and has criticised the French government’s hesitation to recognise Palestine. The PCF has long maintained solidarity with the Palestinian cause and continues to advocate for official recognition.
On the other hand, far-right parties such as the Rassemblement National (RN), led by Marine Le Pen, oppose Palestinian statehood. The RN argues that recognition would legitimise terrorism and threaten Israel’s security. Similarly, Le Pen’s younger sister, Marion Maréchal, a prominent far-right politician, has described the recognition of a Palestinian state as tantamount to creating an “Islamist state” that would pose a danger to Israel and the West.
The French government banned pro-Palestinian demonstrations in October 2023. The Conseil d’État rejected legal challenges to this measure, although it did rule that the ban should be applied on a case-by-case basis, rather than as a blanket measure.
As in most of Western European countries, student actions in support of the Palestinians have been met with draconian measures, including police violence. This week, the town of Chalon-sur-Saône banned the Palestinian flag as a “rallying sign”, prohibiting its sale and display, after riots broke out following Paris Saint-Germain’s victory over Inter Milan on 1 June.
And, as this article went to press, port workers in Marseilles were blocking the shipment of 14 tonnes of military equipment destined for Haifa, contradicting French government denials that it is supporting Israel’s campaign in Gaza.
It should go without saying that any measure to redress the gross injustice perpetrated against Dreyfus should be welcomed. Yet it is difficult to escape the suspicion that the passing of such a measure in the current moment has more to do with the French government’s contemporary needs than it does with the Dreyfus Affair.
Admittedly, the government’s situation is considerably less fraught than that of Germany. There, the historical responsibility for the mass murder of Europe’s Jews and the long alliance with Israel—undertaken, in part, to expiate that crime—has made it impossible for public authorities to chart a middle course.
France does have its own burden to bear with respect to that grim history. While the French story of the Second World War is one of victimisation and resistance, the Nazis had no trouble finding collaborators in occupied France ready and willing to assist in the deportation of France’s Jews.
Taken as a whole, recent developments in France highlight the peculiar nature of the situation in Gaza.
To confront it directly would endanger the narrative of French benevolence. However, refusing to do so endangers the neutrality of the state, in accordance with the principle of läicité, and its longstanding commitment to justice for oppressed peoples.
Combatting the legacy of Antisemitism is the right thing to do. But honouring Alfred Dreyfus without acknowledging how the discrimination he suffered is linked to the discrimination against Muslims today misses the point.
Photograph courtesy of Jeanne Menjoulet. Published under a Creative Commons license.
