Threatened with death for having insulted the mobilized pro-Palestinian students, Élie Semoun files a complaint

Since Israel's announcement of its imminent attack on Rafah, located on the border between Egypt and the Gaza Strip, the mobilization of pro-Palestinian students against the war has reached a new milestone with the blockade of universities and schools . These protests, which began in the United States before migrating to France, affected most of the country's Institutes of Political Studies, such as those in Strasbourg, Rennes and Menton on Thursday May 2. In Paris, the school on rue Saint-Guillaume was occupied on April 26.

Three days later, Élie Semoun reacted on Instagram to a photo montage of students mobilized at Sciences Po Paris. Above this image, in a vindictive text, the comedian denounced the rally in favor of Palestine: “Band of uneducated morons who promote Hamas who refuse the ceasefire, who steal the money intended to the Palestinians, who holds them hostage, etc., etc. When they are in France, we will send them to receive them.”

In an interview with Le Parisien, on Sunday May 5, Élie Semoun explains this speech. “I called Sciences Po students uneducated morons […]. Maybe I shouldn't have. Those were probably the wrong words. But I am so angry and powerless in the face of this anti-Semitic wave, in the face of all this ignorance,” he says. The founder of the humorous program Les Petites Annonces believes he was the target of “a surge of hatred and insults”, to which were added death threats which motivated him to file a complaint with a police station.

Lucid, the actor claims not to be “afraid”. However, he admits remaining “hypervigilant” and feels “much too caught up in social networks since October 7”. Since the Hamas assault on the Hebrew state, where 600 Israeli soldiers lost their lives according to the IDF, Élie Semoun affirms “that times are going to be hard for the Jews. Anti-Semitism is coming back, and the worst thing is that it was the pogrom of October 7 that opened the floodgates, at a time when we could expect the world to close ranks around the Jews, share our pain. I expected a lasting wave of empathy, and then no..."

Sciences Po Paris was again occupied by students on the night of May 2 to 3. The police had to intervene to get the young people out of the enclosure. In the United States, mobilization in universities does not seem to be weakening: around forty campuses are the subject of demonstrations.