French journalist summoned to testify over social media post criticizing Israel over Palestine

PARIS

A French journalist and activist has been summoned to testify to police about a post about Palestine on social media on charges of spreading "terrorist propaganda," she said.

Sihame Assbague said on X that she had been summoned to testify to police over a post she made last Oct. 7 about Palestine.

In the post, she wrote: "The only one responsible: the colonial state of Israel. The only solution: The end of colonization and the liberation of Palestine. The only political path: to talk about the causes of the perpetuation, in a word, colonization, and violence, to condemn the complicit states and to support the Palestinian resistance.”

Assbague said she would testify as part of a preliminary investigation over spreading "terrorist propaganda" for her statements.

She said that she is not the first or the last person to be summoned to testify for expressing her support for Palestine and the Palestinian struggle.

Since last Oct. 7, hundreds of people have been harassed for the same reasons, she said.

Assbague said that this pressure also exists in politics and the media, stressing that there are people who are detained, whose homes are searched, who face legal sentences or punishments in school, or who are fired from their jobs for the same reasons.

‘We cannot be silent. We should not be silent'

“In France, as in other Western countries, everything has been done to ensure that solidarity with the Palestinian people is not expressed,” she said.

Despite threats, Assbague said she will continue to condemn "Israel's colonial policy" and the "complicity" of Western countries in it, she added.

"We cannot be silent. We should not be silent. Those who stand with the colonized and oppressed peoples should not be ashamed. We are on the side of life, justice, and peace,” she said.

*Writing by Zeynep Cetin in Istanbul