Franco-Moroccan Zineb El Rhazoui has been charged with “terrorism propaganda” in France

According to French Interior Minister Bruno Retailleau, French Moroccan journalist and activist Zineb El Rhazoui has been held on charges of “propaganda for terrorism.” Retailleau announced via the social media platform X that he has submitted to the Paris prosecutor a report regarding El Rhazoui’s comments made in an interview with the newspaper Nouvelle Aube, published on October 4. In the interview, El Rhazoui, a former journalist for Charlie Hebdo, suggested that Israel was a “terrorist state” or a “successful ISIS” and referred to Hamas as a Palestinian “resistance movement.” Following another interview, with the French edition of Yeni Şafak, El Rhazouiposted a video on social media where she did not condemn the October 7, 2023, Hamas attack. Instead, El Rhazoui went on to say that “there are no civilians in Israel, because everyone is doing military service or lives in settlements,” while saying that Palestinian civilians suffer under Israeli occupation and live in what she called a concentration camp in Gaza. The Moroccan-born writer and television commentator El Rhazoui has been very forthright on the war in Gaze; last December she 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.