Is indignation France’s only weapon? On Tuesday, July 22, Foreign Minister Jean-Noël Barrot once again expressed outrage over the massacres taking place in the Gaza Strip, calling the “new ground offensive” launched by the Israeli army around Deir al-Balah, in the center of the territory, just hours beforehand, “deplorable.” Speaking on the radio station France Inter, Barrot also condemned the way Israel has instrumentalized humanitarian aid within the Palestinian enclave through the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation, which he said led to a “bloodbath.” “About 900 people” were killed, he said, “as they went to collect a bag of flour and were targeted while in food lines.”
“I demand that the free and independent press be allowed access to Gaza, to show what is happening there and be able to speak about it,” he said. The day before, Agence France-Presse (AFP) had spoken out about the fate of its local collaborators there, warning about the threat of famine devastating the enclave. “Since AFP was founded in August 1944, some of our journalists were killed in conflict (…) but there is no record of us ever having to watch our colleagues starving to death,” AFP’s journalists’ association wrote in a statement published on Monday.
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