Skip To Content
JEWISH. INDEPENDENT. NONPROFIT.
Fast Forward

French President’s Party Withdraws 2nd Candidate Who Supported BDS

(JTA) – For the second time this month, the party of French President Emmanuel Macron withdrew from its parliamentary elections ticket a candidate who promoted a boycott of Israel.

William Tchamaha was removed Thursday from the En Marche party’s list in next month’s elections, the news site Actu reported.

CRIF, the umbrella group of French Jewish organizations, had called for his removal, citing his support for the boycott campaign. Promoting a boycott of countries or their citizens is illegal in France, where it is classified as hate speech.

“A state outside the law that despises the law,” Tchamaha wrote Feb. 8 on Twitter in a message that has since been deleted. “Boycott Israeli products and [apply] an economic embargo!”

In 2015, Tchamaha tweeted about the slaying by Israeli police officers of Palestinians while they were trying to carry out terrorist attacks against Israelis.

An En Marche spokesman neither confirmed nor denied to Actu that Tchamaha’s removal from the ticket was connected to the tweets.

“He no longer corresponded with the values that we uphold,” the party’s elections committee said without elaborating.

Last week, En Marche withdrew from its list another candidate that CRIF had urged the party to withdraw over anti-Israel tweets.

Republish This Story

Please read before republishing

We’re happy to make this story available to republish for free, unless it originated with JTA, Haaretz or another publication (as indicated on the article) and as long as you follow our guidelines. You must credit the Forward, retain our pixel and preserve our canonical link in Google search.  See our full guidelines for more information, and this guide for detail about canonical URLs.

To republish, copy the HTML by clicking on the yellow button to the right; it includes our tracking pixel, all paragraph styles and hyperlinks, the author byline and credit to the Forward. It does not include images; to avoid copyright violations, you must add them manually, following our guidelines. Please email us at [email protected], subject line “republish,” with any questions or to let us know what stories you’re picking up.

We don't support Internet Explorer

Please use Chrome, Safari, Firefox, or Edge to view this site.