French President Emmanuel Macron has been forced to an embarrassing backtrack after falsely claiming that the shootings in Trappes were the first time that the country had experienced a terror attack over race or religion.
On Friday, six people were shot, leading to the death of one man and leaving a 12-year-old girl injured, in the multicultural Paris suburb of Trappes. The suspected attacker, only identified publicly as “Kevin T.”, was arrested shortly after the shootings while possessing an antique Sten MK II automatic gun, tear gas canisters, and cocaine.
The attack was immediately characterised by some as being motivated by race and religion, with Trappes Mayor Ali Rabeh claiming Friday afternoon that his city had “witnessed a racist attack, probably Islamophobic”.
Speaking to the press from Trappes, President Emmanuel Macron asserted that the attack was a “turning point” for France, claiming that “this is the first time there has been a planned terrorist act to kill our fellow citizens, our children, because of their skin colour or the religion they are given”.
This claim faced immediate and swift pushback on social media, with users and politicians citing numerous instances of Islamic terrorists killing people because of their religion, particularly those of Jewish and Christian faith.
Examples of this included the 2012 antisemitic attack against the Ozar Hatorah Jewish school in Toulouse by Mohamed Merah, who brutally murdered three children and a father, Jonathan Sandler, his sons Arié and Gabriel, and young girl Myriam Monsonego, Le Figaro reported. The French paper of record also pointed to the 2015 hostage situation at the Hyper Cacher kosher supermarket in Paris during which Malian-heritage Muslim Amedy Coulibaly killed five people and injured 11 more.
The Catholic community in France has also come under frequent attack, including the 2016 jihadi killing of Father Jacques Hamel at the church of Saint-Étienne-du-Rouvray in Normandy by two ISIS supporters, Adel Kermiche and Abdel Malik Petitjean. In 2020, a Tunisian Muslim, Brahim Aouissaoui, stabbed three people to death at the Catholic basilica of Notre-Dame de Nice.
In response to President Macron’s false claim, National Rally leader Jordan Bardella said: “This ignoble attack, of exceptional gravity, shocks the entire country and calls for an implacable judicial response.
“But alas, contrary to what you declare, this is not ‘the first time’ that French people have been targeted and killed, in the context of a planned terrorist operation, ‘on account of their skin colour or their religion”: your eminent position requires you not to forget the Jewish victims of the Ozar Hatorah school in Toulouse or of the Hyper Cacher, Father Hamel murdered in his church, the Catholic faithful of the Notre-Dame Basilica in Nice, and all the other innocent victims.”
French MEP and leader of the Identity–Liberties party Marion Maréchal added: “Don’t the little Jewish children of the Ozar Hatorah school, shot at close range by Mohammed Merah, matter to you, Mr. President? And Father Hamel? And the Nice basilica?
“Today’s horror must not overshadow that of yesterday.”
Mayor of Nice, Éric Ciotti, said that the attack in Trappes was “abhorrent and must be denounced by all with force” but said that President Macron’s comments represented a “historic and grave mistake.”
Such statements are unworthy and abhorrent… This mediocre attempt at political recovery of a racist attack definitively discredits a President who will have damaged and divided France. Let him finally go!”
Following the steep backlash, Macron was forced to walk back his assertion, albeit without acknowledging his initial mistake, admitting that there have been “attacks that have struck Christians because they were Christians and Jews because they were Jews… None of these victims should be forgotten. No pain should be ranked.”
