1973, Badinter argues against anti-Zionism

First application of the Pleven Act: a Soviet propaganda article in court.

In March 1973, Robert Badinter — the French lawyer, humanist, and future justice minister who would later lead the fight to abolish the death penalty — delivered a little-known but crucial courtroom plea during the first trial brought under France’s newly enacted Pleven Law, which criminalized incitement to racial hatred. The case centered on a piece of Soviet propaganda in which antisemitism hid behind the mask of anti-Zionism. In his argument, Badinter wove together law, history, and Jewish memory with remarkable moral clarity.

To mark his recent induction into the Panthéon, France’s secular temple to its national heroes, K. publishes the full text of this 1973 plea — a powerful early example of Badinter’s lifelong fight against antisemitism and his commitment to socialist and humanist principles. The document is introduced and annotated by historian editor-in-chief of Droit de vivre Emmanuel Debono.

 

 

Robert Badinter’s induction into the Pantheon was an opportunity to highlight the life journey of a major humanist figure in our national history. The former Minister of Justice’s fight against antisemitism was not the least of his commitments, in which law and politics were put at the service of human emancipation. From his family history to his last comments on current events before his death^[1], February 9, 2024, to his masterful condemnation of Holocaust denier Robert Faurisson before the 17th Criminal Court in 2007, his career is an expression of great consistency in this regard.

Consistent with this stance, in February 2024, Robert Badinter’s family did not want elected representatives from the French far-right political party National Rally (RN) and French left-wing party La France Insoumise (LFI) to attend the national tribute that was to be paid to him. While the RN respected this wish, LFI did not, and was represented on February 14 by two deputies, including Éric Coquerel. “Putting the far right and LFI on the same level is not in line with Robert Badinter’s main struggles,”^[2], stating a point of view undoubtedly shared by his political entourage. The desecration of Robert Badinter’s grave in the Bagneux cemetery on October 9, 2025, the very day of his burial in the Pantheon, provoked a strong emotional reaction from the political class, including a number of LFI elected officials. That day, in a message on X, Éric Coquerel expressed his “disgust,” “anger,” and ‘sadness’ at the ignominious act and announced that his political party would respond that same evening “in the face of hatred and obscurantism.”^[3].

The trial of anti-Zionism

Anti-Zionism, which characterizes La France Insoumise, and whose radical expression must be emphasized among a number of elected officials and activists aligned with the positions of Hamas and pro-terrorist organizations, from Samidoun to the Collectif Palestine Vaincra, from the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine to Urgence Palestine, was despised by Robert Badinter. Aware of the profound nature of this ideological current, the lawyer was even a pioneer in his analysis during a trial in 1973, where he represented the International League Against Antisemitism (LICA, now LICRA. ^[4]) against a publication by the Soviet embassy in Paris^[5].

The forgotten case we recount here is important for more than one reason. First, it is an effective denunciation of anti-Zionist propaganda and its organic links to antisemitism. Second, it was the first trial conducted under the anti-racism law, which had been enacted a few months earlier, on July 1, 1972. Finally, it resulted in the conviction of the media outlet that published the offending article. Gaston Monnerville, former president of the Senate and vice president of the LICA, said with great optimism about this court decision: “It will certainly set a precedent .”

The debates and pleadings of this trial are known to us through a publication conceived by François Musard, editor-in-chief of Droit de Vivre, the LICA’s journal^[6]. Robert Badinter’s closing arguments, reproduced in full below, combine several themes—historical, political, religious, and personal—making them an exceptional testimony in our era, when Jews must face globalized hatred and the obscurantism of those who contribute to spreading it.

“The school of obscurantism”

In a September 1972 newsletter, the Soviet Embassy in Paris published the French translation of an article from the Novosti^[7] news agency, an agency created in 1961 under the auspices of the Soviet Information Bureau, Sovinformburo, responsible for disseminating official USSR propaganda throughout the world. Entitled “Israel: the school of obscurantism,” the text violently attacks the Jewish state. The antisemitism of the Soviet regime was particularly reactivated by the Six-Day War of June 1967. It culminated in the early 1970s, when Jewish citizens of the Union were victims of discriminatory policies and were, in particular, prevented from emigrating to Israel.^[8]

The article in the USSR bulletin had only one goal: to portray Israelis as a people of aggressors, with the help of slander. According to the author, who wrote under the pseudonym “Zandenerg,” the Palestinians in the occupied territories were the main target of the Israelis and victims of their cruel perversity. In his exposé, Zandenerg employs all the tricks of anti-Jewish propaganda. The Israelis are Nazified: “Muslims are herded into ghettos, behind the barbed wire of concentration camps.” Israeli society as a whole is demonized, even children, who are allegedly raised to hate their neighbors: “Israeli schoolchildren, as soon as they learn to read and write, answer the question ‘How should we treat Arabs?’ with ‘We must massacre them!’. The savagery begins in the school classroom (…) .“ The author analyzes what he believes to be the philosophy behind Israeli school textbooks: ”The world must belong to the followers of the almighty God Yahweh, in whose name they can wear any mask. The property of non-Jews belongs to them only temporarily, until it is handed over to the ‘chosen people’. When this people outnumbers the other peoples, ‘God will deliver them all to be massacred once and for all.’”

As always in anti-Jewish propaganda, apocryphal quotations are used to support the argument. Supposedly coming from religious sources, they are intended to establish the culture and morals in which Jews live. The following imaginary prescription is thus reported: “When a Judean witnesses the last moments of an Akum^[9], he must rejoice.” Or this other one: “Akums are not to be considered human beings.”

Anti-Zionism in the dock

The article caused an uproar when it was published. Beyond the Israeli embassy, the entire national press reacted with indignation. The LICA and the magazine Encounter between Christians and Jews (Rencontre entre chrétiens et juifs) took legal action. Since July 1, 1972, France had in fact adopted a new law against racism, introducing into French legislation the offense of incitement to racial discrimination, hatred, or violence^[10]. The legal mechanism also allows anti-racist associations that have been in existence for at least five years to bring civil action, which the LICA did not fail to do, but which the Movement Against Racism, Antisemitism and for Peace, founded in 1949 as a satellite of the Communist Party, refrained from doing^[11].

As the trial approached, the URSS newsletter published a clarification that took the form of a most ambiguous mea culpa. While the statement regretted the generalization made by the author of the article, it nonetheless attacked a smear campaign against the Soviet Union allegedly led by “unconditional champions of Israeli policy who readily support its racist acts against the Arab population.” The newspaper L’Humanité reprinted this clarification in its entirety on March 22, 1973.

The hearing took place on March 26 before the 17th Criminal Division of the Paris District Court. Faced with the charges, the defense cried conspiracy, but its arguments carried little weight. The publication’s director, Robert Legagneux, the Communist deputy mayor of Nanterre, absolved himself of all responsibility by claiming that he was merely a figurehead. His lawyer, Claude Michel, fought against his detractors: while the terms of the article were appalling, the judges had to recognize that “the right to criticize Zionism and Israeli policy must remain free and must be able to be exercised.”

Who would dare to contradict him on this last point? The personalities that the LICA called to the stand as witnesses came one after another simply to denounce the nature of a text which, according to expert analysis, was inspired by the Protocols of the Elders of Zion and a pamphlet produced in 1906, also fabricated by the secret police of the Russian Empire. René Cassin, Rabbis Kaplan and Guggenheim, historian Léon Poliakov, priests Michel Riquet and Roger Braun, and others demonstrate that the article’s supposed religious quotations are erroneous, distorted, truncated, or invented.

One of the witnesses emphasized that there was no difference between the anti-Jewish propaganda of the Tsar and that of the USSR bulletin. “The only difference,” he added, “is that the word ‘Jew’ has been replaced by ‘Zionist.’”

The uniqueness of the trial did not escape the witnesses or the prosecution lawyers: it was Lenin’s legacy that was being betrayed! The condemnations of antisemitism by the father of the Bolshevik revolution were being trampled on, which inspired the two defense lawyers to make uncompromising pleas.

First, Gérard Rosenthal, another lawyer for the civil party, summed up the drift at work in a single sentence: “This is an article that, in theory, is about the war in the Middle East and political criticism of the State of Israel, but immediately it moves on to criticism of ‘Zionism’ and, with a light step, crosses the line to the most abject antisemitism by declaring that all those who follow Jewish law dream of massacres and expropriations.

Then Robert Badinter makes the following bitter observation: “As if it were just biding its time, we have seen it [the beast] reappear in a new ideological guise, more subtle, more dangerous. Ah! It is no longer in the name of the ‘master race’, it is no longer in the name of racial purity, it is no longer to defend Christian civilization or Aryan purity against degradation or Jewish leprosy: it is in the guise of generosity, it is in the guise, paradoxically, of anti-racism. It is under the guise of defending the oppressed that we have seen it appear!”

At the end of his plea, Badinter concludes, implacably: “If this is the only defense against evil, if this is the only hope for justice and brotherhood that a world that claims to be socialist can offer, then today’s trial has an almost desperate significance, because if socialism is so powerless against the old beasts and demons, then what recourse remains for those who believe in socialism?” “

The lawyers’ arguments clearly illustrate the historical mechanisms of radical criticism of Israel: the demonization of a state, the distortion of its values, the dehumanization of its citizens, in order to better justify its eradication. All of this in an obsessive manner.

As Robert Badinter asserts, judges do not have to answer the historical and political questions raised by the case. On the other hand, informed by the context, the elements of the investigation, and a number of expert opinions, they must evaluate the intentions behind such statements. The court’s decision was finally handed down on April 24, 1973, by the 17th Criminal Division: it unequivocally condemned the antisemitism that was (poorly) concealed behind the mask of anti-Zionism.

Emmanuel Debono

 

 

Robert Badinter’s closing argument delivered on March 26, 1973, during the trial of Licra and the magazine Rencontre entre chrétiens et juifs (Encounter between Christians and Jews) against the newsletter “URSS,” 17th Criminal Court of Paris:

Mr. President,

Gentlemen,

My friends[1] present at this bar have left it to me to speak last on behalf of the civil party in this case. I thank them for this, insofar as it is, for a French and Jewish lawyer of mature age, a strange circumstance and an exceptional moment to have to invoke this law on racial provocation for the first time in France [2]. I would like to emphasize this law, because President Monnerville[3] was incomplete on this point, and I want to be thorough. This law is primarily due to the efforts of the Communist group in the National Assembly in 1968[4].

I was curious to find out the complete history of the text: it was the Communist group that first tabled the bill on racial provocation.

To tell the truth, I find it surprising that this text is being applied for the first time in relation to antisemitic provocation. When President Pierre-Bloch [5] first spoke to me about this important text, we both agreed that it would apply to victims other than Jews, victims of obsession, fanaticism, and that centuries-old, degrading passion known as racism.

We thought that it would be for the benefit of other victims—North African workers, Black people, all the helots of French society—that we would prosecute these writings, which are degrading to those who publish them, even more degrading to those who write them, and dishonorable even to those who accept them without indignation.

That time will come, let us not delude ourselves. None of us should delude ourselves in this regard. Pierre-Bloch will find his way back into the public eye in other trials of this kind. Gérard Rosenthal[7], Aubourg[8], myself, and others will be there. Because hatred, racism, and racial or religious provocations are not about to disappear. But today, the singularity, the paradox, is that it is for antisemitic writings, published on French territory based on forgeries produced in the USSR, the country that at one point in history carried the hopes of mankind, that those we are prosecuting are the first to suffer the moral rigors—we ask for nothing more—but exemplary, we all demand, of your justice.

Let Mr. Legagneux[8], who, I want to believe, has been led here by a policy he did not want, leave reassured, and reassure his wife[9]: we will not pursue the enforcement of penalties against him, if there are any penalties. It is something else that we will pursue, something much more important.

This trial against antisemitism exposes the nature of antisemitism, this evil that we denounce and which, day after day, is taking on more and more substance and consistency, in reality under the guise of what is called anti-Zionism.

All the same… all the same, if it is opinionated, surprising, how extraordinary and revealing today’s trial is! How revealing it is, first of all, that so many of us, Christians and Jews, insist today on telling people that their convictions, their passions, their reasons for fighting should, more than anything else, incline them to be wary, to see what they are committing themselves to! How the warnings we have given in vain are exemplified here. How this trial against antisemitism unmasks the nature of antisemitism, this evil that we denounce and which, day after day, is taking on more and more substance and consistency, in reality under the guise of what is called anti-Zionism [10]. It is centuries-old antisemitism that is reviving a fire that we thought had been extinguished by the blood of six million innocent people!

I thought there were still a few deluded people, irredeemable fanatics, a few lunatics who, from time to time, would say, ‘It’s the Jews’ fault!’ and repeat the old, degrading slogans of antisemitism. [11].

I said to myself, “The beast, the one that is never satisfied according to Scripture, the vile beast, may this time be sated.”

And then, as if it were just waiting for its moment, we saw it reappear in a new ideological guise, more subtle, more dangerous.

Ah! It is no longer in the name of the “master race,” no longer in the name of racial purity, no longer to defend Christian civilization or Aryan purity against degradation or Jewish leprosy; it is in the guise of generosity, in the guise, paradoxically, of anti-racism.

It is under the guise of defending the oppressed that we have seen it appear! Anti-Zionism was born out of international tension, international conflict, and armed struggle, which threatens the existence of the State of Israel and the right of Israelis, recognized by the whole world, to live as free men in the land that has become theirs. I readily say to those who evoke the suffering of the Palestinian people that there is not a single Jew nourished by the sources of Jewish tradition who does not think of the tragedy of the Palestinian people, recursively, no doubt, but it was inevitable; it was antisemitism and the crimes committed in Europe against millions of innocent Jews that gave rise to it.

When Theodor Herzl, in the climate of the late nineteenth century, first dreamed of establishing a Zionist state, it was in Paris, on Rue Cambon—there is a plaque on the hotel where he lived—at the end of the Dreyfus affair. This man of heart said to himself: “If this can happen in France, the country that was the first to give Jews the status of free men, then it will happen everywhere. And it is elsewhere, in another direction, that Jews must now seek their destiny.” It was there, and for that reason, that Zionism was born.

If the State of Israel was born, if it exists today, if it is what it is and in so many ways, I have no hesitation in saying that we are proud that it is what it is, it is also because, for those who arrived later via the “Exodus”[12] or otherwise, there was no choice. And for those who are trying to get there today, sometimes at the risk of their lives, there is no choice either.

So when, after that, I see how easily, how quickly people rush to make anti-Zionist accusations, it would be easy for me to say what the situation is. The abuses of the Israeli armies? Come on! I have pages and pages of documents here, and it would be easy for me to tell you how things really are. But that is not our trial. Our Israeli friends have said to me: “Don’t do it, we ask you not to do it; this is our problem, not yours.”

But still—just a word—when I see that, in this Bulletin, we have a prelude to the most traditional and lowest forms of secular antisemitism, when I see that the introduction is first and foremost an attack on the Israeli army[13], an attack on Israel, an attack on Israeli education, I think you must know very little about Israel, and very little about the love and passion that Israelis devote to the education of their children, and the way they raise them, caught up as they are in the necessity of survival in the face of acts of war, to portray them in this way.

We must remember the truth, even if at times I feel that, for reasons of international politics, the international conscience is easily silenced when it comes to Israeli athletes killed like rabbits on an airfield [14]!

The truth is that Israeli teachers and parents take infinite care to ensure that these boys and girls, at the age of greatest sensitivity, are not swept away by passion, hatred, and the desire for retaliation and revenge. I bear witness to this, and there is not a single visitor who can say otherwise. In any of the universities, schools, and even simply at meetings in the evening after work in the kibbutzim, one can see that Israel is not the homeland or the school of hatred. That is the truth, whatever the anti-Zionists may say. However, faced with this truth, people prefer the school of falsehood, using the classics, but also creating modern ones. We have a striking example of the school of falsehood in this Bulletin with regard to anti-Zionism. But there are other illustrations. Let us take the twin brother of this bulletin. Its Italian edition [15]. It is again from Novosti, produced in Moscow, October 1972.

This Novosti, published after the Bulletin in question today, before us, but not distributed in France, and therefore escaping your scrutiny, this Novosti, repeating and developing the forged texts, the fakes I mentioned, that Novosti ends by stating that, with regard to these texts, the Israelis—referred to as “Zionists”[16]—would be wrong to be indignant because this remark about Israeli schools as schools of hatred comes from a study by American professor Tamarin, who published the results of his observations on the education system in Israel.

Of course, I too wanted to know the shocking revelations of Professor Tamarin, which so strongly motivate such a categorical position. I have the texts, the page references are given in the Bulletin, Italian edition.

This constant antisemitism, which here finds an excuse in the anti-Zionist struggle. This is what is most remarkable and painful about our trial.

This took place in 1963. A psychiatrist, Mr. Tamarin, was rightly concerned—this is in the field of advanced psychiatry—about the influence that representations of sacred texts might have on children’s minds, a question which, as we can see, in an ecumenical period and in the presence of the Councils we know[17], is not without importance.

So Mr. Tamarin used a text, which was as follows: Israeli schoolchildren were asked the following questions:

“We know about Joshua’s massacre of Jericho, the trumpets, etc… we know about the second massacre in other places, by Mordecai. First question: do you approve of the behavior of the biblical heroes of that time[18]?

Second question: ” Do you agree that if Israeli soldiers take an Arab village, they should behave in the same way?”

These were children aged 8 to 12; I have the results, written down. Here they are:

Regarding approval of biblical policy—let’s call it that—:

For 66%

Against 26%

But when it comes to the same question for Israeli soldiers, which is where it gets interesting, the figures are exactly the opposite, i.e.:

30% in favor

66% against. This is essential.

I would add that, to clarify matters, we refined the study, as they say, analyzed the reasons, and found that those who were in favor were children who, for the most part, came from Arab countries where they had experienced particularly violent tensions in the months before coming to Israel [19].

So we are dealing with a falsehood. Read the Novosti bulletin: “Kill them all, that’s what Israeli education teaches.” Read the text to which Novosti refers. You will see that the author says: “Be careful, this is a dangerous projection for a minority of children.” However, based on this, the school authorities have ensured that the interpretation and commentary accompanying the teaching explain that the biblical heroes are biblical heroes, that their actions are legendary and should not be taken as examples in everyday reality.

I could easily continue with regard to Israeli schools. But, once again, that is not our problem.

Our problem, as I said earlier, is this constant antisemitism, which here takes the form of the pretext provided by the anti-Zionist struggle. This is what is most remarkable and painful about our trial.

Why is it most remarkable and painful? Because the Nazis were the Nazis; for the Jews, only death could be expected from them; for the Russians, only slavery; and for others, not much better. Hitler, in his delusions, with the paranoid logic we mentioned earlier, said: “Since the Jews say that the texts are false, it means that they are true.”

But the consistency, as Mr. Poliakoff would say, of the “breviary of hatred” is striking here[20]. We are told: “These texts come from Moscow.” Thank God they are not manufactured in Paris. They are, I believe, translated in Paris, or revised in Paris; but it doesn’t matter, translation may be an expression of literary creation, but it is not, in any case, a direct literary creation.

But how was this text manufactured in Moscow? Now we know. It is not simply a text lying around in some poorly archived library, which a careless official would have looked at and taken a quote from, without paying attention to the context. Finally, let us imagine ourselves in Moscow in 1972: here is the text! The cover is enough to make any communist shudder with horror.

A text from 1906, entitled in Russian: “Why Jews Have No Rights, etc…” published under the pseudonym Volzov[21], the content of which is the most abject collection of the most classic slanders of antisemitism: should this text not be abhorrent to a Soviet communist?

Soviet citizens could not sink lower than to produce, like their great-grandfathers before them (who, unfortunately, were not Soviet), these despicable documents, distributed throughout the world, saying: “This is the ideology in which the Zionists are raised.”

For if anything can disgust a Soviet communist, it is a text from the Okhrana [22]! Otherwise, he deserves neither the name of communist nor that of Soviet. If there is one crooked monster that has been rightly denounced among Russian communists, it is the Okhrana; everyone knows that the Protocols of Zion[23] were fabricated with Okhrana money.

Look at the date of the text: 1906… that’s no coincidence either. It adds to the infamy, because 1906 was immediately after the Revolution and the failure of 1905, and 1906 was immediately before the great pogroms of 1906 and 1907 [24].

And when Lenin said (after the 1905 revolution):

“Millions of rubles are spent on antisemitic propaganda,” well, he was also referring to this text.

So it’s crazy, unbelievable (and that’s why this trial is so valuable, so important, and will have international repercussions), it’s unimaginable to think that in 1972, the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics took a text from the Okhrana of 1906, a text that was denounced by Lenin, and disseminated it throughout the world after disguising it!

I turn to those who are motivated by communist ideology and ask them: is this your hope? Finally, can we imagine anything worse than thinking—and believe me, when you know Soviet bureaucracy, this did not happen without control, this text had to go up the chain of command, it did not arrive in Paris by chance and was certainly checked—that this is a text from the Okhrana, paid for by the Black Hundreds [25], condemned by Lenin, and used by the USSR Bulletin?

For what purpose? To stir up anti-Zionist passions, taking advantage of the persistence of antisemitism.

I say that one cannot sink lower than this when one is a Soviet citizen, when one has read—I hope—Lenin’s writings[26], when one has read—I want to believe—the Soviet Constitution[27], when one has received—I think—the Soviet education that says “racial discrimination is a disgrace.” Soviet citizens cannot sink any lower than by fabricating, as unfortunately their great-grandfathers did, who were not Soviet, these despicable documents, distributed throughout the world, saying: “This is the ideology in which the Zionists are raised.”

Because that is what the trial is about. They say: “This is the ideology in which we raise the Zionists, we raise them in this ideology!” And to make it more odious, they fabricate it with proven forgeries.

I say this from the bottom of my heart: I greatly pity the country that did not hesitate to fabricate falsehoods to serve a degrading cause. I pity those who live there, and I felt a moment of pity, regret, and spontaneous affection for that long-haired witness, with his handsome Russian Jewish face, who came here to testify, who was so eager to tell what he had seen because he had seen so much, and whom we were unable to hear for long enough. He told me something extraordinary, which I pass on to this Court, this praise of our justice system, which does not receive it so often. He said to me: “This time, I am sure I will leave the Court a free man.”[28]

So, after that? Well, the cause, the Protocols of Zion, their obscure journey and finally the bulletin printed in Paris, the constancy of antisemitism, the exploitation of antisemitism, is there not something there, for any of us, to question, to dream about? Because, after all, as I said, this is no coincidence, it is a policy. And a policy, in a country where everything political is so meticulously filtered and controlled, is not the result of a civil servant’s initiative, it is something deeper, something we must question, something each of us must reflect on deeply.

Because, after all—a moment of grace and rest for me—it is painful that these things come to us from Russia, it is good that these things are condemned in France.

Unlike Mr. Rosenthal, I grew up in the Jewish tradition. I don’t know it very well. I was a poor student. Chief Rabbi Kaplan[29] will forgive me for this belated admission; he had certainly noticed! I was a poor student, but what I do know, like all those who have measured it from near or far when they have approached it (not in the abject projections of the Okhrana) the reality of Jewish tradition, it is that if there is one word that has no meaning in this tradition, it is the word “hatred,” and if there is one word that has strength, fullness, and lived richness, it is the word “love.”

This is true, as you know, for Jews among themselves. But it is not only within Jewish families; it is something else, something much deeper than this Jewish love, which goes beyond the circle of Judaism.

Deep down, I have always told myself that, in their relationships with non-Jews, Jews, my fellow believers, forgive me for saying so, are all a bit like Silbermann[30], they are all seeking love. And when they receive it, you should know, they feel a sense of celebration because it is not only a need, it is the answer to a fundamental question.

I have here, I have learned them one after the other—I have caught up, at least on this point—the texts of the Jewish tradition; I have the text of Passover and I have, linked to the text of Passover, the memory of the evenings spent celebrating Passover. And it is no coincidence that, on Passover evening, it is said that Jews should not rejoice because the Egyptians were drowned. I found the text by Maimonides [31] who comments on it[32]; I will not read it because the court will see it, and because I have a much stronger memory of how my father, or the Jews who were present, said to the little boy who was there: “You understand, when the enemy of Israel dies, there can be no joy.”

That is the school of Judaism.

And then I have here the book by poor Edmond Fleg [33]; I have here all the passages from the Talmudic tradition, and all those from the Rabbinic period. You will see the fundamental principle reiterated: “To wrong a stranger is like wronging God himself,” and all the prescriptions. They follow one another, and the texts there are accurate, believe me:

“It is customary to wish the worker, not only Jewish but also non-Jewish, success in his work.”

“If one gives anyone, Jewish or non-Jewish, the opportunity to sin, one sins against the commandment ‘Do not place an obstacle in the path of the blind.’”

“One must not forbid the poor non-Jew any more than the poor Jew from gleaning, from taking the forgotten sheaf, from harvesting the corner of the field reserved for the poor.”

“One must show the same respect to the elderly non-Jew and lend him a hand to support him. “

And the famous anecdote:

”Whoever harms his neighbor, Jew or non-Jew, by means of false measures or false weights, sins against the commandment ‘Do not commit iniquity’ .” Speaking of weights and measures, an Israelite recounts that he had sold dates to a non-Jew and made a greater profit by falsifying the measure; with his profit, he had bought himself a jug of oil. But the jug broke and all the oil was lost. Then the Rabbi said to him: “Praise be to God who makes no exception for anyone! For it is written: ‘Do not extort your neighbor; the non-Jew is your neighbor, and the good you have stolen from him, you owe to sin’” .

I have fifty such quotations, fifty parables. But I need not insist. I regret that Mr. Elie Wiesel[34] did not come, I regret that the interpreter of the Hasidic tradition did not come to the stand to remind us precisely what this love of one’s neighbor that beats in the Jewish heart is. I regret it.

One last anecdote, which I heard from him, took place in 1944:

“The train is rolling from Hungary to Auschwitz and the Rabbi consoles, and the Rabbi exhorts, and the Rabbi says: ‘So much suffering will not be lost, the Messiah will appear’.

At that moment, a young boy interrupted him and said, ‘Rabbi, if the Messiah comes, will all men be good then?’. The Rabbi said, ‘Of course!’ and the boy paused and said, ‘And if the Messiah comes, will the wicked be forgiven?’. The rabbi hesitates, but a commandment is a commandment, and tradition is tradition. He says, “When the Messiah comes, the wicked will be forgiven, and they will become good.” The boy insists and says, “And those who deport us, will they be forgiven too?” And the rabbi waits, waits, waits, and finally says, “Yes.” And the kid’s only response is, “Then I understand why he’s in no hurry to come!”

How can this be? How can this happen? How can we draw on the sources of antisemitism to try to revive it again behind the mask of anti-Zionism?

Well, that’s why, because of that, for those who have been distorting the truth about Jews for centuries under the principle: “You shall hate those whom you believe hate you,” that’s why it’s important, not only for Jews, but for all those—and I’m thinking of “Rencontre ,”[35] Father Braun[36], Father Riquet[37], and the vast majority, thank God, who are like them—that it is important for a decision to be made, imbued with the dignity that attaches, for reasons of striking historical significance for the Jews, to all French court decisions, because I am not ashamed to say it: nowhere outside France, if it had not been for French justice, would Dreyfus have escaped the injustice of his time.

And Rosenthal will allow me to recall a memory. It was in France, in Paris, in 1928—he was a very young man—that he made his debut at the Palais. The same lawyer, assisted by him and whom I later served, I mean Henry Torrès[38], whose name I am happy to mention here at this moment, had Schwartzbard[39] acquitted by a French Assize Court. Schwartzbard had shot the Cossack ataman, Petliura[40], in Paris,

Petliura, who had committed so many pogroms; and on that day, throughout Europe, I would say throughout the world, in all Jewish communities, everywhere, people gave thanks and prayed in honor of the French. This is no small memory for us, and I am pleased to recall it here, in this hearing.

The judgment that will be handed down is not like so many others that are rendered by the judicial system, routine, Parisian conflicts, or political rivalries. It is an echo of human conscience, and I see in its wording, not in its provisions, a double and considerable significance for those who, like me and like you, await the solemn reminder that antisemitism is a scourge and that antisemitism has been fueled by crimes and falsehoods throughout the centuries and across regimes.

For these reasons, for all of them, there will be emotion and gratitude. For others, for certain others, there will be something more, something that is equally important to them. It is this fundamental question that we cannot fail to ask: a great country once took the path of socialism, a great country overthrew a tyrannical power and embarked on a course that is a fundamental aspiration for a society that is finally just and fraternal.

Decades and years have passed, and it is this great country that claims this message, this hope, which suddenly revives the horrors it fought and defeated, the most degrading texts, in order to use them in turn.

The question that arises at this point is the following: because, objectively, the Arab countries are supported by what I will deliberately call Soviet imperialism, just as Israel is supported by what I would deliberately call American imperialism, because imperialism, unfortunately, is not only linked to an economic or political structure, but also to an international dimension, in this battle between imperialisms, must we go so far as to deny the aspirations that could validly rally the hearts of those who love justice?

This will be the first question they ask themselves: is it worth it?

And then the second is:

How can this be done? How can it happen? How can we draw on the sources of antisemitism to try to revive it behind the mask of anti-Zionism? And after how many years? Fifty-three, fifty-four years since Lenin spoke on Red Square?

If this is the only defense against evil, if this is the only hope for justice and brotherhood that a world that claims to be socialist can offer, then today’s trial has an almost desperate significance, because if socialism is so powerless against old beasts and old demons, then what recourse is left to those who believe in socialism?

That is all. The Court does not have to answer these questions.

It will answer ours, which is pressing, and I await its decision with confidence.

Robert Badinter

---

[1] The two other lawyers for the civil party are Didier Aubourg and Gérard Rosenthal (see notes 6 and 7).

[2] The law against racism was enacted on July 1, 1972. It introduces, alongside insult and defamation, the offense of incitement to hatred, violence, and racial discrimination. Ethnicity, religion, and real or supposed nationality are the three other criteria used to characterize these offenses. The trial of the URSS newsletter is the first legal proceeding in which this law (known as the “Pleven Law”) has been applied since it came into force.

[3] Former Senate President Gaston Monnerville (1897-1991) was a long-time activist with the LICA. Committed to denouncing Nazism, he joined its central committee in 1935. Close to the association’s founder, Bernard Lecache (1895-1968), he remained loyal to the association in the post-war period. He was particularly involved in its legal activities. From March 1974 to March 1983, Monnerville was a member of the Constitutional Council.

[4] The 1972 law against racism was drafted by lawyers from the Movement Against Racism, Antisemitism and for Peace (MRAP) under the leadership of Léon Lyon-Caen, president of this association from 1953 to 1962. The MRAP text, submitted to the National Assembly by the Communist group and adopted in the summer of 1972, had been tabled several times during the 1960s in the National Assembly – and not only by Communist deputies.

[5] Jean Pierre-Bloch (1905-1999) was a member of the LICA central committee from 1935. A journalist and socialist deputy for the Aisne department, he joined the Resistance and Free French Forces. He was general delegate to the Commissariat of the Interior he was a general councilor for the Aisne department from 1945 to 1967. He chaired the LICA from 1968 to 1993, as well as the National Consultative Commission on Human Rights from 1986 to 1989, of which he was honorary president from 1989 until his death.

[6] Lawyer Gérard Rosenthal (1903-1992) represented the LICA alongside Robert Badinter. Close to the Surrealists, he was a member of the Communist Party. A former colleague of lawyer Henry Torrès, he assisted the latter in October 1927 in the defense of Samuel Schwartzbard, the assassin of Symon Petliura. This trial was followed by the creation of the International League Against Pogroms, which became the LICA in 1929. Rosenthal remained a fellow traveler throughout. He was Leon Trotsky’s lawyer. A member of the Resistance during the Occupation, he joined the SFIO after the war.

[7] Didier Aubourg is the lawyer for the magazine Rencontre entre chrétiens et juifs (Encounter between Christians and Jews) in this case.

[8] Robert Legagneux is deputy mayor of Nanterre and editor of the journal Études soviétiques d’information. During the hearing, he explains that, by tradition, the editor of this journal signs the URSS bulletin.

[9] During the proceedings, Robert Legagneux reports his wife’s fears that she will be forced to pay a fine on behalf of the embassy in the event of a conviction.

[10] This case occurred five years after the Six-Day War, which triggered a significant wave of antisemitic hatred around the world. In France, anti-Zionism was expressed with virulent force, from the extreme left to the extreme right. While the majority of French public opinion was sympathetic to Israel, many voices on the left spoke out to condemn the Jewish state. See Emmanuel Debono, “From the fight against Zionism to antisemitism: the roots of a passion in French society (1969-1970),” Archives Juives, no. 55, 2nd semester, pp. 32-61.

[11] An antisemitic far right continued to exist after 1945, expressing its ideas in publications such as Aspects de la France, Rivarol, and Charivari. Small groups such as Jeune Nation and the Fédération d’action nationale et européenne (FANE) sought to mobilize support around the theme of antisemitism. In October 1972, a few months before the trial of the URSS bulletin, former members of the Waffen-SS, neo-Nazis, and former members of the OAS founded the National Front.

[12] In July 1947, the Exodus, a ship chartered by the Haganah that had left Sète with 4,500 survivors of Shoah on board, was intercepted by the British army near the Palestinian coast and turned back. The authorities wanted to limit Jewish immigration in order to avoid tensions with the Arab population. The widespread media coverage of this tragedy would weigh heavily on the process of creating the future State of Israel.

[13] The beginning of the article refers to the events of Deir Yassin on April 9, 1948, during which dissidents from the Haganah attacked an Arab village. There were about 100 victims, some killed during the fighting, others, including children, after the battle.

[14] On September 5 and 6, 1972, Israeli athletes were taken hostage at the Munich Olympics by the Palestinian terrorist group Black September. This resulted in the massacre of eleven of them, notably at the NATO air base in Fürstenfeldbruck. The terrorists had demanded that a plane be made available to take them to Cairo. Five terrorists were shot dead by the German police.

[15] A month after the publication of the incriminating article in the USSR bulletin, the Novosti agency repeated the offense with a similar article, published in the London and Rome bulletins. It contained the same accusations, the same exaggerations, and castigated the reactions provoked by the article of September 22, 1972: “Faced with world public opinion, the Zionists are trying in this way to stem the tide of evidence and criticism. They resort to the hypnotism of accusations such as ‘racism’ and ‘antisemitism’, which are ridiculous and senseless in such a situation. Who will believe them? It is not the Soviet article, but Tel Aviv that incites racial hatred by refusing to submit to the will of the United Nations and liberate the occupied Arab territories.” In Le Procès de la LICA… op. cit., p. 94.

[16] See Emmanuel Debono, “Ce que l’invective ‘sionistes’ veut dire” (What the invective “Zionists” really means), Les Études du Crif, no. 67, July 2025, pp. 43-60.

[17] The Second Vatican Council (Vatican II) opened on October 11, 1962, and ended on December 8, 1965. On October 28, 1965, the Declaration on the Relationship of the Church to Non-Christian Religions, Nostra Aetate, was approved by a large majority. It profoundly renewed the Church’s teaching on Judaism by condemning traditional anti-Judaism.

[18] The battle of Jericho (around the 14th century BCE) is recounted in the Book of Joshua. According to the biblical account, the people of Israel conquered the city by blowing their trumpets under the walls, which then collapsed. Its inhabitants were put to the sword.

[19] This exodus was that of several hundred thousand Jews who lived in Arab and Muslim countries after the creation of the State of Israel. There they were victims of persecution, confiscation of their property, and pogroms, as in Yemen, Egypt, Syria, Iraq, and Libya. See in particular Georges Bensoussan, Juifs en pays arabes : le grand déracinement 1850-1975 (Jews in Arab Countries: The Great Uprooting 1850-1975), Paris, Éditions Tallandier, 2012.

[20] Léon Poliakov (1910–1997) was one of the first historians at the Centre de Documentation juive contemporaine (CDJC) [Contemporary Jewish Documentation Center], created during the Occupation. At the Nuremberg trials, he served as an expert assistant to Edgar Faure, deputy prosecutor general of the French delegation. Together with Joseph Billig, he brought back numerous documents that would enrich the CDJC’s archives. In 1951, he published Bréviaire de la haine (Breviary of Hate), the first major comprehensive study of the policy of exterminating the Jews of Europe.

[21] The text is by a certain “S. Rossov” (not “Volzov”) and is entitled The Jewish Problem: On the Impossibility of Granting Rights to Jews (1906). It purports to reveal Jewish hatred of non-Jews, using false quotations supposedly taken from the Shulchan Aruch, a code of Jewish law compiled by Rabbi Joseph Karo in the 16th century. The text of the URSS bulletin reproduced passages from Rossov’s text. It was the writer Grigory Svirsky who, with the help of a translator, authenticated the coincidence of the two texts during the hearing.

[22] The Okhrana was the name of the secret police of the tsarist regime. It was founded by order of Alexander III in 1881.

[23] The Protocols of the Elders of Zion is a document fabricated by the Tsar’s secret police, the Okhrana. First published in Russia in 1903, it presents itself as a plan for world conquest by Jews and Freemasons. This famous forgery has fueled anti-Jewish propaganda worldwide for over a century. Adolf Hitler referred to it in Mein Kampf, as did Hamas in its 1988 charter.

[24] Nicholas II’s publication of the October Manifesto (1905) in response to revolutionary unrest triggered a wave of pogroms, including the one in Byalistok in 1906 (approximately 80 deaths). The pogroms ceased in 1907. Robert Badinter refers to the “failure of 1905,” even though the revolution led to the granting of a liberal constitution. The failure came later, with the “coup d’état of June 3, 1907,” in which Nicholas II dissolved the Second State Duma of the Russian Empire.

[25] The Black Hundreds (or Black Centuries) was a nationalist, monarchist, and antisemitic organization that emerged in Russia in the context of the 1905 revolution. It was composed of several groups that participated in the repression of liberals, intellectuals, socialists, and Jews.

[26] On July 25, 1918, the Council of People’s Commissars adopted a ‘decree on the fight against antisemitism and anti-Jewish pogroms.’ The decree was signed by the chairman of the Council of People’s Commissars, Lenin, the head of the Council’s administrative service (Bontch Brouievit), and its secretary (Nikolai Gorbunov).

[27] Article 123 of the 1936 Constitution proclaimed that “equal rights for citizens of the USSR, regardless of nationality or race, are guaranteed in all areas of economic, political, social, and cultural life.” It did not specifically refer to Jews.

[28] This is likely a reference to the writer Grigory Svirsky (1921-2016), cited by the prosecution, who was a member of the Union of Writers of the USSR, but whose works were banned and destroyed in 1968. He was able to leave the USSR in 1972, settling in Israel before moving to Canada.

[29] Born in 1895, Jacob Kaplan was Chief Rabbi of France from 1955 until his retirement in 1980. When asked by Mr. Rosenthal what he thought of the text, Kaplan said that “since the end of Nazism, no article as virulent and violently antisemitic has been published in France .”

[30] Jacque de Lacretelle’s novel Silbermann was published in 1922 by Gallimard. It won the Femina Prize that same year. Silbermann tells the story of the friendship between two high school students, one, the narrator, from a Protestant family, and the other, David Silbermann, Jewish. A lover of French history and literature, Silbermann nevertheless suffers greatly from the antisemitism of his contemporaries.

[31] Moshe ben Maimon or Moses Maimonides, a 12th-century Sephardic rabbi, was one of the most important rabbinical authorities of the Middle Ages.

[32] In his Mishneh Torah (Hilkhoth De’oth 6:5), Maimonides writes: “One must not hate another Jew, nor rejoice in his misfortune.” He draws inspiration from the Book of Proverbs: “Do not rejoice when your enemy falls, and let not your heart be glad when he stumbles, lest the Lord see it and be displeased, and turn away his anger from him” (24:17-18).

[33] Edmond Fleg (1874-1963) was a Swiss and French writer and philosopher, and an important figure in French Judaism. He was notably the author of L’enfant prophète (1927, Gallimard) and Pourquoi je suis juif ? (1928, Éditions de France). In 1948, he co-founded the Amitié judéo-chrétienne (Jewish-Christian Friendship) with Jules Isaac.

[34] Elie Wiesel (1928-2016) came from a Hasidic family. The writer and Shoah survivor is notably the author of a series of books on Judaism (Célébrations). His book Célébration hassidique, portraits et légendes (Hasidic Celebration, Portraits and Legends) was published by Seuil in 1972. He received the Prix Bordin from the Académie française.

[35] Father Braun’s journal (see following note), Rencontre entre chrétiens et juifs (Encounter between Christians and Jews), existed from 1967 to 1986. It was then edited by Pierre Piérard.

[36] Roger Braun (1910-1981) was a French priest who, during the Occupation, served as Chaplain General of the camps in the southern zone and of foreign worker formations. He worked to rescue Jews. He worked to bring Jews and Christians closer together by creating the Cahiers sioniens (1947-1955), then the journal Rencontre entre chrétiens et juifs (1967-1986). An activist in the fight against antisemitism, Father Braun was involved with the LICA. See Frédéric Lunel’s thesis on him, Roger Braun s.j. (1910-1981): engagement philosémite et secours aux étrangers (Roger Braun s.j. (1910-1981): pro-Semitic commitment and aid to foreigners), doctoral thesis defended at the University of Le Mans (2013).

[37] Michel Riquet (1898-1993) was a French Jesuit priest. During the Occupation, he joined the Resistance, was arrested in January 1944, interned at the Compiègne camp, and then deported to Mauthausen and Dachau. After the war, he was honorary president of the National Union of Associations of Deportees, Internees and Families of the Disappeared (UNADIF), honorary president of the Réseau du Souvenir (Remembrance Network) and vice-president of the LICA.

[38] The great lawyer Henry Torrès (1891-1966), Samuel Schwartzbard’s defense attorney, was Robert Badinter’s mentor at the beginning of his career. The master had a considerable influence on the young lawyer’s approach to defense. Badinter pays tribute to him in L’Exécution (1973) and L’Abolition (2000).

[39] Samuel Schwartzbard (1886-1938) was a Jew of Ukrainian origin who had experienced pogroms in Ukraine under the Tsarist Empire and participated in self-defense. He settled in France in 1910, joined the Foreign Legion, and fought in World War I. He obtained French citizenship in 1925. In May 1926, he recognized and assassinated the former president of the Ukrainian Directory, Symon Petliura, in Paris, accusing him of allowing massive pogroms to take place during his country’s war of independence against the Bolsheviks. Tried in criminal court, Schwartzbard, defended by Henry Torrès, was acquitted in October 1927.

[40] Symon Petliura (1879-1926) was the third president of the Ukrainian People’s Republic. During the civil war against the Bolsheviks, numerous pogroms were committed by his troops. He was accused of ordering, if not allowing, these massacres to take place. He went into exile in Poland in October 1920, then in France in 1923, from where he continued his activities in support of Ukrainian independence. Samuel Schwartzbard shot him dead on Rue Racine in Paris on May 25, 1926. He remains a popular hero in the memory of the Ukrainian people.