Doha – Various Moroccan political parties and civil society organizations have strongly criticized French President Emmanuel Macron’s speech delivered before the Moroccan Parliament on Tuesday, October 29, specifically regarding his characterization of Hamas and the October 7 events.

The Justice and Development Party (PJD) issued an open letter to President Macron, expressing their strong objection to his parliamentary address.

While acknowledging the positive aspects of his speech regarding French-Moroccan relations and the Sahara issue, the party took particular issue with Macron’s characterization of the October 7, 2023 events.

In their letter, the PJD emphasized that “Hamas, like the National Liberation Movement in Morocco, the French Free Forces in France, and the National Liberation Front in Algeria… is and remains a Resistance Movement that practices the legitimate right recognized by international law for all peoples to defend themselves against occupation and extermination.”

The party further stressed that Hamas and all branches of Palestinian resistance are “fighting against colonialism, occupation, ethnic cleansing, great replacement, genocide, and against all these barbarities perpetrated by Israel, which do not date from October 07, 2023, but go back and remain uninterrupted for more than 76 years.”

The party strongly contested Macron’s description of Hamas’s actions as “particularly atrocious barbarity,” arguing that describing these events as such while supporting “Israel’s right to defend its people against such a threat” constitutes “a manifest injustice and an unworthy insult to the Palestinian people oppressed since at least 1948.”

Read also: Macron Urges Ceasefire in Gaza, Says Nothing Can Justify ‘Disastrous Human Toll’

They also emphasized that such characterization represents “a ‘license to kill’ and encouragement to an unscrupulous occupation army to continue this ethnic cleansing and these unprecedented pogroms.”

Abdellah Bouano, President of the Justice and Development Parliamentary Caucus, further elaborated on the party’s position, stating that “the Al-Aqsa Flood is a natural reaction, guaranteed by all international laws and conventions, to all peoples under occupation and colonialism.”

He emphasized that the conflict “did not start on 7 October 2023, but extends for more than seven decades.”

Bouano revealed that his parliamentary group had considered “an immediate reaction inside the session hall” during Macron’s speech but refrained “due to respect for him as a guest of His Majesty the King, and in compliance with the Moroccan approach in dealing with their guests.”

The Moroccan Observatory Against Normalization issued particularly strong statements, describing Macron’s speech as “deeply biased in favor of the Zionist entity.”

France’s ‘surreal contradictions’

The Observatory pointed out what they called “surreal contradictions” in France’s position, noting that “while France glorifies its own resistance history under General de Gaulle against Nazi German colonialism… it considers the resistance of colonized peoples, including the Palestinian people today, as barbaric operations.”

They provocatively suggested that “perhaps this makes General de Gaulle also a barbaric savage terrorist in the same Macronian dictionary.”

The Observatory also called for “international trials for those crimes and the arrangement of legal, financial, and economic penalties and sanctions against France, and the payment of compensation to the peoples of countries victimized by French colonial terrorism.”

The Observatory particularly highlighted the timing of Macron’s speech, stating: “While the French President was speaking in the Moroccan Parliament in Rabat, the remains of more than 70 displaced martyrs, more than a third of them children and women, were flying and being ground under the rubble of a building in Beit Lahia in northern Gaza this morning!”

They further emphasized that Macron’s position “contradicts even the pulse of the French street and public opinion in Western societies that came out and continues to come out against the Zionist entity whose masks have all fallen from its bloody, terrorist, Nazi face.”

Protests have emerged across Morocco in response to the speech. In Marrakech, the Moroccan Front for Supporting Palestine and Against Normalization organized a demonstration on Tuesday evening, with another protest scheduled to be held today in front of the French consulate in Casablanca.

Protesters raised slogans opposing the characterization of Palestinian resistance as “barbaric” and declared solidarity with both Palestinian and Lebanese people.

The parliamentary group of the Democratic Left Federation also joined the criticism through their representative, Fatima Tamni, who said in a separate statement that “this speech reveals the blatant hypocrisy of the French state which claims to defend democracy and human rights while continuing to support and arm the Zionist entity.”

Macron’s visit to Morocco, which began on Monday and concluded on Wednesday, included the signing of 22 bilateral agreements with King Mohammed VI.