"One Youth Marches for Islamism, Yours Against Antisemitism": Retailleau Makes October 7 His Dividing Line

Saturday, September 12, 4 p.m., Pavillon Baltard in Nogent-sur-Marne. To Hans Zimmer's score from the film "F1," Bruno Retailleau works his way through a crowd of roughly a thousand young Républicains activists for his political rentrée. The party leader, a declared candidate for the presidential election of April 18 and May 2, 2027, casts himself as a "rebuilder" against the "patch-up artists" and the "snake-oil salesmen." The Rassemblement National is mocked as "the weathervane party," "sold to the English" after once claiming Joan of Arc as its own.

But the line that matters for our readers came elsewhere. "France is divided between a youth that marches for Islamism, and yours, which marches against antisemitism," he declared. Then: "Your heroes are not the butchers of October 7." And again: "The youth of France is not Jean-Luc Mélenchon's new France."

Let's apply our one and only yardstick: the safety of France's Jews. On the diagnosis, Retailleau is right. Since October 7, French Jews have seen with their own eyes which part of the activist youth marched under which slogans, and which party supplied the platforms. For a presidential contender to name Islamism as the primary threat and October 7 as a moral line, without hedging or a "but," is no small thing in a country where so many elected officials hunt for the softest possible word.

Then comes the house rule: words versus deeds. A speech at Baltard is not a policy. On antisemitism, the rentrée text contains nothing but a rhetorical opposition between two youths — not a single measure. What resources to protect schools and synagogues? What answer for the universities where the "youth that marches" lays down the law? What line on Israel when the time comes to vote in Brussels or at the UN? A Jewish voter is entitled to demand the program behind the phrase.

And then there is the mechanics of that same afternoon. At 4:30 p.m., Jean-Luc Mélenchon took the stage at the Fête de l'Humanité to call for a "citizens' revolution." In Le Touquet, RN parliamentarians held their own rentrée with Marine Le Pen and Jordan Bardella. Édouard Philippe, for his part, was pleading for the right and the center to unite. Three political comebacks, and only one speaker said the words "October 7." That is telling. It is not reassuring.

Because here is the trap the Baltard speech sets without meaning to. By making the fight against antisemitism the identity marker of "his" youth, Retailleau turns it into a partisan cause. And a partisan cause has a perverse effect: it lets the other side off the hook. If defending Jews means "being on the right," then the non-Mélenchon left — the part still hesitating — finds a comfortable reason to look away, and Mélenchon gets exactly the divide he is after: him against "reaction," with the Jews filed away as part of the enemy's scenery.

France's Jews have no interest in being won by one camp. Their interest is that no camp can afford to abandon them. That is the difference between a republican consensus and an electoral map.

So the real test for Bruno Retailleau will not come at Baltard, in front of his own. It will come the day he repeats the same sentence before an audience that is not applauding in advance, and backs it with commitments that can be held against him in 2028. That day, we will know whether October 7 is, for him, a compass or a slogan.