France Télévisions has removed the replay of its literary programme "La Grande Librairie" after actress Adèle Haenel used a live appearance to denounce what she called a "genocide" in Gaza and call for sanctions against Israel.
Haenel appeared on the France 5 show on Wednesday evening as the main guest to present her first novel. During the broadcast she also spoke during "Droit dans les yeux," a segment at the end of the programme in which a guest addresses the camera directly.
What Haenel said on air
Speaking to the camera, Haenel first raised the silence surrounding sexist and sexual violence before turning her remarks to Gaza. She said the State of Israel was committing a genocide in Palestine and that France was complicit, telling viewers not to accept the unacceptable and urging them to sanction Israel and free Palestine. Her comments were followed by applause from the audience.
She drew a parallel with the conflict in the Middle East, criticised what she described as silence over Palestinian victims, and repeated her call to sanction Israel and free Palestine.
Replay disappears from France.tv
Clips of the segment spread quickly on social media and were picked up by several television channels. On France.tv, however, the replay of the full episode of "La Grande Librairie" became inaccessible, a disappearance that immediately fuelled accusations of censorship.
On Instagram, Haenel said she had anticipated the possibility that the clip would be taken down and had made a screen recording of it in advance, but said she had not expected the entire programme to be pulled. She said the removal was, in her words, the perfect demonstration of the point she had been making: that there are certain words and certain realities that everyone knows but that must not be spoken.
Political reaction
The controversy spread into politics. Several figures from La France Insoumise, Communist senator Ian Brossat and Olivier Faure criticised the removal of the clip from the public broadcaster's website.
Faure, First Secretary of the Socialist Party, wrote on X that the whole point of the "carte blanche" format was to let someone speak freely, and asked what conclusion should be drawn if certain viewpoints were now forbidden or if the remarks amounted to a criminal offence. Without any justification, he said, the removal was a disgrace.
National Rally lawmaker Julien Odoul took the opposite view, saying the public broadcaster had agreed to act as a sounding board for allies of Jean-Luc Mélenchon repeating Hamas propaganda, and that French taxpayers should not have to fund what he called the antisemitic ravings of the far left. Odoul said he was reporting the matter to Arcom, France's broadcasting regulator.
France Télévisions responds
Contacted by the AFP news agency on Friday, September 11, France Télévisions rejected any suggestion of censorship and stressed that Haenel's "carte blanche" segment had in fact been broadcast in full.
The broadcaster said there was no censorship, noting that Haenel had been the main guest on "La Grande Librairie," had been free to present her book, and had even been chosen among all the guests to deliver the closing "carte blanche," which was aired as planned.
France Télévisions said it had received multiple complaints and pointed to its programming obligations, which it described as extremely strict on the subject. Its management said Haenel's remarks could not be balanced by "several points of view" within the broadcast.
The broadcaster said that faced with numerous complaints, and given how strict its obligations are on the issue, it had suspended the replay as a precautionary measure to allow Arcom to carry out its assessment. France Télévisions said it was now awaiting the regulator's evaluation.
