Why 2025 was the worst year for pro-Palestine speech in France

France likes to see itself as the homeland of liberté d’expression or freedom of speech. Yet in 2025, the space for pro-Palestinian solidarity has felt unusually conditional: tolerated when it is quiet, policed when it is visible and treated as suspect when it enters universities, associations or electoral politics.

The result is not simply a line of isolated controversies. It is a pattern that raises a hard question: has 2025 been a particularly bad year for freedom of expression in France on Palestine and what does that suggest for the months ahead?

Start with the streets. Pro-Palestinian events in France often unfold under heavy police presence. In itself, policing is not proof of repression but when public order becomes the default justification, when assemblies are approached as inherently risky rather than presumptively legitimate, freedom of expression narrows in practice.

Recent civic-space monitoring has documented broader restrictions on peaceful assembly in France and concerns about policing methods, a context that shapes how Palestine demonstrations are handled as well.

Ever since 7 October 2023, Palestine solidarity is repeatedly reframed from political speech into a public-order issue.

Nothing illustrates that escalation more clearly than the government’s move against Urgence Palestine, one of the most visible French pro-Palestinian collectives. At the end of April 2025, the French Interior Minister announced a procedure to dissolve the group. The government says the group encouraged hatred or supported violence, which they strongly denies, while human rights groups warn that the attempt to dissolve it is being used to discourage lawful and legitimate political speech.

Initiating such proceedings has an immediate political impact: it sends a message that engaging in pro-Palestinian groups can put an organisation’s very existence at risk. This perception alone alters the wider civic environment, affecting access to funding, meeting spaces, partnerships and people’s willingness to participate.

Then the debate moved from the street to the lecture hall.

In November 2025, the Collège de France cancelled a planned two-day symposium on Palestine and Europe that was organised by the Chair of Contemporary History of the Arab World at the Collège de France in partnership with the Arab Centre for Research and Policy Studies, citing institutional responsibilities and safety/neutrality concerns. The five-century-old research institute stated in a press release that “as a place of knowledge and its dissemination, it does not advocate, encourage or support any form of militancy.”

This position becomes internally contradictory when it is used to justify discouraging debate on subjects deemed politically sensitive. Universities and higher education establishments are supposed to be safe spaces of advocacy and are fundamentally spaces of inquiry, disagreement and intellectual risk.

The cancellation did not remain an internal matter, it became a national flashpoint about whether academic institutions can host serious debate on Palestine without being squeezed by political pressure and securitised controversy.

One can oppose the decision without denying what it signals: at one of France’s most prestigious academic institutions, Palestine is handled as an exceptional and sensitive subject, one that can be cancelled entirely when political tensions rise.

This is how academic freedom is gradually weakened, not through explicit prohibitions, but through precedents that encourage caution, deter initiative and lead scholars and organisers to censor themselves before any restriction is formally imposed.

The treatment of Palestinians

In August 2025, France halted a programme receiving Palestinians from Gaza after authorities investigated a scholarship recipient over antisemitic posts. The government suspended arrivals and indicated that people who had been evacuated could be sent back, an approach widely read as collective punishment triggered by one individual case.

Combating antisemitism is non-negotiable. But policy proportionality matters. When one person’s alleged speech becomes the basis for stopping an entire pathway, affecting other students with no connection to the wrongdoing, the state sends a broader signal: Palestinian presence itself is politically precarious, contingent on an impossibly high standard of collective reputational “safety.”

2025 also showed how quickly outspoken pro-Palestinian figures can be placed under a permanent cloud. Rima Hassan, a French-Palestinian MEP, has become a polarising symbol of that dynamic, frequently accused of antisemitism by opponents. She condemns Israeli policy and colonisation and their genocide towards Palestinians, not Jews.

She was also denied entry to Israel in February 2025, a decision justified by Israeli authorities on the basis of her support for boycott advocacy and public statements.

The key issue is how the accusation ecosystem functions: “antisemitism” is sometimes deployed as a rhetorical shortcut to delegitimise Palestine advocacy as such, rather than to identify and isolate genuinely antisemitic acts. This dynamic ultimately damages all sides, suppressing legitimate speech and weakening the fight against genuine antisemitism by reducing the term to a political weapon rather than a precise and serious charge.

Furthermore, the boundaries of acceptable Palestine speech have been influenced by events beyond France. In July 2025, the United States imposed sanctions on Francesca Albanese, the UN Special Rapporteur on human rights in the occupied Palestinian territory, following her calls for accountability and her reporting on Gaza and the occupation. Human Rights Watch and UN officials criticised the sanctions as retaliation against an independent mandate holder, warning of intimidation that undermines the UN human rights system and freedom of speech.

Why does this matter for France? Because it contributes to a wider Western environment in which Palestine advocacy is increasingly framed as a threat to social cohesion, to security, to “values” rather than as a contested but legitimate political position.

Looking ahead, several developments appear likely in the coming months. First, there is a strong possibility of increased legal and administrative pressure on pro-Palestinian associations and events. As dissolution procedures and other forms of lawfare become normalised as political tools, more groups may find themselves targeted, even if courts later limit or overturn such measures.

Second, universities may increasingly resort to cancellations and so called “risk management” strategies. The Collège de France case sets a precedent that may encourage other academic institutions to avoid hosting discussions on Palestine altogether, particularly when security concerns can be invoked to justify withdrawal.

Finally, the rhetorical climate is likely to harden further. As prominent figures continue to face accusations of antisemitism, public debate risks shifting away from substantive legal and political arguments toward stigma, delegitimisation and exclusion.

Oman Alyahyai is a writer and journalist based in Paris.

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Opinions expressed in this article remain those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of The New Arab, its editorial board or staff.