France's largest publisher has recalled a dictionary and three textbooks that described October 7 massacre victims as "Jewish settlers," following outrage from Jewish groups and President Emmanuel Macron.
Hachette Livre - number one publisher in France for over two decades - pulled the three revision textbooks last Wednesday following criticism by the International League Against Racism and Antisemitism (LICRA) on Tuesday.
LICRA discovered that the three French baccalaureate revision textbooks included the paragraph "In October 2023, following the death of more than 1,200 Jewish settlers in a series of Hamas attacks, Israel decided to strengthen its economic blockade and invade a large part of the Gaza Strip, resulting in a large-scale humanitarian crisis in the region".
“Is it too much to ask of a renowned publisher to prevent this kind of confusionist and denialist drift?” asked LICRA on X.
French President Emmanuel Macron then tweeted: "A baccalaureate revision manual that falsifies the facts: that is intolerable. As is any relativism regarding the terrorist and antisemitic attacks by Hamas on October 7. Revisionism has no place in the Republic. I have asked the Government to take measures."
Education minister Édouard Geffray also condemned the sentence as "serious and unacceptable," adding, "This constitutes a falsification of the facts and an attack on the dignity of the victims of terrorism."
Following this, Hachette released a statement saying it was immediately recalling three extracurricular revision books entitled "Objectif Bac Terminal", which contain erroneous content on the events of October 7.
"Hachette Livre understands the emotion aroused and would like to apologize for this erroneous content present on a page of these books." The process involves retrieving all books from partners and booksellers and destroying unsold books.
Hachette Livre also announced that it had launched an internal investigation to determine the "reasons that led to such an error being found in these books intended for revision."
Middle school dictionary contained same text
However, just two days later, on Friday, Hachette told AFP that it had pulled another text - a dictionary for middle school students - which contained the same paragraph as the three textbooks. Hachette had sold a few hundred copies of the book before the issue was pointed out.
President of the Representative Council of the French Jewish institutions (CRIF), Yonathan Arfi, said he had spoken to Hachette CEO, Arnaud Lagardère, about the passage, and also the books' failure to explicitly label Hamas as a terrorist organization.
"The justification of the October 7 terrorism has no place in school textbooks," Arfi relayed having told Lagardère.
"It is not acceptable for this text to continue serving as an educational resource in the schooling of young French people."