French rapper Médine in a scene from one of his videos. Photo: Screenshot

A bitter quarrel has erupted among French left-wing and climate change activists over a speaking invitation extended to a rapper accused of antisemitism.

The rapper, Médine, is scheduled to appear on an Aug. 24 panel at the annual summer school of France’s main environmentalist party, Europe Ecology — The Greens (EELV). However, several party officials, including some of its parliamentarians, have loudly protested the invitation, arguing that his presence will only serve to legitimize antisemitic discourse. Separately, French Industry Minister Roland Lescure announced that he was withdrawing from the event in protest.

The roots of the dispute lie in a tweet that Médine posted earlier this month in which he attacked Rachel Khan, a Franco-Gambian writer whose Jewish maternal grandparents perished during the Nazi Holocaust. Médine described Khan in the tweet as a “resKHANpée” — a French slang term intended by him to signify a person “who has been thrown out of hip-hop circles, drifting among social traitors and literally eating at the table of the extreme right.”

Given the fate of Khan’s grandparents at the hands of the Nazis, many observers deemed the post to be antisemitic. In an interview with the French language service of Israeli broadcaster I-24, Khan said that the rapper had attacked her “for having a humanist and universalist position, and for having one day met [far-right leader] Marine Le Pen when my book Racy came out.”

In the same interview, Khan said that she was troubled by the apparent reluctance of many on the left to condemn statements that would be denounced without complication if they were uttered by supporters of the far right.

“What saddens me is the silence on the left. What saddens me is that some prefer the complicity of silence rather than the courage of reactions,” she asserted.

However, Médine later flatly denied that his tweet was antisemitic, insisting that he had intended “no allusion to her origin or family history.”

“Rachel Khan called me trash a few days ago,” he wrote. “I did not shout Islamophobia or anti-Arab racism. The fight against antisemitism, against Islamophobia, and all forms of discrimination deserves better than conflicts on Twitter.”

Several EELV leaders and activists were unpersuaded, however, pointing to past controversies involving Médine. In a 2015 track, “Don’t Talk,” he called for secularists to be “crucified,” leading some on the French right to call him an “Islamist.” He also released an album in 2005 titled “Jihad,” and in 2014, he was photographed alongside the antisemitic propagandist Dieudonné M’bala M’bala performing the “quenelle,” an inverted Nazi salute that became a viral phenomenon at the time.

On Friday, Karima Delli, who sits for the EELV at the European Parliament, led the charge in demanding that the invitation be canceled.

“I am an environmentalist and a woman on the left, viscerally attached to respect for people, freedom, equality, solidarity and secularism. Therefore, I cannot support, let alone endorse, the invitation of Médine,” she tweeted.

Delli also questioned whether Médine’s status as a musical artist warranted the invite.

“We don’t invite someone who only has a relative audience as a rapper, but who on the other hand has a disproportionate audience as a vector for the political confusion that is rampant in the present period,” she remarked.

Delli’s concern was echoed by her EELV colleague in the French parliament, Francesca Pasquini.

“When we write texts, we measure the weight and scope of the words,” she tweeted. “When we are political leaders or elected officials, we must strongly condemn, without half measures. There are no possible excuses.”

Nevertheless, Marine Tondelier, the leader of the EELV, emphasized in a prime-time interview on Friday that the invitation to Médine — whose full name is Médine Zaouiche — would go ahead.

“Antisemitism must be condemned and fought everywhere and all the time,” she told broadcaster France Inter. However, she continued, Médine was among those individuals “who do not realize the scope of their words, who do not see the suffering that they can generate.”

“It’s up to him to explain himself ,” Tondelier added. “I will be extremely attentive to what Médine will say on Aug. 24 and what he will say on every day that follows.”

In addition to the EELV summer school, Médine is also scheduled to appear at a similar event staged by La France Insoumise (“France Rising” — LFI), the country’s main far-left party.

Responding to criticism on Wednesday, the LFI dismissed the dispute over Médine as a “trumped up controversy,” accusing members of parliament from other parties who condemned the invitation of “instrumentalizing antisemitism and the history of the extermination of the Jews for political ends.”