NETANUA, Israel: Two French-Israeli activists facing legal summons in France for “complicity in genocide” denounced on Sunday what they described as a political trial.
The summons were issued in July last year for lawyer Nili Kupfer-Naouri of the Israel is Forever group and Rachel Touitou of the Tsav 9 group over protests in 2024 and 2025 in which trucks carrying humanitarian aid for Gaza were blocked at checkpoints.
The summons call for the two to appear before an investigating magistrate but not for their detention.
Speaking at an event in Netanya in central Israel, Kupfer-Naouri asserted that “this is not an individual case, this is a state matter... this is a political trial.”
Touitou told AFP that she had “protested peacefully, my only ‘weapon’ was an Israeli flag,” adding she had been motivated by accusations of Hamas looting aid while hostages were “rotting” in militants’ hands.
“International law cannot be hijacked and instrumentalized for political ends,” she added.
Kupfer-Naouri, who has filed a slander complaint in France against organizations involved in the case, said: “You cannot be accused of complicity in genocide when no court, either French or international, has ruled that there is a genocide in Gaza.”
The Gaza war was sparked by Hamas’s October 7, 2023 attack on Israel, which resulted in the deaths of 1,221 people, according to an AFP tally based on official Israeli figures.
Israel’s retaliation flattened much of Gaza and left more than 71,800 people dead, according to the health ministry, whose figures are considered reliable by the United Nations.
A ceasefire has been in place since October 10, though both sides have repeatedly accused each other of violations.