“YOU EAT THE FLESH OF PALESTINIAN CHILDREN!”
I still remember how I had to catch my breath before I could scream that phrase as loudly as my “comrades in struggle.” It was Saturday, February 22, 2025, and I was among a swarm of 60 protesters yelling at families sitting on the terrace of a McDonald’s in Strasbourg, France. I still can’t shake the looks of sheer terror on the faces of the children, who moments earlier had been excitedly unwrapping their Happy Meal toys.
How had I ended up there, fist raised and face twisted in rage, alongside people I’d met that very day? To understand, we have to go back a year and a half to October 8, 2023.
It was three weeks after I’d published my last book, The New Inquisitors, which was a write-up of what I’d discovered during my undercover investigation into feminist, LGBTQ+, and anti-racist activist circles in France. I’d hoped that by writing the book, I would come to understand the radical ends of the modern intersectional movement.
And understand it I did. As someone labeled a racial minority because I am Franco-Moroccan, and my mother was raised Muslim, I was once tasked with sorting people by skin color during a 2022 LGBTQ+ rights march—to the point of separating same-sex couples if one partner was white. Meanwhile, at the same march—which drew more than 40,000 people—organizers struggled to decide “how to sort the Jews.” Should they be placed at the back of the procession with the “privileged whites”? Or were they “oppressed racialized people” like the others?
My book sparked a lot of reactions upon release, as it detailed how, when the intersectional framework is applied to broad identity groups, it leads to a hierarchy of oppressions. But I was right. And that would only become more apparent several weeks later, after the Hamas attacks on Israel on October 7, 2023.
I am not Jewish, and I have never been to Israel. On October 8, it was journalistic reflex that led me to reactivate one of the fake activist accounts I had used during my previous investigation. I returned to social media forums to observe the reactions of feminist and LGBTQ+ militants, who are usually very vocal when denouncing violence against women and minorities.
