Europe

A high school science teacher in France has been suspended since late March for holding a minute's silence for the victims of Israel's war on Gaza.

Le Parisien reported on Thursday, citing education authorities, that the physics and chemistry teacher at Janot Curie high school in Sens, Yonne, was suspended on 31 March. Five days earlier, a minute's silence was held just at the end of her class to pay tribute to the victims of the war, just as Israeli forces unilaterally broke a ceasefire in Gaza and killed more than 700 Palestinians.

The decision marks the latest episode of French authorities taking punitive action over protests and remarks related to Israel’s war on Gaza. Jean-Paul Delescaut, leader of the General Confederation of Labour union, was handed a suspended one-year jail sentence for writing in response to the 7 October Hamas attacks: “The horrors of illegal occupations… are receiving the responses they provoked.”