French Muslims condemn Israeli branding of Palestinian detainees
After footage showed Palestinians marked with numbers on foreheads, France's main Muslim body warned practice echoed darkest chapters of European history
PARIS (MNTV) — France’s main Muslim representative body has condemned what it called the “barbaric” branding of Palestinian detainees by Israeli soldiers, after footage from the occupied West Bank showed men marked with numbers on their foreheads during a military raid.
The images emerged from Qabatiya, a town near Jenin, where Israeli forces detained dozens of residents on 17 August. Video circulated by Palestinian and international media showed men with figures inked across their foreheads and arms.
One detainee, Ahmad al-Hathnawi — marked with the number 44 — told local media that around 50 people, including women, had been rounded up. “This is the first time they’ve put these numbers on me,” he said.
He described the interrogations as an attempt to terrorise families and deter resistance to the expansion of Israeli settlements around Jenin.
The French Council of the Muslim Faith (CFCM) said it had watched the reports with “horror” and “deep indignation.”
In a written statement, it condemned the acts as barbaric and warned that they carried a particular resonance in Europe, and in France especially.
Reducing a human being to a number inscribed on their body, it said, recalled the darkest periods of the continent’s history — an unmistakable allusion to the tattooing of prisoners in Nazi concentration camps.
The dehumanisation of a people, the CFCM added, has always preceded or accompanied genocide. It noted that the practice did not appear isolated, pointing to similar reports from the Jenin area in April, when Palestinians were filmed with numbers marked on their hands as they entered an army-controlled refugee camp to collect belongings.
The Israeli military did not deny the incident. In response to the footage, it said soldiers had marked suspects who were questioned during the operation, that commanders had impressed on the troops the seriousness of the conduct, and that “lessons have been learned” — the same phrasing it had used after the April episode.
Experts noted the recurrence undercut the claim that the practice was aberrant.
Condemnation also came from within Israel’s own political system. Knesset member Ahmad Tibi called the marking “shocking and repulsive,” writing that it was “what dehumanisation looks like: erasing the person and turning them into a number,” in an image that recalled dark times and should shock everyone.
The CFCM placed the incident within a wider pattern of escalating violence, citing the daily killing of civilians, army abuses, and settler attacks it said were emboldened by a “fanatical” Israeli interior minister.
It called on France, the European Union and the international community not to look away, but to demand respect for international humanitarian law and take firm, coercive action to end the violations.
“Human dignity cannot be applied selectively,” the body said. “It must be defended for every human being, regardless of origin, religion or nationality.”
The raid came amid a sharp intensification of Israeli operations across the northern West Bank, where settler violence has surged and rights groups warn of an accelerating campaign to push Palestinians from their land.
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