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With the fate of the world depending on the erratic and criminal strategies of autocrats who flout international law, the citizen protests seen across the globe, and in particular those against the genocidal operations in Gaza, bear witness to a shared conscience and a collective ability to stand together, writes Mediapart's publishing editor Carine Fouteau in this op-ed article. She argues that only these protests and this unity can halt the unfolding catastrophe, a looming disaster exemplified by the American bombing of Iranian sites this weekend.

Caroline Parmentier is a Member of Parliament for the far-right Rassemblement National and a key strategist for that party's former presidential candidate Marine Le Pen. In particular, she has been one of the architects of Le Pen’s so-called “de-demonisation” strategy to soften the party's image and erase memories of its murky past. Yet an investigation by Mediapart has shown that over a period of 30 years Caroline Parmentier wrote racist, anti-Semitic and homophobic comments for a far-right publication. She also openly expressed her support for Marshal Philippe Pétain – who headed France's wartime Vichy government which collaborated with the Nazis - on Facebook as recently as 2018. Rassemblement National now faces growing embarrassment over these revelations about a woman who is a close friend of Marine Le Pen. Fabrice Arfi and Antton Rouget report.

The war declared on Iran by Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu has completely changed the stance of French diplomacy. A planned conference in New York that would have highlighted France's position on events in Gaza and the wider Palestinian situation was postponed, and French recognition of the state of Palestine currently seems to be on hold once more. Once again, Paris is back to showing public support for Israel. Mediapart's Ilyes Ramdani analyses the impact of the Israeli air strikes on the French president's Middle East diplomacy.

In a series of confessions before US and German prosecutors, the transcripts of which have been obtained by Mediapart, former Libyan secret services agent Musbah Eter detailed how intelligence chief Abdullah al-Senussi, Muammar Gaddafi’s brother-in-law, and his bomb-maker “Masud”, planned and carried out a series of bombings in the 1980s, including that which downed a Pan Am Boeing 747 over the Scottish town of Lockerbie in 1988. Eter’s statements, given in a series of interrogations between 2013 and 2015, have never before been made public and remained unexploited by prosecution services. That may change ahead of a new trial over the Lockerbie bombing due in the US next April. Karl Laske and Vincent Nouzille report.  

Mediapart is publishing a series of reports regularly sent to it from inside the Gaza Strip by two young Palestinians. Nour Elassy, a 22-year-old journalist, who is also a poet and writer, and Ibrahim Badra, a 23-year-old journalist and human rights activist, chronicle the grim reality of life and death in Gaza as Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu continues to wage a genocidal war against the population of about 2.1 million. “Famine is not a natural disaster,” writes Ibrahim Badra in his first contributions published here. “Famine is a despicable, deliberate policy used by the occupation to collectively oppress the people of Gaza.”