“A year and a half ago, I was fired by the NGO Plan International France because I was speaking out against antisemitism on the left.
In February 2023, I was hired as a press officer by the NGO Plan International France, an NGO that defends children’s rights around the world. I was explicitly recruited because I am an activist and because the Director General wanted to give the organization a more activist-oriented direction. For a year, everything went very well: I managed relations with journalists, I was also one of the NGO’s spokespersons, and I continued my personal activism on the side.
At the end of 2023, when I publicly expressed criticism about the way certain feminist organizations had responded after October 7th, my relationship with one of my colleagues and friends (whom I call Nadia in my book), also a feminist activist, deteriorated sharply. Her hostility quickly turned into harassment at work and on social media: she stopped speaking to me, would leave a room when I entered it, obstructed my work, stated that she did not want to appear publicly alongside me, posted insulting stories about me, and sent me threatening messages.
At first, I said nothing — I hoped the situation would calm down and I didn’t want to cause her difficulties. I also never voiced any criticism of Plan International’s messaging on the situation in the Middle East, even though there were things worth questioning. Like most NGOs, Plan said nothing on October 7th. Their first tweet came on October 10th and condemned ‘the escalation of violence between Israel and Palestine,’ calling for a ceasefire. I then wrote numerous press releases and tweets condemning the strikes on Gaza.
At the start of 2024, I received an email to my professional inbox from someone criticizing us for having said nothing about the sexual violence of October 7th. I would have liked to reply that she was right, but I couldn’t. The Director General then forwarded me a directive from the NGO’s headquarters: we were instructed not to respond to this type of criticism. The subject line of that email was ‘Allegations of sexual violence on Oct 7.’ Several months later, the accusations of sexual violence were therefore still only ‘allegations’ as far as Plan International was concerned.
This time, I replied with a strongly worded email to the Director General and the department heads. I never received a response. I once again witnessed Plan International’s double standards during the Hezbollah strike that killed 12 Druze children in July 2024 on the Golan Heights: the NGO wrote in a tweet that it was a ‘tragic’ event, without naming the source of the strike. Yet two days earlier, a strike on a school in Gaza had sparked outrage of a completely different magnitude — as, rightly, do all such attacks.
On March 8, 2024, I went to the feminist demonstration with my colleagues. The ‘Nous Vivrons’ [‘We Will Live’] contingent was right behind us, and Nadia explained to everyone that they were far-right genocidal Zionists. When I objected, she screamed at me in front of all our colleagues. After an intense period of harassment following March 8th, I was put on sick leave for two weeks. At that point, I finally told my manager about the situation, and she said she would handle it.
When I returned from sick leave, nothing had changed. So I used the magic word: harassment. I finally felt like I was being taken seriously. I had a meeting with the Director General during which I told her everything, verbally and in writing. I made clear that I did not want an investigation or sanctions against Nadia, but mediation — that my only wish was to be able to work again in good conditions. But two weeks later, I was summoned and asked to sign a contract regulating what I could and could not say on my personal social media.
I was made to understand that I had to sign if I wanted to keep my job. So I signed, committing not to mention the NGO in my personal communications and to respect its missions and values — which I was already doing. There was no issue with the substance, but I couldn’t understand why I was the only one required to sign this document — not Nadia, not the other spokespeople. Nor why the response to my harassment complaint was to treat me as though I were the one responsible for what was happening to me.
To continue down that path, the HR director asked me some time later whether I was really sure I wanted to keep talking about harassment. Because if I persisted, mediation would not be possible — which is false under the French Labour Code. When I insisted, she ended up sending me an email advising me to call the psychological support hotline. At the end of July, I returned from vacation to learn that Nadia was leaving: she had obtained a mutual termination agreement — from what I understood, with all the benefits she had asked for.
At the same time, I received a formal warning over a story I had posted a month earlier, in which I had urged feminist organizations to attend a rally in support of the 12-year-old girl who was the victim of an antisemitic rape in Courbevoie — even though Plan International’s very purpose is to defend children and girls. In August, I was hit by an online pile-on in reaction to a tweet: insults and threats flooded in for several days. One person even tagged Plan International in a story and shared the Director General’s email address, encouraging people to write to her to report me.
The reaction was swift: I received a call from the HR director telling me I was no longer to come into the office, that my access would be revoked and that I was no longer permitted to work. Along with a summons to a pre-dismissal interview, with no explanation. During that interview, I was reproached for having spoken about the ‘sensitive’ subject of the October 7th sexual violence, for having criticized feminist organizations, and for having challenged media outlets on their coverage of the conflict. Even though I was speaking in my own name, I was told it had created confusion between my personal positions and those of the NGO.
Yet I had already criticized left-wing organizations and challenged media outlets on other topics — such as the Julien Bayou affair — without it ever being a problem. But it seems that when it comes to antisemitism, cowardice took over. They offered to negotiate a mutual termination, but the conditions they wanted to impose were unacceptable: the minimum legal severance payment and a ban on posting anything about activism — on any topic — on my personal social media for one month. I refused the offer and was dismissed for serious misconduct, with no notice period and no severance pay.
Apart from one colleague, no one tried to reach out to me after my departure. Nadia, meanwhile, still has access to the NGO. In October, I filed a claim with the labour tribunal (prud’hommes) in Bobigny. Hearing in November.”
