Support for the Palestinian People Must Not Tolerate Antisemitism or Reactionary Ideas – 2 June 2024

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Open letter to the organizations converging within Urgence Palestine.

We are left-wing activists, revolutionaries, anarchists, trade unionists, some of us Jewish. As we write these words, our solidarity and support go out to the people of Gaza, who are enduring an atrocious and staggering massacre, as well as to Palestinians in the West Bank subjected to colonization, expropriation, and daily violence carried out by settlers and security forces acting on the orders of the Israeli government.

Our support and solidarity also go out to the civilian victims of the October 7th attack in Israel — massacred because they were Jewish or perceived as such — some of whom are still held hostage by Hamas. We do not forget. We do not forgive.

The Urgence Palestine collective, created in October 2023 at the initiative of Boussole Palestine, brings together numerous organizations [1] with the initial objective of forming “a broad, popular, democratic front” [2] around certain demands that we share: “For an immediate ceasefire and the end of the blockade. Stop the massacre, stop the siege.” [3]

That said, several aspects deeply concern us: through its own statements or those of its member organizations, this collective has accumulated a great number of problematic positions — glorification of the October 7th massacres, willful blindness toward or even complicity with the Palestinian far right, antisemitic conspiracy rhetoric, erasure of the rapes committed against women in Israel…

The struggle for Palestinian independence and the freedom of the Palestinian people is just, legitimate, and necessary. For it to be genuinely emancipatory, broad-based, and victorious, it must tolerate neither antisemitism nor reactionary ideas.

Through this open letter, we wish to enable activists and organizations that identify with antiracism, antifascism, international solidarity, and social justice — comrades who feel the urgency of a permanent ceasefire for the Palestinian people, the urgency of independence for Palestine, the urgency of peace between peoples — to make an informed choice about whether to commit alongside Urgence Palestine.

a) Glorification of the October 7th massacres

From October 7th itself, we had access to substantial information [4] showing that the operation carried out by Hamas [5], Islamic Jihad [6], the PFLP [7], the DFLP [8], and the Lions’ Den [9] had targeted civilians to a large extent — particularly in kibbutzim and at the Tribe of Nova music festival — with a markedly antisemitic, pogromist, and exterminatory character: systematic and indiscriminate massacres of civilians of all ages, rapes and mutilations, torture, the kidnapping of hostages including babies and elderly people, desecration of corpses, destruction of homes…

And yet, most statements from Urgence Palestine member organizations characterized the “Al-Aqsa Flood” of October 7th as a “resistance operation” and defended or even celebrated it, in contempt of the crimes committed against civilians massacred on account of their supposed Jewishness.

This was notably the case with Action Antifasciste Paris Banlieue (AFA-PB), which declared: “Faced with current events in Palestine, one can only stand on the side of Palestinian resistance.” [10]

For its part, the association Europalestine hailed “the Palestinian armed resistance, led by the military wing of Hamas (the Ezzedine al-Qassam Brigades), [which] on Saturday succeeded in an unprecedented offensive against the apartheid regime,” rejoicing at seeing “Netanyahu and his gang humiliated by the success of the resistance.” [11]

On October 7th, the Nouveau Parti Anticapitaliste (NPA) reiterated its “support for Palestinians and the means of struggle they have chosen to resist (…).” [12]

In a post on the social network X, since deleted, the Parti des Indigènes de la République (PIR) expressed its position without ambiguity: “May the Palestinian Resistance, which is carrying out its action with determination and confidence in heroic conditions, receive in these terrible hours our full militant solidarity. Palestine will win, and its Victory will be ours.” [13]

After describing Hamas and its allies as the “Muslim Resistance,” Perspectives Musulmanes condemned the “cowardly and underhanded condemnations of the action of the Liberators.” [14]

Révolution Permanente stated: “The right [of Palestinians] to resistance and struggle against the aggressions and attacks of Israeli colonialism is, for us, beyond question. In this sense, despite our political disagreements with Palestinian leaderships, we unconditionally defend this right, by whatever means it finds at its disposal in such a complex situation, including armed struggle.” [15]

Samidoun characterized Hamas’s operation as “resistance pointing a new way forward,” before uncritically reproducing and endorsing the statement of Mohammed Deif, one of Hamas’s military leaders responsible for the October 7th attack. [16]

Finally, the UJFP compared Hamas to the Manouchian Group — fighters of the immigrant labor network (the majority of whom were Jewish) within the Francs-Tireurs et Partisans who resisted the German occupier — implying that Israelis are the new Nazis. [17]

These statements all converge, and if one were to take a full inventory of the positions held by organizations within or close to Urgence Palestine, one would probably find no fundamental contradiction among them. The elements of a political consensus are clearly present for the reader to assess.

b) Willful blindness toward, if not complicity with, Hamas’s far-right ideology

While the CNT’s international secretariat notes that it “clearly does not share [Hamas’s] vision of society,” and while Révolution Permanente speaks of “political disagreements with Palestinian leaderships,” neither communiqué specifies the nature of those “disagreements” — and both hasten immediately to salute “the legitimate right of Palestinians to defend themselves,” “whatever one may think of their political leaderships,” as the UJFP puts it.

As if these disagreements were incidental.

As if the massacres committed by Hamas could be detached from the ideology of that political organization.

As if one could separate the act of killing and mutilating Jewish people from the explicit calls to kill them:

— in its foundational Charter: “The Hour will not come until Muslims fight the Jews (i.e. until Muslims kill them). The Jews will hide behind rocks and trees, and rocks and trees will say: ‘O Muslim, O servant of God, there is a Jew behind me, come and kill him.'” [18]

— through statements by its leaders:

“The Jews have corrupted the peoples of Europe. That is why Europe wanted to get rid of them […] It falls to blessed Palestine to wage jihad, so as to rid the world of the harm done by the Jews.” [19]

“We want you to cut the heads of the Jews with knives.” [20]

“There are Jews everywhere! We must attack every Jew on the face of the earth — we must slaughter and kill them, with the help of Allah. Enough warming up!” [21]

While many organizations rightly emphasized the importance of contextualizing the October 7th attack — situating it within the context of a people subjected to a murderous and destructive Israeli far-right government policy — these same organizations failed to see, or chose not to see, the contextual link and direct lineage between Hamas’s foundational antisemitism on one hand, and the choice of its mode of operation on the other. The October 7th attack, with its pogrom-like character, constitutes the bloodiest massacre of Jewish people since the Shoah.

Moreover, these organizations paid little attention to the fact that Hamas targeted kibbutzim which, as is well known, were home to left-wing activists committed to peace and to recognition of Palestinian rights — people like Viviane Silver, a left-wing activist who worked every day for peace and who cared for Gazan children by arranging medical treatment for them. She was burned alive in her home in Kibbutz Be’eri on October 7th, to the deafening silence of part of our political camp.

Such silence, such blindness, or even such complicity on the part of organizations “on our side” in the face of these horrors reflects a profound insensitivity and contempt for Jewish lives — a complete dehumanization that fills us with revulsion.

That same silence characterized far too many organizations — notably on November 25th — in the face of the systematic mass rapes [22] that accompanied the October 7th attacks [23], and in the face of the fate of the hostages, whose release Urgence Palestine refuses to demand [24], while Europalestine declared that “fighters in Gaza are treating the hostages properly.” [25]

As if international solidarity could not simultaneously condemn the atrocities inflicted on Palestinian civilians and the atrocities inflicted on Israeli civilians!

c) Conspiracy rhetoric and antisemitism

Among the other deeply problematic elements in Urgence Palestine’s positions is the use of rhetoric verging on antisemitic conspiracism to characterize Zionism: “Zionism was born in the West and continues to be supported by the colonial, imperialist, and racist powers, where its networks feed off the domination of powerful and wealthy white men.” [26]

In the same vein, one of Urgence Palestine’s spokespersons, Sari Hijji, endorsed remarks by a Generation Palestine activist named Chafik, who declared that one must “liberate oneself from Zionism, because Zionism is not simply what is happening in Palestine — it is something that is global.” [27] Sari Hijji then stressed the importance of fighting Zionism because it is “a catalyst, a place where you can politicize people.” [28]

By deploying terms such as “networks,” “domination,” “powerful and wealthy white men,” and by making the struggle against “global Zionism” the “catalyst” of social struggles, Urgence Palestine has moved far from any critique of the policies pursued by Israel’s far-right government. Through the imagery it invokes and the vocabulary it employs, the collective comes far closer to the antisemitic vision of an “international Jewish-Zionist conspiracy” as imagined in The Protocols of the Elders of Zion and propagated, among others, by the notorious negationist and antisemite Ahmed Rami [29a]. The October 12, 2023 tweet by this associate of Robert Faurisson and Vincent Reynouard resonates strongly with the positions of Urgence Palestine cited above: “The liberation of Palestine is part of the liberation of the entire world, whose fate is being decided in Palestine. If the Palestinian people frees itself from this Zionist domination, it will give hope to the entire world that it too can free itself from this domination.” [29b]

The Protocols of the Elders of Zion: the matrix of “global Zionism” denunciations

This text, written at the beginning of the twentieth century by the Okhrana — the Tsarist secret police — is a forgery [30] purporting to describe a Jewish and Zionist project for world domination. It served as antisemitic propaganda throughout the world across the entire twentieth century.

In order to prove “Jewry’s aspiration to dominate the peoples of the entire world,” [31] Hitler drew on this forgery on numerous occasions. So did other Nazi dignitaries, such as Johann von Leers, who cited the following passage in a Nazi propaganda pamphlet [32]: “We shall force them to offer us an international power of such a kind that, by its position, it will be able, without crushing them, to absorb the forces of all the states of the world and form the Supreme Government.” Von Leers was a Nazi official who took refuge in Cairo in the 1950s, where he developed antisemitic propaganda for Nasser’s regime. He headed “The Voice of the Arabs,” Egypt’s main radio station and the vehicle of “anti-Zionist” propaganda throughout the Arab world. Upon his arrival in Egypt, he had been welcomed by Amin al-Husseini with the following words: “We thank you for coming here to resume the fight against the powers of darkness embodied by world Jewry.” [33]

In the USSR, portions of the Protocols were used by Stalin. The accusation of Zionism was central to the “Doctors’ Plot” — an affair likewise fabricated from whole cloth [34] — which served as the starting point for a state-sponsored antisemitic campaign in the final months of the dictator’s life.

A contemporary reworking of “global Zionism”

In 1988, Hamas cited the Protocols in its foundational Charter as irrefutable proof of the “Zionist plan”:

“When they will have digested the region they overtook, they will aspire to further expansion, and so on. Their plan is embodied in the Protocols of the Elders of Zion, and their present conduct is the best proof of what we are saying.” [35]

This conspiracist vision of Zionism was reaffirmed in their 2017 “Document of General Principles and Policies,” which states that “the Zionist project does not target the Palestinian people alone” and that it is “the main source of [the Ummah’s] problems” and “a great danger to international security and peace and to the stability of all of humanity.” [36]

In France, this idea was updated in the 2000s by the far right — by Soral and Dieudonné, who regularly attacked “global Zionism” and the “Zionist lobby” supposedly controlling the media and finance. They would go on to deeply influence a significant portion of “the left,” as was still evident recently when David Guiraud explained that Soral and Dieudonné were “the only ones to take head-on” the Israeli-Palestinian issue. [37] One might also cite Étienne Chouard, who stated without hesitation: “[Soral] made me sensitive to a point that, for me, did not exist before: Zionism — the global weight of Zionism.” [38]

Europalestine presented a list for the 2004 European elections [39] that included Dieudonné and received strong backing from Soral. The same association called for a demonstration in support of the “comedian” on February 20, 2014. A dozen years later, the same association would repeatedly denounce the supposed grip of the Jewish lobby, demonstrating on April 1st and December 9th, 2017, for “the separation of the CRIF and the State” [40] — an echo of the “separation of the Synagogue and the State” demanded by far-right militant and former collaborator Pierre Sidos on February 6th, 1959.

On the question of links to the far right, it is also worth noting that Elias d’Imzalène, founder of Perspectives Musulmanes and a regular speaker on the Urgence Palestine truck, gave a lecture in 2013 at the Théâtre de la Main d’Or — then run by Dieudonné — on the theme “All-Powerful Lobby: Toward a Revolt of the Forgotten.” [41] The event, organized by Égalité & Réconciliation, also featured Franck Abed, a far-right antisemitic and royalist theorist.

Thus, to speak of Zionism in the manner of Urgence Palestine — not for what it actually is, namely a movement aimed at establishing a Jewish national homeland, traversed by currents ranging from anti-colonial far left to far-right religious fascism, but rather to denounce the influence of Zionism at a global level and the “domination of powerful and wealthy white men” — is to inscribe oneself in the continuity of a rhetoric drawing on numerous antisemitic tropes.

We should not lose our internationalist compass

The necessary defense of the Palestinian people is being tainted by declarations celebrating the atrocities committed by Hamas; by the erasure or outright denial of the violence and rapes committed against Israelis; by antisemitism and conspiracism.

We cannot tolerate such an uncritical and unconditional support for Hamas — an organization that propagates and enacts an antisemitic, sexist, homophobic, and reactionary ideology.

We cannot tolerate organizations to which we have belonged or contributed, and which now find themselves gathered around Urgence Palestine, showing such contempt for Jewish lives — all the more so in a context of surging antisemitism in France. [42] The atrocities committed by the Israeli army and Israeli settlers must in no way cause us to lose sight of our internationalist, antifascist, antiracist, and anti-patriarchal compass.

In France, the ambiguity of our political camp — parts of the left and anti-authoritarian movements — on these questions benefits antisemites; plays into the hands of the far right, which poses as a defender of Jews in order to better attack Arabs, North Africans, and Muslims; endangers Jewish people; and diminishes our capacity to build mass mobilization in support of the Palestinian people.

We must not let this stand!

P.S.: We recently learned that Gérald Darmanin is considering dissolving two Urgence Palestine member associations: Europalestine and Samidoun. Despite our deep opposition to the positions taken by these organizations, we are opposed to their dissolution by state force.

It is for the social movement to become aware of the problematic aspects of these organizations and to push them out.

SIGNATORIES (last updated 20/02/2024 – 22:22)

Fred Albi, community and trade union activist;
Ludovic Arberet, trade unionist;
Raphaël Assouline, member of the Golem collective;
Jacky Assoun, retired teacher, member of the Réseau Bastille;
Stéphanie A., Golem collective;
Jean-Michel Barbier, engineer, former member of Alternative Libertaire;
Grégory Benzekry (Dubamix), CGT trade unionist, Golem collective;
Françoise Bonnet, libertarian;
Sophie Bournazel, CNT-F activist;
Sylvaine Bulle, academic sociologist, member of the Réseau d’Actions contre l’Antisémitisme et tous les Racismes (RAAR);
Pascal Busquets, participant in the Éditions syndicalistes;
Yves Coleman, Éditions Ni Patrie Ni Frontières;
Françoise Croville, antiracist and antifascist activist;
Debunkers de Hoax et rumeurs d’extrême droite, collective;
Laura F., activist with Juives et Juifs Révolutionnaires (JJR);
Jean-Pierre Fournier, teacher, immigrants’ rights activist;
Nathalie Fromont, Les Écologistes official, Golem collective;
Anne Gorouben, visual artist;
Inès Grau, Les Écologistes official;
Hélène Harel, Les Écologistes official;
Sephora Haymann, co-founder of #MeTooTheatre, actress, feminist activist;
Nadine Herrati, Les Écologistes official, local elected representative;
Marieme Helie Lucas, Secularism Is A Women’s Issue (SIAWI);
Robert Hirsch, historian;
Stéphane Julien, participant in La Révolution Prolétarienne;
Jacques Kirsner, screenwriter and producer;
Mela Kla, member of Debunkers de Hoax and Rumeurs d’extrême droite;
Laurent Lanquar-Castiel, departmental secretary of Les Écologistes, Alpes-Maritimes;
Michel Lanson, retired National Education employee, member of the Réseau Bastille; Martine Leibovici, philosopher, member of the RAAR;
Lorenzo Leschi, Golem collective;
Marc Daniel Levy, former member of the PS and SNESUP; Aplutsoc;
Jules Le Roy, young ecologists activist, Golem collective;
Pierre Madelin, author;
Philippe Marlière, political scientist;
Fabienne Messica, sociologist, LDH;
Helena Muzi Cohen, Golem collective;
Christophe Naudin, secondary school history teacher, author of Journal d’un rescapé du Bataclan (Libertalia);
Vincent Présumey, history teacher, FSU trade unionist and member of the Aplutsoc group;
Alexandra Raduszynski, artist and antiracist feminist activist;
Martial Roche, journalist, former CNT-F activist;
Emmanuel Sanders, activist with Juives et Juifs Révolutionnaires;
Fabien Seignon, antifascist activist;
Brigitte Stora, author, internationalist activist;
Nathanaël Uhl, PCF activist and Golem collective;
Sender Vizel, comic artist, JJR activist;
Stéphane Weinberg, CGT trade unionist;
Illana Weizman, essayist;
Lola Yaiche, member of the Golem collective, member of Place Publique;
Dan Zisso, co-organizer of anti-Netanyahu demonstrations in Paris, Les Écologistes departmental bureau (Hauts-de-Seine), Golem collective.

Notes

[1] Action Antifasciste Paris-Banlieue (AFA); Association des Travailleurs Maghrébins de France (ATMF); Argenteuil Solidarité Palestine (ASP); Comité d’action interprofessionnel et intergénérationnel d’Issy-les-Moulineaux; Association France Palestine Solidarité-Paris 14-6; Collectif Boycott Apartheid Israël Paris-Banlieue; Collectif Ivryens pour la Palestine; Convergence Citoyenne Ivryenne (CCI-Ivry); Comité pour le Respect des Libertés et des Droits de l’Homme en Tunisie (CRLDHT); Coordination pour la Défense des Quartiers Populaires; Droits Devant!!; Europalestine; Femmes Plurielles; Fédération des Tunisiens pour une Citoyenneté des deux Rives (FTCR); Front Uni des Immigrations et des Quartiers Populaires (FUIQP); Fédération Syndicale Etudiante (FSE); FSE Nanterre; FSE Saint-Denis; Secrétariat international de la Confédération Nationale du Travail (CNT); Nouveau Parti Anticapitaliste (NPA); Parti des Indigènes de la République (PIR); Parti des Travailleurs Tunisie-Section France; Perspectives Musulmanes; Révolution Permanente; Samidoun Paris Banlieue; Solidarité Montreuil Palestine; Union des Travailleurs Immigrés Tunisiens (UTIT).

[2] Call from Urgence Palestine: https://urgence-palestine.com/

[3] Call from Urgence Palestine.

[4] “Attaque du Hamas sur Israël : au moins 250 morts et 1 500 blessés selon un bilan dans la soirée, nombreux appels à la désescalade,” Libération, 07/10/2023.

[5] “Des centaines de morts, des otages, Tel Aviv touchée… Retour sur le Jour I de la guerre entre le Hamas et Israël,” L’Orient Le Jour, 07/10/2023.

[6] “Palestinian Al Quds Brigades claim responsibility for attack at Lebanon-Israel border,” Al Arabiya, 09/10/2023.

[7] PFLP communiqué, 08/10/2023.

[8] “Al-Qassam fighters engage IOF on seven fronts outside Gaza: Statement,” Al Mayadeen, 08/10/2023.

[9] “Qassam Brigades announces control of ‘Erez Crossing’,” Roya News, 07/10/2023.

[10] X/Twitter, AFA P-B, 07/10/2023.

[11] “Gaza, Israël complètement pris par surprise par l’offensive de la Résistance,” Europalestine, 07/10/2023.

[12] “Offensive de Gaza : nous sommes tous et toutes palestinienNEs!,” NPA, 07/10/2023.

[13] Archive: https://web.archive.org/web/20231009232309/https://twitter.com/PartiIndigenes/status/1711048078566859142

[14] “De la Résistance à la Libération, tous derrière la Palestine,” Perspectives Musulmanes, 09/10/2023.

[15] “Soutenir la résistance palestinienne est-ce soutenir la stratégie et les méthodes du Hamas?,” Révolution Permanente, 11/10/2023.

[16] “Palestine : La résistance s’élève vers la révolution, le retour et la libération,” Samidoun, 07/10/2023.

[17] UJFP is not a signatory to the Urgence Palestine call but actively participates in its organizing meetings.

[18] Hamas Charter, 1988, Article 7.

[19] Yunis Al-Astal, Hamas member and member of the Palestinian Legislative Council, Al-Aqsa TV, 25/02/2016.

[20] Fathi Hammad, member of the Hamas Political Bureau, Al-Aqsa TV, 07/05/2021.

[21] Fathi Hammad, Al-Aqsa TV, 12/07/2019.

[22] “‘Screams Without Words’: How Hamas Weaponized Sexual Violence on Oct. 7,” New York Times, 28/12/2023.

[23] Urgence Palestine communiqué, 24/11/2023.

[24] Urgence Palestine communiqué, 18/11/2023.

[25] https://twitter.com/Europalestine1/status/1735938877142040698

[26] Urgence Palestine communiqué, 24/11/2023.

[27] X/Twitter Space, 07/12/2023, 41 min.

[28] X/Twitter Space, 07/12/2023, 47 min 30.

[29a] “Les amis de Faurisson – Ahmed Rami,” PHDN.

[29b] Tweet by Ahmed Rami, 12 October 2023.

[30] “Les Protocoles des Sages de Sion, le complot centenaire,” podcast by Alexandre Manzanarès, France Culture, September 2020.

[31] Werner Maser, Mein Kampf d’Adolf Hitler, 1968.

[32] Johann von Leers, Forderung der Stunde: Juden raus!, 1933.

[33] Bernard Lewis, Sémites et antisémites, Presse Pocket, 1991.

[34] Thomas Wieder, “Staline et le ‘complot des blouses blanches’,” Le Monde, 20/04/2006.

[35] Hamas Charter, 1988, Article 32.

[36] Hamas Charter, 2017, Article 15.

[37] Charlotte Belaïch, “Daniel et David Guiraud, politiques de père en schismes,” Libération, 15/12/2023.

[38] “L’air du soupçon,” interview with Étienne Chouard by François Ruffin, 10/09/2013.

[39] Wikipedia page for Europalestine.

[40] “Séparation du Crif et de l’Etat, Appel à rassemblement,” Europalestine, 14/03/2017.

[41] Conference by Elias d’Imzalène announced on the Égalité & Réconciliation website.

[42] https://www.lemonde.fr/societe/article/2023/11/15/antisemitisme-1-518-actes-recenses-depuis-le-7-octobre-peu-de-condamnations_6200221_3224.html

Postscript – May 2024

When we published this article in February 2024 on the Club de Mediapart, we denounced the fact that, through the Urgence Palestine collective, “the necessary defense of the Palestinian people is being tainted by declarations celebrating Hamas’s atrocities, by the erasure or outright denial of the violence and rapes committed against Israelis, by antisemitism and conspiracism.“

In late May 2024, Mediapart unpublished it after receiving a complaint alleging supposedly defamatory statements. The piece, however, did nothing more than document the public positions of Urgence Palestine and its member organizations. At the same time, Mediapart chose to keep online the response* by Urgence Palestine spokesperson Omar Alsoumi, co-authored with Houria Bouteldja, Youssef Boussoumah, and Sbeih Sbeih, which contains statements that substantially minimize the reality of the October 7th massacres: “Most of the crimes and atrocities (rapes, feminicides, decapitated babies…) attributed to Hamas and repeated ad nauseam by the Zionist media have either been refuted […] or are very poorly substantiated. […] The coalition of forces of the Palestinian national movement behind October 7th did indeed commit acts of war and kill Israelis — though the hypothesis that Israeli helicopters fired on participants at the rave party near Gaza is more than serious, and numerous testimonies call into question the Israeli version of events regarding the kibbutz attacks.”

Since February, positions of the same kind as those we denounced in the letter have multiplied, as illustrated for example by a text from Boussole Palestine** calling to “tear down the defamatory classifications” applied to organizations such as Hamas and Islamic Jihad, and categorically rejecting any two-state solution.

In response to those who seek to silence our internationalist, antiracist, and antifascist voices, we are republishing this letter and calling on left-wing, far-left, autonomous, anarchist, and/or community and trade union activists who identify with it to distribute it widely and add their signatures.

We will not back down!

* “Lettre ouverte aux sionistes de gauche qui convergent à Mediapart,” Omar Alsoumi, Houria Bouteldja, Youssef Boussoumah, Sbeih Sbeih, 29 February 2024.

** “Contre les deux faces de la même pièce qui sert à sauver le sionisme.” A text by Abdallah Silawi, Boussole Palestine, on Instagram, 6 June 2024.

Support for the Palestinian People Must Not Tolerate Antisemitism or Reactionary Ideas – 2 June 2024

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