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Remembering France’s Minister of Justice Who Was Shaped by Holocaust Past
Robert Badinter was a French lawyer, politician, and author who enacted the abolition of the death penalty in France in 1981, while serving as Minister of Justice under François Mitterrand. Photo: Wikimedia Commons.
Until 1981, the guillotine continued to be used as the means of implementing death sentences in France. However, in that year, France abolished the death penalty. The person who played a pivotal role in achieving this outcome was a Jewish lawyer, Robert Badinter, who had just been named Minister of Justice by the newly-elected President François Mitterand.
Badinter, who died at age 95 on February 9, was a renowned lawyer, a politician, and a historian. He was proud of his Jewishness.
Some years ago, I had the honor of meeting Badinter here in Washington at a lunch organized by B’nai B’rith during one of Badinter’s tours of the United States in his unsuccessful effort to persuade Americans to follow France’s example and eliminate the death penalty. Sitting next to Badinter for a couple of hours, speaking in my native French, I discovered a brilliant exponent for liberal causes. Even though we did not agree on much, we got along famously.
Our common interests in the law, about history, and in matters Jewish made conversation easy. The fact that the bushy eyebrowed lawyer, whose family came from Bessarabia in Eastern Europe, looked strikingly like one of my uncles, made me feel a certain closeness to Badinter.
Indeed, his family’s history is a reflection of both the suffering of the Jewish people in the 20th century and the success that Jews have experienced in the Western world. His immigrant parents met in France, married and had two sons, of which Robert was the younger. When Nazis occupied France in 1940, in an effort to evade German persecution, the family left Paris and moved south. Unfortunately, in 1943, Badinter’s father was arrested by Klaus Barbie, the sadistic SS officer in charge of the region, and was sent to Sobibor, where he was murdered.
Following the liberation of France, Badinter went on to study law. As a criminal lawyer, he defended a number of murderers and attended the execution of one of them. That experience turned him into a ferocious opponent of the death penalty. His opposition bore fruit when, having been named Minister of Justice, he was able to persuade the French National Assembly to vote for the abolition of the death penalty in spite of significant public dissent.
He also championed other causes, including, in particular, the decriminalizing of homosexuality. At the end of his term as Minister of Justice, for nine years he served as President of France’s Constitutional Council, effectively its Supreme Court.
While pursuing his legal and political career, he became an author. He most notably wrote an important book regarding the grant of equality to French Jews during the French Revolution. He also wrote a book that was significantly less laudatory of France. That book, entitled An Ordinary Antisemitism, focused on the role of the Paris Bar during the German occupation. In meticulous detail, Badinter described the complicity of the Paris Bar in the implementation of the discriminatory laws which sought to strip the vast majority of Jewish lawyers of their right to practice law.
In an annual lecture that I give to law students at the Holocaust Museum, I cite Badinter’s book as an example of how lawyers can lose their moral compasses when they get too focused on the details of law practice and fail to keep their eyes on the moral components of the law. My reference to Badinter’s research invariably has an impact on my audience.
Most recently, Badinter wrote a moving book about his grandmother, Idriss, who had immigrated to France in response to the pogroms in her native Bessarabia. He wrote with affection and respect of the struggles of the immigrant generation in adapting to life in a new land. Not surprisingly, the book struck a chord with the French public and was widely read.
All of Badinter’s accomplishments have had a profound impact on France. His importance to France is such that he will be given a special public tribute by President Macron. It is possible that he will ultimately be buried in the Pantheon in Paris, the mausoleum in which France’s greatest heroes are interred. Only three other Jews have been similarly honored to date.
While all of Badinter’s accomplishments are an eloquent memorial to a distinguished Frenchman, I will always remember him by reason of an exchange we had at our lunch. When speaking about the Holocaust and his family’s suffering, he noted that, as the son of a martyred father, he had had an uncommon opportunity to rectify a terrible wrong. In 1983, while he was Minister of Justice, Klaus Barbie, the man who had arrested and sent Badinter’s father to his death at Sobibor, was found in Bolivia and extradited to France. Badinter told me that, in memory of his father’s suffering, he decided that it would be appropriate to reopen the abandoned prison in which his father had been incarcerated by Barbie, and that he sent Barbie there to serve out a life sentence.
But I also noted that, even though Barbie had been previously sentenced to death in absentia, long before the abolition of the death penalty (and notwithstanding his personal desire to avenge his father), Badinter stood by his opposition to the death penalty and did not wish nor seek to have his father’s killer executed. He thereby demonstrated a rare willingness to place principle over the powerful personal desire to avenge the brutal death of a beloved parent.
Badinter was an important French political figure, a brilliant lawyer, an erudite historian, and a man of principle. He was, as President Macron stated recently, “a man of great significance.”
Gerard Leval is a partner in the Washington, D.C., office of a national law firm. He is the author of Lobbying For Equality, Jacques Godard and the Struggle for Jewish Civil Rights during the French Revolution, published by HUC Press.
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‘Totally Obliterated’: US Bombs Iran’s Nuclear Sites, Trump Declares Operation a Success
US President Donald Trump delivers an address to the nation alongside US Vice President JD Vance, US Secretary of State Marco Rubio, and US Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth at the White House in Washington, DC, US, June 21, 2025, following US strikes on Iran’s nuclear facilities. Photo: REUTERS/Carlos Barria/Pool
The United States launched a large-scale military strike against Iran early Saturday, destroying key nuclear enrichment facilities, including the heavily fortified Fordow site.
US President Donald Trump said in a public address that the operation had “completely and totally obliterated” Iran’s nuclear capabilities and urged Tehran to “make peace,” warning that any future aggression would be met with even greater force.
The multi-pronged strike combined stealth B‑2 Spirit bombers deploying bunker-buster bombs with Tomahawk cruise missiles launched from submarines. Fordow, Natanz, and Isfahan — all central to the Iranian nuclear program — were targeted in a coordinated assault. US military officials said the campaign neutralized Iran’s main enrichment operations.
Trump praised Israel’s role in coordinating the response and hailed Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu as a key partner, saying the two leaders worked “as a team like perhaps no team has ever worked before.” Netanyahu, for his part, called the American action “unmatched” and said it signaled a shift toward restoring regional stability.
Iran’s foreign ministry condemned the operation as a breach of sovereignty and international law, vowing to respond with force. Hours after the strike, Iran retaliated by unleashing a salvo of roughly 30 ballistic and hypersonic missiles toward central Israel. Several missiles hit urban centers including Tel Aviv, Ramat Gan, Haifa, and surrounding areas, causing injuries to at least 25 civilians and extensive property damage. Israel closed its airspace and instructed residents in key regions to only venture out for essential activities. In response, Israeli jets struck military targets in Iran, including missile launch sites and rocket depots.
Domestically, Trump’s decision exposed sharp political divisions in Washington. Republican hawks applauded the move as decisive, while isolationists and some constitutional conservatives questioned the legality of bypassing Congress, demanding oversight before further military escalation. Meanwhile, the United Nations and key US allies, including Britain and France, urged caution and a swift return to diplomatic solutions.
Iranian state media reported that most nuclear material was evacuated from Fordow ahead of the strike, the Reuters news agency reported. The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), the UN’s nuclear watchdog, said it detected no spike in off-site radiation.
According to Arab sources cited in The Wall Street Journal, the United States sent messages via regional intermediaries to reassure Tehran that the strike was a one-off and not part of a campaign to topple the regime. A senior US official confirmed that the administration clarified it had no intention of pursuing regime change and that the door remained open to renewed negotiations.
US Reps. Thomas Massie (R-KY) and Ro Khanna (D-CA), co-sponsors of a bipartisan resolution to block unauthorized military action in Iran, criticized Trump’s strike as unconstitutional. Massie called the move illegal, while Khanna urged Congress to immediately vote on their Iran War Powers Resolution “to prevent America from being dragged into another endless Middle East war.”
Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY), meanwhile, called for Trump’s ouster, claiming it violated the US Constitution and as such was an impeachable offense.
“The president’s disastrous decision to bomb Iran without authorization is a grave violation of the Constitution and Congressional War Powers. He has impulsively risked launching a war that may ensnare us for generations. It is absolutely and clearly grounds for impeachment,” she said.
Arsen Ostrovsky, a leading human rights lawyer and CEO of the International Legal Forum, rejected the criticism. He said Trump was acting well within his powers under Article II of the Constitution, which grants the president authority as commander-in-chief to protect national security.
“This is not without precedent,” Ostrovsky told The Algemeiner, pointing to former President Barack Obama’s operation to kill Osama bin Laden and former President Joe Biden’s airstrikes on Iranian proxies in Syria.
“Trump did not need the authorization of Congress in order to initiate a military strike,” he said, adding that the action was also supported by the War Powers Resolution of 1973 and Article 51 of the UN Charter, which affirms a nation’s right to self-defense.
Ostrovsky also defended the legality of Israel’s involvement, saying its campaign was not a sudden act of aggression but a response to a protracted armed conflict initiated by Iran.
“Faced with an existential and imminent threat from a nuclear Iran, the Jewish state had no choice but to act before it was too late,” he said. He described the strikes as “lawful, necessary, and proportionate under the Laws of Armed Conflict against a genocidal regime that had vowed to destroy the world’s only Jewish state and stood on the cusp of acquiring the means to do so, had Israel not acted.”
“In striking Iran’s nuclear weapons program, Israel and the United States made the world a safer place. They did it not only in their own defense, but in defense of the free world,” he concluded.
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Israeli Strike on Tehran Kills Bodyguard of Slain Hezbollah Chief
Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araqchi lays a wreath as he visits the burial site of former Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah, on the outskirts of Beirut, Lebanon, June 3, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Mohamed Azakir
A member of Lebanese armed group Hezbollah was killed in an Israeli air strike on Tehran alongside a member of an Iran-aligned Iraqi armed group, a senior Lebanese security source told Reuters and the Iraqi group said on Saturday.
The source identified the Hezbollah member as Abu Ali Khalil, who had served as a bodyguard for Hezbollah’s slain chief Hassan Nasrallah. The source said Khalil had been on a religious pilgrimage to Iraq when he met up with a member of the Kataeb Sayyed Al-Shuhada group.
They traveled together to Tehran and were both killed in an Israeli strike there, along with Khalil’s son, the senior security source said. Hezbollah has not joined in Iran’s air strikes against Israel from Lebanon.
Kataeb Sayyed Al-Shuhada published a statement confirming that both the head of its security unit and Khalil had been killed in an Israeli strike.
Nasrallah was killed in an Israeli aerial attack on Beirut’s southern suburbs in September.
Israel and Iran have been trading strikes for nine consecutive days since Israel launched attacks on Iran, saying Tehran was on the verge of developing nuclear weapons. Iran has said it does not seek nuclear weapons.
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Hamas Financial Officer and Commander Eliminated by IDF in the Gaza Strip
Israeli soldiers operate during a ground operation in the southern Gaza Strip, amid the Israel-Hamas conflict, July 3, 2024. Photo: Ohad Zwigenberg/Pool via REUTERS
i24 News – The Israeli Defense Forces (IDF), in cooperation with the General Security Service (Shin Bet), announced on Friday the killing of Ibrahim Abu Shamala, a senior financial official in Hamas’ military wing.
The operation took place on June 17th in the central Gaza Strip.
Abu Shamala held several key positions, including financial officer for Hamas’ military wing and assistant to Marwan Issa, the deputy commander of Hamas’ military wing until his elimination in March 2024.
He was responsible for managing all the financial resources of Hamas’ military wing in Gaza, overseeing the planning and execution of the group’s war budget. This involved handling and smuggling millions of dollars into the Gaza Strip to fund Hamas’ military operations.
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