French publisher withdraws school books over 'Jewish settler' reference

French publisher Hachette said Wednesday it was recalling three textbooks for high-school children which refer to the Israeli victims of the October 7, 2023 attacks on the country as "Jewish settlers".

The worst attack in Israeli history saw militants from the Palestinian armed group Hamas kill around 1,200 people in settlements close to the Gaza Strip and at a music festival.

The revision manuals for final-year students refer to all the victims as "Jewish settlers" -- a term usually used to describe Israelis living on illegally occupied Palestinian land.

"In October 2023, following the death of more than 1,200 Jewish settlers in a series of Hamas attacks, Israel decided to tighten its economic blockade and invade a large part of the Gaza Strip, triggering a large-scale humanitarian crisis in the region," they state.

French President Emmanuel Macron criticised them as "intolerable". He said they were a "falsification of the facts" that amounted to "revisionism" in a post on the social media platform X.

Yonathan Arfi, head of the French Jewish group Crif, said the text amounted to "a falsification of history and an unacceptable legitimisation of terrorism by Hamas, which this work notably fails to describe as a terrorist organisation".

The chairman of Hachette, Arnaud Lagardere, issued a statement to "personally offer my apologies to all those who may rightly have felt hurt, to the teaching staff, to the parents of students, and to the students themselves".

The company, France's biggest publisher, has launched an internal investigation and is recalling an estimated 2,000 copies of the manuals.

Hamas's October 7, 2023 attack on Israel resulted in the deaths of 1,221 people, with 251 people were taken hostage, including 44 who were dead, according to an AFP tally based on official Israeli figures.

Authorities in Gaza estimate that more than 70,000 people have been killed by Israeli forces during their bombardment of the territory since, while nearly 80 percent of buildings have been destroyed or damaged, according to UN data.

Israeli forces have killed at least 447 Palestinians in Gaza since a ceasefire took effect in October, according to the Hamas-run health ministry.

jri-fff-slb-adp/jj