Actress Dawn French has issued an “unreserved apology” after she posted a “one-sided” video to social media earlier this week in which she appeared to mock and belittle the suffering of Israel’s October 7 victims.
In the 40-second video, the 67-year-old actress, well known in the UK for being in television shows such as The Vicar of Dibley and French and Saunders, was accused of dismissing the murder of 1,200 people on October 7 as “a bad thing”.
Putting on a child-like, whimpering voice, Dawn appeared to imitate someone justifying the ongoing war: “Yeah, but you know they did a bad thing to us,” followed by “yeah, no” in her normal voice.
Actress Tracy Ann-Oberman said she had been “so saddened” by the video, while independent MP Rosie Duffield added, “One can, and should, hate what is happening in Gaza and also condemn the hideous events of October 7.”
Brighton-based hostage advocate, Heidi Bachram, whose husband’s cousin, Tsachi, was kidnapped and murdered by Hamas and his 18-year-old daughter shot in the head, said her relatives “deserve more than [French’s] smug dismissal”.
On Saturday, French deleted the video from her social media feed, issued an apology that acknowledged the video “appeared one-sided” and said she never meant to “mock, or dismiss, or diminish the horror” of what happened on October 7. She said she was “particularly sorry that my disgust at Hamas” wasn’t conveyed in the video.
October 7, she said, was a “brutal unthinkable, unforgivable, savage attack” and her heart breaks “for the many innocent people and their families that were killed, tortured, r@ped and kidnapped. The fact that hostages are still held is utterly appalling.”
Dawn French in a video she made in which she appears to dismiss the horrors of October 7 (Image: X/Screencrab)[Missing Credit]
She claimed her intention behind the video was to “mock and point the finger of shame at the behaviour of the cruel leaders on ALL sides of this atrocious war.”
She added, “I am a person, who like many others, is feeling increasingly helpless and hopeless as we witness the carnage and destruction worsen. The images of starving and wounded children have haunted me day and night. History has taught us never to standby and allow this kind of inhumane violence to be wrought on anyone, especially innocent children.
“I have felt my silence is complicit or even somehow sanctioning. So in my small way I wanted to voice my desire to say NO – to BOTH sides – to any further violence. I hope you will understand my intention was not to offend, but clearly I have. For which I am sorry and I have removed the video.”
Hamas’s rampage across southern Israel on October 7, 2023, amounted to the deadliest attack against Jews since the Holocaust, with over 1,200 people killed and some 250 taken hostage. Fifty-six are still held after more than 600 days in captivity, and around 20 of those are thought to be alive.
