French Interior Ministry agency launches “cult” attack on respected kibbutz

In France, Miviludes is a sub-agency of the Ministry of Interior, dedicated to fight against what they call “cults” – a term they interpret to include a large variety of well accepted new religious movements as well as alternative medicine practitioners or even dissident political eco-movements.

In their report on “sectarian aberrations” (“derives sectaires” in French, which could also be translated as “cultic deviances”) Miviludes published a chapter about a religious community named “La Famille”, a community born in the beginning of the 19th Century from Jansenist believers. The report included references to a Kibbutz located in the Center of France, the Kibbutz of Malrevers, a community that left “the Family” during the 1960s.

The members of the kibbutz did not like being accused of being a cult with “sectarian aberrations” and filed a complaint against the Miviludes, referring the matter to the Administrative Court of Paris. The kibbutz maintained, through its lawyer Julien Bensimhon, that: “the contested decision is vitiated by an error of assessment because, on the one hand, the characterization of the Malrevers kibbutz as a cult is totally unfounded, as no member of the kibbutz is under anyone’s control; each person has free will and freedom of opinion and expression; furthermore, Miviludes has no tangible evidence to support its claim that the Malrevers kibbutz is a cult; it has not received any reports from individuals or administrations; it has not made any observations or analyses before making such serious accusations…”

See the full European Times report here: