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A conference by La France Insoumise MEP and pro-Palestinian activist Rima Hassan was held on Dec. 13, 2024, on the Saint Martin d Heres campus, in the Grenoble suburbs, France. Photo: Benoit Pavan / Hans Lucas via Reuters Connect
European Union lawmaker Rima Hassan is drawing criticism after spreading pro-Hamas rhetoric and questioning the reported surge of antisemitic attacks targeting France’s Jewish community, renewing concerns over her promotion of hateful ideology.
In a Tuesday interview with French outlet Thinkerview, Hassan defended the Hamas-led invasion of and massacre across southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, and asserted the Palestinian terrorist group is justified in denying the Jewish state’s right to exist.
“Historically, Hamas has maintained that Israel has no right to exist, arguing that it has taken our lands and settled on them. In this regard, they are correct,” said Hassan, a 33-year-old lawyer and activist who last year became the first French-Palestinian member of the European Parliament, the EU’s law-making body.
“Oct. 7 is something that must be punished, yes, but it should be put into context before being condemned,” she continued.
This is not Hassan’s first instance of seemingly endorsing Hamas’s violence against Israelis.
The politician, who was born in a Palestinian refugee camp in Syria, has repeatedly faced controversies and investigations for promoting hateful speech.
“We have over 100 years of colonization, we are being massacred, we have over a million martyrs, and these French people don’t seem to understand that we want our independence,” Hassan said during the interview.
Earlier this year, the French diplomat was expelled from Israel after being arrested while attempting to reach Gaza aboard the vessel Madleen to “break the Israeli blockade.”
She has also been subject to an investigation in Paris for “apology of terrorism” following an interview given after the Oct. 7 atrocities, in which she justified Hamas’s actions.
During her interview, Hassan also questioned the rise in anti-Jewish hate crimes and targeted attacks against France’s Jewish community since the Hamas onslaught in Israel.
She expressed distrust in the figures reported by the Representative Council of Jewish Institutions of France (CRIF) – the main representative body of French Jews – on antisemitism.
“Yes, there have been more antisemitic acts, but honestly, I do not trust the CRIF’s figures at all,” the French lawmaker said.
According to the French Interior Ministry, 646 antisemitic incidents were recorded from January to June this year — a drop from the previous year’s first-half record high but a 112.5 percent increase compared with the same period in 2023, when 304 incidents were reported.
Yonathan Arfi, president of CRIF, strongly condemned Hassan’s remarks, denouncing them as a dangerous distortion of reality and an attack on France’s Jewish community.
“Downplaying, minimizing, and even hiding antisemitism is a core part of the strategy of LFI, and specifically of Rima Hassan,” Arfi said, referring to the left-wing French political party La France Insoumise. The party, of which Hassan is a member, has been widely accused of animus toward not only Israel but also the French Jewish community.
“She ignores that these figures come from the Ministry of the Interior, effectively pretending to forget that they are official French statistics,” Arfi continued.
Just last week, a 34-year-old Algerian man was sentenced to 40 months in prison for threatening passengers with a knife and making antisemitic death threats after boarding a train at Cannes station days earlier.
“Today, I want to kill Jews. I am Algerian, and I want to support the Palestinians,” the assailant said, according to French media.
In another incident earlier this year, a Jewish man wearing a kippah was brutally attacked and called a “dirty Jew” in Anduze, a small town in southern France.
In March, Arie Engelberg, the rabbi of Orléans, was violently attacked while walking home with his nine-year-old son from the synagogue in the city, located south of Paris.
According to Engelberg, the attacker asked if he was Jewish, and when the rabbi replied yes, the assailant began hurling antisemitic insults, including “all Jews are sons of —,” and attempted to film him. The attacker then allegedly started punching Engelberg and bit him until several people stepped in to help.
Antisemitism in France continued to surge to alarming levels across the country last year, with 1,570 incidents recorded. The total number of antisemitic outrages in 2024 was a slight dip from 2023’s record total of 1,676, but it marked a striking increase from the 436 tallied in 2022. The figures, presented by CRIF in its annual report, were compiled by the Jewish Community Protection Service using data jointly recorded with the Ministry of the Interior.
The report found that 65.2 percent of antisemitic acts last year targeted individuals, with more than 10 percent of these offenses involving physical violence.
One such incident occurred in June, when a 12-year-old Jewish girl was raped by three Muslim boys in a Paris suburb. The child told investigators that the assailants called her a “dirty Jew” and hurled other antisemitic comments at her during the attack.
In another egregious attack, an elderly Jewish woman was attacked in a Paris suburb by two assailants who punched her in the face, pushed her to the ground, and kicked her while hurling antisemitic slurs, including “dirty Jew, this is what you deserve.”
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