Courtesy of JNS. Photo credit: Magali Cohen/Hans Lucas/AFP via Getty Images
MEP Rima Hassan at the Humanity festival (La Fête de l’Humanité) in Brétigny-sur-Orge, near Paris, on Sept. 14, 2024
(JNS) — French MEP Rima Hassan said in an interview on Thursday that Shiri Bibas and her sons Kfir, then 9 months old, and Ariel, 4 years old, whom Gazan terrorists kidnapped from their home at Kibbutz Nir Oz on Oct. 7, 2023, and subsequently murdered in the Strip, were not murdered by Palestinian terrorists.
Hassan pointed the finger of responsibility at the “occupation and colonization regime imposed by Israel.”
“Not murdered? Killed?” the interviewer from Radio Sud asked Hassan.
“No,” she reiterated, adding that she was sorry that the journalist had not performed “a press review on the subject.
“The Bibas family itself has asked the Israeli authorities to stop commenting on the circumstances of their loved ones’ death,” Hassan said.
According to the European Parliament member from the far-left La France Insoumise (“France Unbowed”) party, the Bibas family has not yet received “official and clear information on the accounts communicated by the Israeli army.”
“Would there have been Hamas and the October 7 attacks if there hadn’t been an illegal occupation and an illegal blockade imposed for decades?” Hassan said. Claiming that she spoke the “language of international law,” the French MEP, who is of Palestinian origin, declared that Hamas had carried out “a legitimate act.”
After the autopsies, the Israeli army said last Friday that the two children had been “brutally killed in captivity in November 2023 by Palestinian terrorists,” and not by an Israeli air strike as Hamas claimed. According to the IDF, the murderers used “their bare hands” to kill the baby and the toddler.
“Rima Hassan’s comments are totally unacceptable,” Interior Minister Bruno Retailleau said on Thursday. “Hamas is a terrorist organization that tramples on international law when it kills hostages, when it commits attacks, when it propagates antisemitic hatred and when it calls for the destruction of a state.
“As of today, I am notifying the Paris public prosecutor of these remarks, which are tantamount to an apology for terrorism,” Retailleau said.
Earlier, the mayor of the city of Nice, Christian Estrosi, called for Hassan to be prosecuted for “apology for terrorism’’ after she denied that Hamas murdered the Bibas family.
Maud Bregeon, a member of the French National Assembly for President Emmanuel Macron’s Renaissance party, also denounced Hassan’s remarks, calling her “the spokesperson of Hamas in Brussels.’’
Bregeon said that La France Insoumise uses “antisemitism, sometimes veiled to avoid legal trouble, [as] an electoral strategy.”
On Monday, Hassan was barred from entry into Israel as she arrived at Ben-Gurion International Airport with a parliamentary delegation for a visit to Judea and Samaria. Hassan and the entire delegation led by Irish MEP Lynn Boylan returned to Brussels.
The Israeli Interior Ministry cited Hassan’s support for boycotting Israel as the reason for her ban. Interior Minister Moshe Arbel said Hassan has “consistently worked to promote boycotts against Israel in addition to numerous public statements both on social media and in media interviews.”
Arbel’s decision followed a recommendation from Israel’s Ministry of Diaspora Affairs and Combating Antisemitism.
“The State of Israel is not obligated to allow the entry of any official from a foreign country, including members of parliament, if they work to boycott and undermine its legitimacy,” said Diaspora Affairs Minister Amichai Chikli.
“Rima Hassan leads hostile campaigns against Israel, calls for boycotts and encourages economic sanctions,” he added.
