Op-Ed: France Honors Group That Spawned Fogel Murderers

Published: Friday, April 12, 2013  -- Arutz Sheva 7

French anti-Semitism is now official and shameless. A public event in a Paris district in support of terrorism against Jews is the last straw.

Giulio Meotti

The writer, an Italian journalist with Il Foglio, writes a twice-weekly column for Arutz Sheva. He is the author of the book "A New Shoah", that researched the personal stories of Israel's terror victims, published by Encounter. His writing has appeared in publications, such as the Wall Street Journal, Frontpage and Commentary. He is at work on a book about the Vatican and Israel.

Jules Renard, a republican, leftist and a Dreyfusard, once said about the French: “We are all anti-Semites, some of us have the gallantry or coyness not to flaunt it”. A provocative definition which might turn to be true, except for the part about not flaunting it.

A public event in support of Palestinian Arab terrorism will take place next Wednesday, the 17th of April, at the chamber of commerce of Saint-Denis, a popular district in the outskirts of the Parisian municipality. Many well known 'anti-racist' organizations support the initiative, including the "Ligue des Droits de l’Homme" and the "Mouvement contre le Racisme et pour l’Amitié entre les Peuples".
Salah Hamouri, the member of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) who planned to assassinate former Sephardic Chief Rabbi Ovadia Yosef, Shas’ spiritual leader, will attend the event. Hamouri was one of 550 prisoners freed to complete a deal in which Israel released 1,027 prisoners for soldier Gilad Shalit.

"Rabbi Yosef deserves to die", the French terrorist declared after his liberation. The terrorist is an object of a worship in the French leftist press and benefits from important support, to the point of being given the title of honorary citizen in three cities in France.

Present at the Saint-Denis event will also be a public official of the city of Bezons, which just granted honorary citizenship to Majdi Rahima Rimawi, the Palestinian PFLP terrorist who was sentenced to life in prison in Israel for his role in the assassination of then-Tourism Minister Rehavam Ze'evi. Fathya Barghouti, the wife of Rimawi, will also attend the French initiative.

We must not forget that PFLP terrorists killed Jews in Paris itself. On Friday October 3, 1980, the eve of Succot, a motorbike bomb exploded outside the Copernic Synagogue, the liberal synagogue of the Paris elite. Four people lay dead on the street and in the synagogue interior. The bombing fell on the 39th anniversary of the “Jewish Decrees” of the Vichy regime.

Can we forget that Dr. George Habash, the PFLP founder, was hosted in a Paris hospital? The malingering Socialist government of Francois Mitterrand caved in to the Arabs, doing tremendous damage to the struggle against terrorism.

The program for the Paris evening in honor of Arab terrorism includes the participation of "Allam and Amir, from the Balata camp, expelled to Gaza, and respectively members of the Palestinian organizations Fatah and PFLP".

One is the former Al Aqsa commander in Nablus, Amir Jabar Sharif Sawalma, arrested in 2003, sentenced to six life sentences for an array of lethal terrorist acts. He carried out a shooting attack at an IDF checkpoint at Mount Gerizim, killing two IDF soldiers. He also dispatched two suicide bombers and prepared their explosives belts at IDF positions, killing an additional two soldiers.

Sawalma also sent a third suicide bomber to a civilian target. The bomber was stopped by a security guard, who was killed in the attack.

The other one is Allam Kaabi, a high profile terrorist of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, which led, planned and carried out the assassination of Rehavam Ze’vi.

France, which equipped Saddam Hussein with his most advanced and deadly weapons, whose President Mitterrand treated Yasser Arafat like royalty, where the PLO opened its first European office with a charter calling for “the elimination of Israel”, now sponsors Israel's destruction by giving medals, microphones and front pages to the worst Palestinian terror masterminds.

On every French corner today, you see a "Palestine Committee". This is how Europe wants to solve, once and for all, the "péché originel d’Israël". The original sin of the creation of Israel.

How long will it be until France awards honorary citizenship to Amjad and Hakim Awad, the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine's members who slaughtered Ehud, Ruth, Elad, Yoav and baby Hadas Fogel in Itamar?