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4 decades later, new trial of alleged 1980 Paris synagogue bomber offers victims opportunity for closure
PARIS (JTA) — The courtroom was crowded but the defendant’s seat was empty on Monday as a landmark trial in French Jewish history got underway, nearly 43 years after the synagogue bombing that Hassan Diab stands accused of orchestrating.
An arrest warrant in the 1980 bombing that killed four people and wounded 46 was first issued for Diab, a Lebanese academic who lives in Canada, in 2008. Only now is a trial getting underway — and he has chosen not to attend, prompting criticism from both prosecutors and French Jews who are hoping for a sense of resolution after decades of trauma.
“Hassan Diab’s decision not to appear before your court is a great disgrace to your jurisdiction,” the attorney general said during the first day of the trial, during a discussion of whether an arrest warrant should be issued, a move that would require the trial to be dismissed.
“Which human would not make the same decision?” replied Diab’s lawyer, William Bourdon, about his client’s choice not to travel to France to stand trial. “This decision is humanly respectable. It is in no way a sign of cowardice.”
The Reform synagogue on Rue Copernic that was bombed is nested in the heart of a wealthy residential area, in Paris’ 16th arrondissement. A visitor today would not be able to tell that the ceiling had once been shattered into a million little pieces, that the floor had been spotted with blood. If not for the commemorative plaque at the entrance, nothing there would show the synagogue was once the scene of a deadly terrorist attack.
Yet the trial is freighted with the fear and anxiety that set in after what is now known as the Rue Copernic bombing on Oct. 3, 1980, understood to be the first fatal antisemitic attack in France since the Holocaust. Since then, a string of antisemitic attacks on communal targets and individuals have caused many French Jews to feel afraid, both about their personal vulnerability and about the state’s commitment to their safety.
But while the prosecution of some potentially antisemitic attacks has not always satisfied French Jews, the long ordeal to bring Diab to trial suggests great diligence on the part of many involved.
Bernard Cahen, an attorney for the synagogue and one of the victims, who is now in his 80s, promised he would see this case through until the end.
“Whatever the outcome, this has been going on for way too long,” he told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency in an interview, adding with a joke, “Everybody is surprised I’m still here to represent my clients.”
Cahen represents Monique Barbé, who lost her husband in the bombing when she was 37. Now nearly 80 and living in the South of France, Barbé won’t be coming to the trial.
“I don’t have the strength. But I can’t wait for all of this to end,” she told JTA.
About 300 worshippers were attending the Shabbat service and celebrating five bar mitzvahs that Friday evening when, at 6:35 p.m., a bomb exploded right outside the synagogue. The door was blown up, the glass ceiling collapsed on the worshippers; wooden benches were projected across the room.
Outside the synagogue the scene was even more gruesome. In his book about the case, the French journalist Jean Chichizola described “cars thrown on the road like children’s toys,” “flames licking the upper floors of adjacent buildings” and “shop windows blown up all along the street.”
In what looked like a war zone lay four bodies. Israeli TV journalist Aliza Shagrir, 44, was hit by the blast as she walked by. Philippe Boissou, 22, who was riding by on his motorcycle, also died on the spot. Driver Jean-Michel Barbé was found dead in his car, which was parked right outside the synagogue where he was awaiting clients attending the service. Nearby, a hotel worker named Hilario Lopes-Fernandez was seriously injured and died two days later.
Investigators quickly established that the bomb had been placed in the saddlebag of a Suzuki motorcycle parked in front of the synagogue. It was meant to go off precisely as the worshippers left the building, which would undoubtedly have killed many more people. But the ceremony had started a few minutes late.
At first, a man close to a neo-Nazi group claimed responsibility for the attack, misleading investigators for months before confessing he had nothing to do with it. The attack was ultimately attributed to an extremist group in the Middle East, the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine-Special Operations, and investigators alleged that Diab had planted the bomb. After an arrest warrant was issued in 2008, he was extradited from Canada in 2014, indicted in Paris and imprisoned.
But in a surprise to many, Diab’s case was dismissed in 2018, allowing him to return to Canada a free man. Prosecutors appealed, leading to another surprising turn of events in 2021 as the court upheld the earlier decision, directing Diab to stand trial after all.
“This is a gaping wound for the Jewish community and here in France people remember this horrible attack,” historian Marc Knobel told JTA. “Let us not forget how shocked and hurt we all were at the time.”
Indeed, outrage in the immediate aftermath of the bombing was fierce. France’s major trade unions called for a nationwide strike as a gesture of solidarity with Jews, while government ministers promised a speedy response and deployed police officers to other Jewish sites. Meanwhile, Jews marched in the streets, some vowing to take security into their own hands, in a demonstration that presaged longstanding tensions within French Jewry.
Over four decades later, Monique Barbé reflected on the tragedy that has changed her life forever.
“This has ruined my life. I was nervously wrecked for a very long time,” she said. “Imagine, I had to go identify my husband’s body. At the police station, they gave me back his half-burnt ID card and his damaged wedding ring. That’s all I was left with.”
But she questioned exactly how much the bombing and trial should register for people whose connection is more distant than her own.
“I do believe this is a necessary trial but except for those who lost their loved ones, I don’t see why anybody would still think about it today, it’s been so long,” Barbé said. “Plus there have been so many terrorist attacks since.”
Jean-François Bensahel, president of the Copernic synagogue, thinks this trial is actually of great importance even to those who were not born at the time of the attack.
“It’s engraved in our community’s history,” he said in an interview. “It’s difficult for us to understand why Hassan Diab has decided not to come to the trial but nothing is over yet. I want to trust justice will be served.”
The attack’s most lasting effects may not be in the trial but in the heavy security infrastructure that is now familiar to anyone engaging with French Jewish institutions, Bensahel said.
“Sadly, synagogues in France (and many other places) are all under protection, even though it’s completely counterintuitive to have security measures in a place of worship where you usually aspire to peace,” he said. “It shows something is not right with the world.”
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Israeli Defense Chief Says Hezbollah Will Be Disarmed, Terror Group Vows Continued ‘Resistance’ as Truce Begins
Smoke rises following an airstrike in Lebanon, as seen from Israeli side of the border, April 11, 2026. Photo: REUTERS/Amir Cohen
As a newly agreed ceasefire between Israel and Lebanon took effect, Israel’s defense minister warned on Friday that Hezbollah will ultimately be disarmed and Israeli forces will not withdraw from Lebanese territory, vowing the campaign will continue until the threat to Israel’s northern communities is fully eliminated.
During a press conference, Israel Katz said the military campaign had entered a temporary “freeze” phase under a 10-day ceasefire framework. However, he stressed that Israel’s operational objectives on the ground remain unfinished and the maneuver is far from complete.
“The IDF [Israel Defense Forces] will continue to hold all positions it has cleared and taken inside Lebanon,” the Israeli defense chief said. “The ground operation and nationwide strikes against Hezbollah have achieved significant gains, but the mission is not yet complete.”
“Disarming Hezbollah — whether through military force or political pressure — was and remains the central objective of the campaign to which we are committed,” he continued. “Significant political leverage has now also been created, with the direct involvement of US President [Donald Trump] and increased pressure on the Lebanese government to advance that goal.”
Katz’s remarks came shortly after the Iran-back Lebanese terrorist group issued a defiant statement rejecting the ceasefire and any prospect of direct negotiations with Jerusalem, while vowing its forces would continue resisting Israeli troops.
“Our fighters will keep their hands on the trigger, preparing for the enemy’s betrayal and violation of its commitments. We will remain loyal to the alliance until our last breath, and our flag will not fall,” the statement read.
“The presence of Israeli forces on Lebanese territory gives Lebanon and the Lebanese people the right to resist,” it continued.
Meanwhile, residents across southern Lebanon, Beirut, and other parts of the country began making their way back home as the ceasefire took effect, with social media footage showing reconstruction work already underway on infrastructure damaged during the war.
However, Israel has warned Lebanese citizens against returning to their homes at this stage, with officials saying that Hezbollah could try to exploit the situation to reestablish its terrorist infrastructure under civilian cover.
“With the ceasefire agreement taking effect, the IDF will continue to hold its positions in southern Lebanon in light of Hezbollah’s terrorist activity,” Col. Avichai Edraei, the IDF spokesperson in Arabic, said in a statement.
“Until further notice, you are asked not to move south of the Litani River,” he continued. “If the fire resumes, those who return to the security zone will be forced to evacuate in order to allow the mission to be completed.”
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu also signaled that Israel does not intend to withdraw its forces from Lebanese territory, saying the military is establishing what he described as a “thickened security zone” along the border area.
“That’s where we are – and we’re not leaving,” the Israeli leader said in a video statement issued on Thursday.
Netanyahu also said the opportunity for a ceasefire emerged only after what he described as a dramatic shift in Lebanon’s strategic balance of power since the start of the war.
He pointed to major blows to Hezbollah’s military capabilities, including the killing of its longtime leader Hassan Nasrallah in 2024 and the subsequent destruction of large weapons stockpiles, saying these developments led to calls from Lebanese officials for direct peace talks for the first time in decades.
With negotiations now underway toward a longer-term arrangement, Netanyahu said Israel’s position rests on two core demands: the full disarmament of Hezbollah and a “sustainable” security-based peace framework.
For its part, Hezbollah insisted any agreement must include a complete Israeli withdrawal from Lebanese territory and adherence to a reciprocal “quiet for quiet”” arrangement — terms Israel has rejected.
Netanyahu also warned that Hezbollah, which openly seeks Israel’s destruction, still retains a significant rocket arsenal, saying neutralizing that threat will remain a central component of the ongoing security and political process.
According to a report by The Wall Street Journal, nearly half of the roughly 8,000 rockets fired by Hezbollah during the war were launched from the southern Litani River region — an area that, under previous agreements, was supposed to be fully demilitarized.
The newly agreed ceasefire, which took effect Thursday-Friday at midnight, establishes a fixed 10-day window intended “to allow for good-faith negotiations toward a permanent security and peace agreement.”
As part of direct mediation efforts from Washington, Trump invited Netanyahu and Lebanese President Joseph Aoun to White House talks aimed at advancing a broader settlement framework.
According to the US Department of State, the Lebanese government pledged to take “significant steps” to prevent Hezbollah from launching further attacks against Israeli targets.
“Both countries recognize the challenge posed by armed groups that violate Lebanon’s sovereignty and threaten regional stability … The only forces authorized to bear arms in Lebanon will be Lebanese government forces,” an official statement from the meeting said.
“Israel will retain its right to take all necessary measures for self-defense, at any time, against planned, immediate or sustained attacks,” it continued.
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Despite Winning New Jersey Special Election, Anti-Israel Candidate Underperforms in Heavily Jewish Town
Analilia Mejia, Democratic candidate for New Jersey’s 11th Congressional District, speaks to guests after winning the election in Montclair, New Jersey, US, April 16, 2026. Photo: REUTERS/Eduardo Munoz
In Thursday night’s US congressional election in the 11th district of New Jersey, Jewish voters seemed to defect from the Democratic nominee in massive numbers, potentially foreshadowing a significant shift in Jewish voting patterns.
Analilia Mejia, a progressive activist known for her sharp condemnations of Israel, comfortably won the special congressional election in New Jersey in the deep-blue district by a margin of 60 percent to 40 percent.
Despite defeating her Republican opponent by 20 points, however, pundits pointed out that Mejia underperformed expectations and that Democrats hemorrhaged support among heavily Jewish communities.
In Livingston, New Jersey, a town with a significant Jewish population, Mejia barely eked out a 51-49 majority over Joe Hathaway, a staggering sea-change from recent elections. The deep-blue town voted for Democratic Gov. Mikie Sherrill and Democratic presidential nominee Kamala Harris by margins of 0.5 and 12 points, respectively. Taking into account party registration, the town has seen a shift to the political right by over 50 percent since 2024.
Though Mejia won Thursday’s race by a comfortable margin, experts pointed out that the progressive insurgent underperformed throughout the affluent suburban district. When taking into account party registration patterns, Mejia underperformed in Millburn by 23 points, North Caldwell by 10 points, South Orange by 7 points, and West Caldwell by 6 points, among others.
Spectators suggested that Mejia’s impressive margin of victory could be attributed to anti-Trump sentiment and massive turnout among Democrats and depressed turnout from Republicans.
Mejia’s positions on Israel, once considered fringe within the party, are increasingly becoming more mainstream, particularly in elections dominated by liberal voters. Her rhetoric on Israel, which critics say is one-sided and inflammatory, has drawn backlash from moderates and pro-Israel Democrats.
The outcome raises fresh questions about the party’s direction heading into national elections. While progressives see momentum, others worry candidates like Mejia could alienate Jewish and moderate voters while complicating efforts to maintain a broad electoral coalition. Her victory is likely to deepen internal party tensions, especially as debates over Israel grow more polarized and politically charged.
Mejia has said Israel’s actions in Gaza amount to “genocide,” a position that put her well to the left of many mainstream Democrats. She has aligned herself with calls for stronger conditions, or outright opposition, to US military support for Israel, reflecting the broader progressive wing’s push to reassess the traditional US-Israel relationship. She has also aimed sharp criticism toward the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), the preeminent pro-Israel lobbying group in the US, calling the organization “horrendous” and accusing it of dividing the Democratic Party.
A progressive organizer with a record of criticizing Israeli government actions, Mejia benefited from a coalition of younger voters, activists, and highly engaged ideological blocs. Her win is consistent with recent polling trends showing a generational divide within the party, with younger Democrats expressing more skepticism toward Israel than older cohorts.
Mejia’s struggles in heavily Jewish and moderate areas of the district could forecast a split between the Democratic Party and what has been historically one of its most reliable voting blocs.
Since Hamas’s Oct. 7, 2023, massacre across southern Israel launched the Gaza war, the Democratic Paty’s rhetoric toward Israel has become increasingly hostile. Progressive Democrats, such as Reps. Ilhan Omar (MN) and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (NY), have accused Israel of committing “genocide” in Gaza.
This past week, approximately 80 percent of Democratic senators voted to halt military aid transfers to Israel, citing poor humanitarian conditions in Gaza and dismay over the US-Israeli war with Iran.
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Who’s responsible for deadly antisemitism? Everyone will hate the answer
Twenty Jews outside of the state of Israel were murdered for being Jewish in antisemitic attacks across three continents in 2025, the highest death toll among diaspora Jews in more than 30 years. In every country surveyed, antisemitic incidents of all kinds — including beatings, vandalism, threats and online harassment — remain dozens of percentage points higher than they were in 2022, before the Gaza war began.
This information, released in a report from Tel Aviv University on the eve of Yom HaShoah earlier this week, should haunt everyone, regardless of political affiliation.
Neither left nor right is wholly responsible; instead, the report concludes that “rather than a backlash to a specific geopolitical crisis, high levels of antisemitism have become a normalized feature in societies with large Jewish minorities.”
What the left should hear
There is a strain of progressive opinion, particularly vocal since the Hamas attack of Oct. 7, 2023, that dismisses accusations of antisemitism as, essentially, a political weapon — a tool wielded by pro-Israel voices to silence legitimate criticism of Israeli government policy, shut down protests and conflate opposition to political Zionism with hatred of Jews.
There is some truth to this narrative. But the Tel Aviv University report reveals it has severe limitations, as well.
The Bondi Beach massacre did not happen because a government defined antisemitism too broadly. The synagogue attackers in Manchester, England did not gun down worshippers because someone misapplied the IHRA definition. The victims of attacks in Boulder, Colorado and Washington, D.C. were not statistics manufactured by an advocacy group. Twenty Diaspora Jews died violent deaths because antisemitism remains a lethal force in the world — a truth that the left, across the globe, needs to do a significantly better job addressing.
The physical assaults, murders, firebombings, and other acts of concrete violence chronicled in the report cannot be rationalized away as mere criticism of Israel. In Canada, incidents rose from roughly 2,000 in 2022 to 6,800 in 2025. In Australia, the total number of reported antisemitic incidents rose from 472 in 2022 to 1,750 in 2025 — nearly a fourfold increase in three years, including multiple arson attacks on synagogues, in addition to the Bondi Beach shooting.
The tendency among some progressives to dismiss most antisemitism complaints as presumed to be in bad-faith unless proven otherwise has real costs. When allegations of antisemitism are reflexively treated as a political tactic, it becomes easier to ignore actual antisemitism, even when it’s claiming lives and burning down religious buildings.
To be clear, there are real and important questions about how to define antisemitism, and where the line between good faith criticism of Israel as a nation-state and antisemitism against Jews as a people falls. Those questions must continue to be asked.
But when Jewish institutions are targeted and a primary political reflex on the left is to search for Israeli wrongdoing that might have “provoked” the attack, the victims are abandoned.
What the right — and the Israeli government — should hear
The Tel Aviv University report challenges progressive denial. But it challenges the Israeli government and its defenders just as directly.
The report’s authors write that Israeli politicians at the highest levels have “expanded the scope of the term ‘antisemitism,’ including through cynical and hasty declarations, drained it of meaning, and damaged the struggle against Jew-hatred.”
The government, they conclude, “has not contributed in any meaningful way to the cause” of fighting antisemitism against diaspora Jews.
This is not a minor complaint buried in a footnote. It is a central finding of the most authoritative antisemitism report on the planet, published by an Israeli university.
Consider what that behavior looked like in practice. When gunmen massacred 15 Jews at Bondi Beach in December, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s immediate political instinct was to blame Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese’s government, specifically its decision to recognize Palestinian statehood at the United Nations.
“Your call for a Palestinian state pours fuel on the antisemitic fire,” Netanyahu declared — a response that made it seem like an act of violence motivated by the Islamic State was somehow part of the legitimate pro-Palestinian movement. As former Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull pointed out, the vast majority of the world’s nations recognize Palestinian statehood. Were they all complicit in Bondi?
This pattern of using the word “antisemitism” as a cudgel against any policy position that Israel’s government dislikes — whether it is recognizing Palestinian statehood, criticizing settlement expansion or questioning IDF military operations — has a corrosive effect on the fight against actual antisemitism. When the term is deployed reflexively and politically, it trains audiences to be skeptical of the label. It gives ammunition to exactly those who want to dismiss Jewish fear as manufactured. It is, in the deepest possible sense, counterproductive.
The Tel Aviv University report goes further, recommending that Israel’s Ministry for Diaspora Affairs and Combating Antisemitism be dissolved entirely, with its funding transferred instead to Israeli embassies and consulates. The author’s argument: only professionals embedded in local communities, working alongside law enforcement and educators, can actually make a difference in combatting antisemitism. Grand declarations from politicians in Jerusalem motivated more by their own domestic political considerations than by the safety of the Jewish diaspora cannot.
A need for discipline
What this report ultimately demands, from the left and the right alike, is a discipline that both sides have conspicuously failed to practice: the discipline of treating antisemitism as a separate issue from the issues of Israel, Zionism and Palestinian rights.
These issues do overlap. But they are fundamentally individual. Antisemitism is hatred of Jews as Jews, a prejudice that has existed for millennia, operates independently of any particular government’s behavior, and kills people without asking victims what they think about Israeli settlements.
The contemporary state of Israel is a nation-state which commits specific actions, many of which are worthy of criticism.
Conflating the two, in either direction, produces disaster.
On the right, treating any political position unfavorable to Israel as presumptively antisemitic weaponizes Jewish suffering for political ends and corrupts the language we need to name and fight real hatred. On the left, treating the existence of real Jew-hatred as essentially a cover story for Zionist advocacy abandons Jewish communities to violence, and prevents the kind of serious policy response that could actually reduce harm.
The people killed at Bondi Beach were not symbols in a geopolitical argument. They were not collateral in a debate about international law or protest rights. They were Jews who had gathered to celebrate Hanukkah. Their deaths — and those of the other diaspora Jews killed last year — demand better than either cynical exploitation or willful minimization by either side.
The Tel Aviv University report, to its considerable credit, refuses both postures. It counts the dead honestly. It honestly holds the Israeli government accountable. It refuses to let anti-Jewish violence be erased, and it also refuses to let that violence be used as a political instrument. In doing so, it models the intellectual honesty that this moment desperately requires.
The question is whether anyone on either side of this exhausting divide is willing to listen.
The post Who’s responsible for deadly antisemitism? Everyone will hate the answer appeared first on The Forward.