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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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The ‘godfather of denim’ was an Italian designer whose Jewish father was murdered at Auschwitz
(JTA) — Adriano Goldschmied became known as the “godfather of denim” for elevating jeans from casual wear to a luxury staple. His own father’s story was equally riveting.
Goldschmied, who died April 5 at 82, following a battle with cancer in a hospital in Castelfranco Veneto, Italy, credited himself with founding or developing at least 50 brands, including Diesel, AG, Replay, Gap 1969, A Golde and Goldsign.
He was just an infant in 1944 when his Italian Jewish father was arrested by the Nazis.
Goldschmied’s mother, Sofia, was in hiding with his sister at the time of his birth on Nov. 29, 1943, in Vico Canavese, Italy. The Nazis had invaded Italy just months earlier.
His father, Livio, had joined the Italian resistance after the Nazis took over. When he tried to visit his wife, daughter and newborn son, he was apprehended en route. One of six people with his last name deported by the Nazis via Milan’s central station, he was ultimately sent to Auschwitz, where he was killed several months later.
According to a testimony made by a survivor to Yad Vashem, Israel’s Holocaust center, Livio was denounced by a midwife and received permission to visit his son briefly after his arrest. The testimony, which cannot be independently verified, said he had rejected an offer to move to the United States to work with the physicist Enrico Fermi because he would not have been able to bring his family, and had also declined an opportunity to escape from the train that took him to Auschwitz.
Following the war, Goldschmied moved with his mother to Trieste. He later spent a stint pursuing skiing in the 1960s in Cortina, the ski resort in the Southern Alps.
He did not speak readily about his family’s Holocaust history, and unlike his sister, he did not connect with his Jewish heritage. Diana was responsible for installing Stolpersteine, small memorials embedded in sidewalks documenting the Jews who lived at that address before the Holocaust, to commemorate their family members who were murdered.
“Like my father, my brother was a man of great intelligence and extraordinary intuition,” Diana told the Italian-Jewish news outlet Moked. “However, he did not want to talk about our family history. I think memory was working inside him, though.”
Goldschmied got his start in fashion in the 1970s, when he launched his shop, King’s Shop, in Cortina d’Ampezzo, and started a denim line, Daily Blue.
“That first production was going to a fabric store in my hometown, buying crazy fabrics for a very high price and going through manufacturing with my tailor,” Goldschmied told Women’s Wear Daily in 2023. “The product was extremely expensive, and in some way, I created a premium denim by accident.”
In 1981, Goldschmied went on to found the Genius Group, a collective that backed emerging labels like Diesel, Replay and Goldie.
Among Goldschmied’s innovations throughout his career were the development of the stonewash technique, experimenting with Tencel fibers, creating super-stretch denim and pioneering sustainable production methods as early as the 1990s.
“He was the architect of a global staple,” Mariette Hoitink, the co-founder of House of Denim, told Women’s Wear Daily. “Adriano didn’t just design jeans; he orchestrated the greatest transformation in the history of apparel. He was the singular force who elevated denim from rugged workwear into a global fashion staple.”
Goldschmied is survived by his wife, Michela; his daughters Sara, Marta and Glenda; two grandchildren; and his sister.
“Adriano and I led very separate lives,” Diana told Moked. “I rediscovered my Jewish identity. He took a different path, but everyone carries the past within them.”
This article originally appeared on JTA.org.
The post The ‘godfather of denim’ was an Italian designer whose Jewish father was murdered at Auschwitz appeared first on The Forward.
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Not Stupidity — Something Worse: Why the ‘Israel Controls America’ Myth Keeps Spreading
US President Joe Biden and Democratic presidential candidate and US Vice President Kamala Harris react onstage at the Democratic National Convention (DNC) in Chicago, Illinois, US, Aug. 19, 2024. Photo: REUTERS/Kevin Lamarque
In a recent post, Donald Trump took aim at Tucker Carlson, Megyn Kelly, Candace Owens, and Joe Kent, calling them “low IQ” and “losers,” and asking — between Carlson and Kent — “who is dumber?”
It was vintage Trump: blunt, theatrical, and calibrated to dominate a news cycle with a single line. He has long relied on that instinct — to compress a dispute into something sharp enough to stick. But beneath the spectacle sits a more serious issue.
The problem is not intelligence. Many of these figures are clearly relatively smart. The problem is that they — along with a growing chorus of voices on the political left such as Ana Kasparian, Cenk Uygur, and Mehdi Hasan — continue to advance a claim that collapses under minimal scrutiny. Strip away the stylistic differences, the accents, and the partisan framing, and the argument is identical: “Israel controls the United States,” or in its updated form, “Benjamin Netanyahu controls Donald Trump.”
That claim has resurfaced repeatedly over the years, sometimes dressed in more sophisticated language, sometimes stated outright. What makes its latest iteration notable is not merely its persistence, but where it is now being voiced.
This weekend, Kamala Harris, speaking at a Democratic fundraiser in Detroit, said that Donald Trump had been “pulled into this war” by Benjamin Netanyahu. That phrasing carries a clear implication: that the president of the United States — the commander-in-chief of the most powerful military in the world — is not acting independently but is being maneuvered into conflict by a foreign (Jewish) leader.
When this idea circulates on the fringes, it is dismissed. When amplified by pundits chasing attention, it’s often ignored. But when it’s echoed, even cautiously, by a former vice president and major presidential candidate, it crosses a different threshold. At that point, the claim can no longer be dismissed as noise. It has been normalized.
This is not a new idea. It is one of the oldest political accusations in circulation, and it is remarkably easy to test against reality. Only last week, Trump effectively dictated that Israel must accept a temporary ceasefire with Hezbollah — an outcome widely opposed within Israel, where many believe the campaign should be completed and remain skeptical that the Lebanese state will ever disarm Hezbollah. If Israel were directing American policy, that outcome would not occur.
Historically, the “Israel controls America” claim has appeared in different ideological forms but with identical substance. On the far-right, figures such as David Duke have advanced it explicitly. On the far-left, figures like Cynthia McKinney have repackaged it in political language. The wording changes, but the core allegation remains the same: that American power is not sovereign, but subject to external — specifically Jewish — control, echoing Henry Ford and his “International Jew” conspiracy theories of the 1920s and 1930s.
The argument collapses as soon as one examines scale and structure. The United States is a $27 trillion economy with unmatched global reach across military, financial, technological, and diplomatic domains. It maintains a permanent seat on the UN Security Council and leads a network of alliances that spans continents. Israel’s economy, by contrast, is approximately $700 billion. Its military is highly capable, but it is not a global force. It does not control sea lanes, command multinational coalitions, or set the terms of global finance. The disparity is not marginal; it is foundational.
This asymmetry is not unique. The United States maintains deep strategic relationships with many smaller allies such as South Korea, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, and Kuwait. In fact, the United States fought a war to liberate Kuwait in 1991, sustaining approximately 150 American combat fatalities in the process. Yet, almost no one claims Kuwait controls Washington, or that Saudi Arabia dictates US foreign policy. Only one small ally is routinely described in those terms.
The historical record reinforces the absurdity of this Israel “controls” America trope.
In 1956, despite repeated attacks on Israel from the Sinai and Egypt-controlled Gaza, Dwight D. Eisenhower forced Israel to withdraw from Sinai following the Suez Crisis; Israel complied. In 1982, Ronald Reagan pressured Israel to halt operations in Beirut, facilitating the evacuation of Yasser Arafat and the PLO leadership to Tunisia. In 1991, George H. W. Bush asked Israel not to respond to Iraqi Scud missile attacks to help preserve the US-led coalition; Israel absorbed 39 Scud strikes, 13 deaths, and stood down.
In 2015, Barack Obama advanced the Iran nuclear deal despite sustained Israeli opposition. Under Joe Biden, Israeli operations in Rafah were delayed for months under US pressure despite Israeli hostages being held there and its centrality to Hamas’ military infrastructure.
More recently, on June 24, 2025, as a Trump-negotiated ceasefire was taking effect, Iran launched multiple ballistic missiles at Beersheba, killing four Israelis. Israel prepared a large retaliatory strike. Trump intervened and effectively ordered Israel to turn its planes around.
This is what an unequal alliance looks like: coordination, pressure, and at times outright constraint. It is not a relationship where the far smaller country exercises “control.”
So why does the claim persist? Not because it is analytically persuasive — but because it is emotionally effective. Political narratives built on grievance often prefer simple explanations to complex realities.
It is easier to attribute outcomes to hidden manipulation than to acknowledge the interplay of strategic interests, risks, and constraints that define foreign policy decision-making.
There is also a deeper historical layer. For centuries, European political culture absorbed and transmitted variations of the same vile accusation: that Jews operate behind the scenes, exercising covert and pernicious influence over institutions and leaders.
So, when modern commentators repackage that idea — whether in the language of “influence,” “lobbying,” or outright “control” — it does not enter a neutral environment. It lands on fertile soil, reinforcing a long-established and familiar narrative.
Since World War II, the claim hasn’t changed — only its migration from the margins into the mainstream. And once it crosses that threshold, it stops being rhetoric and starts shaping behavior.
As it did in Germany after World War I, if a significant number of people come to believe that their government has been captured, that their leaders are not acting independently but are controlled by a nefarious external force, the range of conclusions and actions they will justify or rationalize expands dramatically. History offers no shortage of examples of where that logic can lead.
Trump attempted to reduce this to a punchline. But this is not a matter of tone. It is a warning sign. And this time, it is coming from closer to the political center than it has in a very long time.
Micha Danzig is an attorney, former IDF soldier, and former NYPD officer. He writes widely on Israel, Zionism, antisemitism, and Jewish history. He serves on the board of Herut North America.
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War or No War, India Stands With Israel
FILE PHOTO: Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi addresses the nation during Independence Day celebrations at the historic Red Fort in New Delhi, August 15, 2020. Photo: REUTERS/Adnan Abidi/File Photo
In today’s global climate, Israel is a country many are expected to avoid. Turn on the international media — from CNN, to European and Indian broadcasters — and one narrative dominates: Israel as aggressor and pariah, Israel as a place defined by war, or worse, apartheid. Add to this the open hostility of regimes like the Islamic Republic of Iran, Turkey, and a growing hostility among Western leaders, such as Italian Prime Minister Meloni suspending defense cooperation.
The message is clear: Stay away from Israel.
And yet, in the midst of missile fire, media hostility, and geopolitical pressure — they came anyway.
A group of Indian workers, recruited through an Indian manpower agency, chose not to be deterred. Their arrival in Israel a few days ago is more than a labor story. It is a quiet but powerful act of defiance against a global narrative increasingly detached from reality. When I received photos of the team from the Israel-Jordan border, proudly waving the Indian and Israeli flags, my heart was happy.
Their journey was anything but straightforward.
After receiving their visas, these men and women left their jobs in India, stepping into uncertainty. Then came the cancelled flights, closed routes, and more than a month of waiting as airlines suspended operations to Israel. Many may have reconsidered at this juncture.
They did not.
Instead, they flew to Amman, waited again, and then endured long hours of land travel and layered security checks on both sides of the Jordanian-Israeli border before finally entering Israel.
Since the October 7 attacks, Israel has faced an acute labor shortage, especially in sectors such as construction, caregiving, and general services, which were once filled by Palestinian workers. India, with its vast labor pool and long history of global migration, is uniquely positioned to help fill this gap. Following Prime Minister Modi’s historic visit in February, just before the Iran-Israel/US conflict escalated, Israel and India strengthened ties through key Memoranda of Understanding in defense, technology, agriculture, research, and labor.
One visible outcome is the arrival of Indian workers who choose to come to Israel, to see and experience the country for themselves despite the weight of propaganda, fear, and misinformation.
They also came after weeks of watching missile barrages over Israeli cities on their television screens. They came despite a steady stream of coverage portraying Israel as unsafe, unstable, and morally suspect. They came knowing that public opinion in parts of India, influenced by global narratives, has grown more critical of Israel.
I recently interviewed an Indian caregiver documenting life under Iranian missile fire — daily fear, resilience, and routine. Her videos have gone viral in India. Alongside support, she also faces hostility from those echoing distorted narratives, but equally sparks curiosity and a deeper desire to understand Israel.
Together with others working to strengthen Israel-India relations, I recently shared a reel on Instagram about Indian workers arriving via Jordan. The response has been overwhelming from both sides: messages from India expressing support and genuine interest in a country often misunderstood, and Israelis warmly welcoming the new arrivals.
What we are seeing is the rise of a people-to-people alliance. One that is less visible, less celebrated, but potentially more enduring. An alliance that is built on shared values: resilience, pragmatism, and the instinct to move forward despite adversity.
At a time when parts of the international community are distancing themselves from Israel, the arrival of these workers offers another perspective on alliance.
If Israel is wise, it will recognize this as an opportunity to invest in these relationships, amplify these voices, and allow a narrative to emerge not from above, but from those who have seen the country firsthand.
At a moment when the nation is misrepresented, and misunderstood, the decision of these workers from India to come to work in Israel carries meaning beyond economics.
In difficult times, we know who stands with us.
Paushali Lass is an Indian-German intercultural and geopolitical consultant, who focuses on building bridges between Israel, India, and Germany.