The Jewish community in France has lambasted a European Union lawmaker for arguing that French-Palestinians must be able to join the “Palestinian armed resistance” if their French-Israeli counterparts are allowed to serve in the Israel Defense Forces (IDF).

Rima Hassan, a 32-year-old lawyer and activist, earlier this year became the first French-Palestinian member of the European Parliament, the EU’s law-making body. On Wednesday, she posted on the social media platform X that the legacy of colonialism would be the only reason to oppose the idea that Palestinians in France should be allowed to join the so-called “resistance” currently fighting Israel in the Middle East.

“If Franco-Israelis are allowed to serve in the Israeli army while enjoying the benefits of dual nationality, any Franco-Palestinian must be able to join the Palestinian armed resistance whose legitimacy is recognized by the United Nations resolutions relating to the right to self-determination of peoples. The only thing that prevents you from considering it is the coloniality of the world,” wrote Hassan, a member of the European Parliament’s Foreign Affairs Committee and coordinator of the Human Rights Subcommittee.

Critics were quick to note that several groups describing themselves as part of the pro-Palestinian “resistance” against Israel are designated internationally — including by the EU itself — as terrorist organizations.

The Representative Council of Jewish Institutions of France (CRIF), the main representative body of French Jews, made this point on Thursday while lambasting Hassan’s argument.

“The organizations that claim to be part of the Palestinian ‘armed resistance’ — Hamas, Hezbollah, Islamic Jihad, etc. — are all recognized as terrorists by the European Union,” CRIF posted on X. “Can you imagine a European MP calling for people to join Al Qaeda or Daesh [ISIS]? If Rima Hassan wanted peace and truly defended the Palestinians, she would fight Hamas instead of defending it without taking responsibility.”

Hassan, who was born in Syria to an Arab family that previously fled Israel during its war of independence in 1948, has falsely accused the Jewish state of “genocide” in Gaza. She has also reportedly accused Israel of being a “nameless monstrosity” and a “fascist colonial entity” which “lies every day,” and has described her keffiyeh as “my superhero cape.”

The EU lawmaker’s political party, the far-left La France Insoumise (LFI — “France Unbowed”), is the largest member of the New Popular Front (NFP), an anti-Israel leftist coalition of political parties that came to power in France’s snap parliamentary elections in July. The coalition gained the most seats of any political bloc but not enough for a majority. Its leader, Jean-Luc Melenchon, has been lambasted by French Jews as a threat to their community as well as those who support Israel. He previously suggested that Jews killed Jesus, echoing a false claim that was used to justify antisemitic violence and discrimination throughout the Middle Ages in Europe

“It seems France has no future for Jews,” Rabbi Moshe Sebbag of Paris’ Grand Synagogue told the Times of Israel following the ascension of the NFP in July’s elections. “We fear for the future of our children.”

Shortly after the NFP’s victory, Melenchon — who in a 2017 speech referred to the French Jewish community as “an arrogant minority that lectures to the rest” — called for France to recognize a Palestinian state. Supporters of the hard-left coalition, which includes socialist and communist parties, poured into the streets of Paris waving Palestinian flags. French flags were largely absent from the celebrations.

In the wake of the Palestinian terrorist group Hamas’s invasion of and massacre across southern Israel last Oct. 7, Melenchon and his party issued a statement declaring the attacks “an armed offensive of Palestinian forces” as a result of continued Israeli “occupation.” Melenchon also failed to condemn a deputy who called Hamas a “resistance movement.”

Last month, CRIF released a survey of the French public that found that 55 percent of LFI supporters adhere to at least six antisemitic prejudices and that a third of LFI supporters indicated they adhere to at least nine such bigoted beliefs.

By comparison, nearly half (46 percent) of French people overall said they adhere to more than six anti-Jewish prejudices, and 52 percent of those who support the far-right Rassemblement National (RN — “National Rally”) said the same.

The survey also found that 20 percent of LFI supporters consider the departure of Jews from France desirable, compared to 15 percent of those who back RN and 12 percent of France’s general population (up from just 6 percent in 2020). The number increases among people under the age of 35, of whom a striking 17 percent think that the departure of Jews from France would be good for the country.

Similarly troubling, the results showed that 25 percent of LFI supporters have “sympathy” for Hamas, and 40 percent refuse to label the Palestinian Islamist group as a terrorist organization.

The survey noted that one in two French people now suspect their Jewish fellow citizens of “double allegiance” to Israel — a reality that CRIF president Yonathan Arfi blamed in part on LFI’s fierce anti-Israel opposition.

“LFI has given antisemitism a political endorsement,” he told Le Point. “We observe this toxic porosity between criticism of Israel and the ostracization of French Jews. The Palestinian cause becomes a license to hate.”

As for people aged 18 to 24, only 53 percent think that the majority of Jews are well integrated into the population, compared to 84 percent of French people more broadly, the survey found.

Meanwhile, almost a quarter of those surveyed think that Jews are not really French like the rest of their countrymen, an uptick of more than six points. The findings also showed that, among the French people surveyed, 64 percent believe that Jews have reason to be afraid of living in France, and 70 percent believe that the country has experienced an increase in antisemitism.

The survey results came as France has experienced a record surge of antisemitism in the wake of Hamas’s atrocities last Oct. 7, amid the ensuing war in Gaza. Antisemitic outrages rose by over 1,000 percent in the final three months of 2023 compared with the previous year, with over 1,200 incidents reported — greater than the total number of incidents in France for the previous three years combined.

This year, anti-Jewish hate crimes and demonstrations in France have continued to skyrocket.

In August, then-French Interior Minister Gérald Darmanin warned that incidents targeting the country’s Jewish community spiked by about 200 percent since Jan. 1.

“Two-thirds of anti-religious acts … are against Jews,” he added, according to French broadcaster BFM TV.

Darmanin appeared to call out the hard left for fostering a hostile environment for Jews during his remarks.

“There is hateful political speech against the Jews of France and it must be denounced,” he said, according to France Info. “We can clearly see that part of the left, unfortunately, is making this speech of encouragement of hatred toward our Jewish compatriots.”

Darmanin’s comments followed him stating weeks earlier that antisemitic acts in France have tripled over the last year. In the first half of 2024, 887 such incidents were recorded, almost triple the 304 recorded in the same period last year, he said.

The now-former interior minister also called out Melenchon during his remarks, asking, “How can politicians think antisemitism is residual?”

Darmanin was referring to a blog post published in June in which Melenchon wrote that antisemitism in France was “residual” and “absent” from anti-Israel rallies. Critics argued that Melenchon was downplaying the significance of antisemitism in France.

Under pressure from Melenchon and Hassan’s LFI party, the French Foreign Ministry quietly announced in March its intention to pursue legal action against any French-Israeli soldiers implicated in alleged war crimes in Gaza.

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