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This comes just days after Hassan was refused entry to Israel alongside other members of an official delegation of the European Parliament.
By MATHILDA HELLER FEBRUARY 28, 2025 09:14 Updated: FEBRUARY 28, 2025 09:15
Rima Hassan at the Humanity festival, whose name is la Fete de l Humanite, in Bretigny-sur-Orge, the 14 September 2024.
(photo credit: Photo by Magali Cohen / Hans Lucas / AFP via Getty Images)
The Bibas family was not murdered and Hamas's cause is "legitimate," French-Palestinian politician Rima Hassan told France's Radio Sud just a few days after she was denied entry to Israel.
The comments, made in an interview with Jean-Jacques Bourdin on Thursday, come in the wake of Hassan's extensive, consistent, and ongoing anti-Israel activities and rhetoric.
Bourdin spoke of the funeral of Kfir, Ariel, and Shiri Bibas on Wednesday, adding that they were "murdered."
Hassan, a La France Insoumise politician and member of the European Parliament, dismissed this claim with an outright "no" to the suggestion. She continued by lamenting a lack of a "press review on the subject before opening this topic."
"I don’t know who is preparing the files here, but perhaps the method needs to be revisited a bit," she added.
On February 19, Hassan tweeted "Kfir, Ariel and Shiri Bibas were killed by an Israeli strike. This had also been communicated and confirmed in November 2023."
Official forensic findings published on 21 and 22 February confirmed that the babies and their mother were murdered in captivity by Gaza terrorists in November 2023, just a month after their abduction, and were not killed by an IAF strike, as Hamas originally claimed.
Bourdin posed to her whether the babies would have died if Hamas had not kidnapped them. She responded by saying: "Would there have been Hamas and, in particular, the attacks of the 7th, if there had not been an illegal occupation and an illegal blockade imposed on the Gaza Strip for decades?"
"Hamas, it's originally a religious movement that then structured itself into a political group," she continued. "It was elected and then developed an armed wing. That's what Hamas is. Its modus operandi is a terrorist one, just like the FLN, just like Mandela’s party. You often see this kind of attack in decolonial movements—unfortunately, it’s a historical continuum."
"Hamas has a legitimate cause if we refer to UN resolutions. UN resolutions are very clear on the right of colonized peoples to resort to armed struggle, but it doesn’t mean that all methods of armed struggle are justified."
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"Le Hamas a une action légitime, mais ce n'est pas parce que les résolutions de l'ONU sont extrêmement claires sur le droit des peuples colonisés à la lutte armée que les processus de lutte armée justifient tout" rappelle @RimaHas pic.twitter.com/fa4bDhsl5I
— Sud Radio (@SudRadio) February 27, 2025Israel ban
On February 24, Hassan was refused entry to Israel at Ben-Gurion Airport alongside other members of an official delegation of the European Parliament.
Hassan and the other officials were due to visit the West Bank in a trip that had reportedly received prior approval from Israeli authorities.
Responding to the denial, Hassan said, "The State of Israel wants to prevent elected representatives from seeing the extent of the human rights violations it carries out on the ground."
Earlier that same day, it was reported that the Diaspora Affairs and Combatting Antisemitism Ministry asked Interior Minister Moshe Arbel to block her entry.
Hassan has publicly called for a boycott of commercial companies operating in Israel, participated in initiatives to boycott Israel, and published content encouraging sanctions against the state.
Diaspora Minister Amichai Chikli stated, “Israel is not obligated to allow the entry of any official representative from a foreign country if they engage in boycotting it and undermining its legitimacy."
Who is Rima Hassan?
Hassan is a 32-year-old lawyer who graduated from Sorbonne University with a background in international law.
She was born in the Neirab camp near Aleppo in Syria, a settlement established for Palestinian refugees. Hassan moved to France at the age of nine and became a naturalized French citizen in 2010.
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