A report by Shimon Samuels
Paris, 7 November 2024
In 1980, I had arrived in Paris to work as Director for Europe of ADL-B’nai B’rith. I witnessed first-hand what would become a series of terror shootings and bombings of Jewish and Israeli targets throughout France and Europe.
At 6:38 p.m. of Friday 3 October 1980, the beginning of Shabbat and the eve of Sukkot, the wave of Palestinian terrorism began with the attack against the Paris Copernic Synagogue.
On the corner of rue Copernic lived the renowned journalist, Tamar Golan. I had come to wish her a good holiday. Just arrived from Israel for the week-end, was Aliza Shagrir, wife of well-known film maker Micha. She asked Tamar if anything was needed for dinner. The hostess replied, “perhaps a few figs. Go down with Shimon and he’ll show you the fruit shop opposite the synagogue.”
We went to the corner, she turned into rue Copernic, I went straight ahead. I heard the bomb, felt the shock wave which killed Aliza and three others, leaving also 46 wounded inside the synagogue.
The following morning, then Prime Minister Raymond Barre made the memorable statement: “This odious bombing wanted to strike Jews... and it hit innocent Frenchmen...”
At first, the Government attributed the attack to neo-Nazis. It took them precious months to realize who was really responsible. A year later, President Giscard d'Estaing said, “I lost my elections at Copernic,” as he refused to return to Paris from his hunting week-end.
Over the following two years, I tabulated 73 such incidents of antisemitic terror, 29 of which in France. This ended only after the 1982 Israeli incursion into Southern Lebanon, routing Palestinian terrorists and dispersing Europeans training in PLO camps. They went back home and targeted banks and government installations rather than synagogues, provoking a rigorous crackdown from national authorities.
In 1999, French intelligence obtained evidence pointing to the perpetrators of the Copernic bombing. These included the name of Hassan Diab, a Beirut-born Palestinian member of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine – Special Operations (PFLP-SO), alleged to have assembled and detonated the motor-bike bomb used in 1980.
Reported evidence, including false passports, hand-writing analysis and testimony from PFLP and other associates, gleaned from European and United States intelligence services, led to the 2008 detention and 2-year house arrest of Hassan Diab, then a University Professor of Sociology in Ottawa, Canada. This sparked a campaign of Palestinian sympathizers claiming mistaken identity.
I attended the 2010 extradition hearings which degenerated into antisemitic demonstrations. I sat in the courtroom, packed with Diab fans wearing Palestinian keffiyehs, calling for the destruction of Israel. For the next four years, I campaigned in the French and Canadian media for his transfer to a Paris court.
After serial appeals, Diab arrived in France where, in February 2015, he was charged with “murder, attempted murder; voluntary destruction of the property of others by an explosive or incendiary substance in an organized group; crimes related to individual or collective deeds aiming to gravely disturb public order by intimidation or terror.”
Finally, while charges were temporarily dropped by one judge, and the prosecutor had ordered Diab to remain in France pending an appeal, he instead escaped through Iceland to Canada, like a “thief in the night”, without papers nor passport, but allegedly with the complicity of Embassy staff.
The French Courts found him guilty of murder in absentia. Since then, Canada refuses to return him to France. This terrorist is now a professor in “social justice” at Carleton University, Ottawa.
On this year’s sombre anniversary of 7 October, the Vancouver-based international organization “Samidoun” (Palestinian Prisoner Solidarity Network) – designated by Israel as an NGO associated to terrorism in 2021 – celebrated Hamas and Hezbollah, burned a maple-leaf flag and called for death of Canada, the US and Israel. The organization subsequently confirmed and defended these “calls to action,” saying they accurately reflected its goal of “destroying the colonialist, capitalist state of Canada.”
At last, on 15 October 2024, Samidoun was designated as a terrorist organization also by the US and Canada. Now, it might have to hide in Ottawa, under the protection of Hassan Diab and radicalized students.
I am delighted that the issue of reopening the extradition case of Hassan Diab has been taken up by B’nai B’rith, the organization where I began my work in Europe. I hope that the families of the victims and the survivors may one day find closure. After 44 years, Justice is still denied.
Dr Shimon Samuels is Emeritus Director for International Relations of the Simon Wiesenthal Centre
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