In France, Judicial Harassment Tactics Used to Silence Pro-Palestinian Lawmaker

Original article: En Francia, se utilizan tácticas de acoso judicial para silenciar a una legisladora pro-Palestina

French MEP Rima Hassan faced court proceedings on July 7 after enduring two years of judicial harassment by pro-Israel organizations, the Macron government, and far-right groups. The charges, grounded in «apology of terrorism» laws, originate from a deleted tweet regarding Palestinian self-defense. Her detention in April involved leaks about alleged drug connections that were later disproven, covert surveillance, and an interrogation laced with Islamophobia. This is part of a broader campaign of legal persecution, media defamation, and threats to revoke her nationality.

On July 7, Rima Hassan, an MEP from La France Insoumise, will appear in court for the first time, following two years of harassment from pro-Israel organizations, the Emmanuel Macron government, and far-right entities.

The case against her is based on so-called «apology of terrorism» laws after she tweeted in defense of Palestinians’ right to self-defense. This stance is controversial within the dominant political culture in the country, which fails to acknowledge Israel’s genocide against Palestine or France’s own international obligations to prevent it.

“I dedicated my youth to the Palestinian cause. As long as there is oppression, resistance is not only a right but also a duty,” the legislator tweeted. This quote is from Kōzō Okamoto, a member of the Japanese Red Army, made during a trial related to a terrorist attack that killed 26 people at an airport near Tel Aviv in 1972.

For Hassan, disseminating this quote was an expression of the idea—clearly supported by international law—that peoples have the right to oppose a foreign army that occupies or colonizes their territory, which did not imply endorsing the actions of the Japanese militant. Shortly after, she deleted the post to avoid confusion.

However, before she could remove it, Matthias Renault—a politician from the Rassemblement National (National Rally) led by Marine Le Pen—acted swiftly, presenting the tweet to a Paris court on March 27 to initiate judicial proceedings. This initiative was supported by the interior minister and two powerful French pro-Israel groups: the European Jewish Organization (OJE) and the International League Against Racism and Antisemitism (LICRA). Both organizations have led a campaign of legal persecution against Palestinian defenders in France, falsely categorizing expressions of anti-Zionism and even criticisms of Israel as examples of anti-Jewish racism. OJE President Muriel Ouaknine-Melki, despite maintaining good relations with Macron, criticized him last year for his merely symbolic decision to recognize the State of Palestine. The OJE also acted as a civil party in a 2023 complaint against Jean-Paul Delescaut, a unionist from northern France, who was convicted for «apology of terrorism.» Among the imposed sanctions was a €5,000 fine that the activist was ordered to pay to the Jewish organization before the conviction was overturned on appeal in March.

“It doesn’t matter whether you’re a politician, an activist, a comedian, or a journalist; if you say something about Israel that they don’t like, they will file a lawsuit,” Hassan remarked.

Since her election two years ago, the MEP has been repeatedly targeted by various pro-Israel groups that have initiated legal proceedings against her. So far, she has faced a total of 16 lawsuits of this kind, although the judiciary has already dismissed 13 of them. Eight of the 16 cases were promoted by organizations such as B’nai B’rith, the Jewish Observatory of France (OJF), and the National Bureau for Vigilance Against Antisemitism (BNVCA).

“What I’ve learned from this is how to better identify the actors involved in the judicialization of debate in France,” Hassan said.

False Information Leaked to the Press

This transformation of political debates into prolonged legal conflicts intensified before her detention in early April.

Following the filing of the complaint, the court subjected the MEP to unusual and stringent surveillance—as if expecting her to flee justice. Hassan had voluntarily appeared for all legal actions initiated against her, even when she was not obliged to do so. There was no legitimate reason to believe she might flee. Nevertheless, according to a report from Mediapart, her travel records were obtained from Air France, the Société nationale des chemins de fer français (French National Railway Company, SNCF), and Thalys, the Eurostar operator. Her phone was also monitored via active geolocation. She and her team became aware of this when she voluntarily presented herself to the police, who questioned her about her phone, claiming they knew she had it just minutes before.

Hassan has two devices—one for work and another for personal and political messaging. She left the latter with a parliamentary assistant out of concern that it might be searched and its content leaked to the media.

Her concerns were justified. Shortly after her detention, journalists closely working with the French police and courts leaked information on social media. They claimed that the police had found an illegal synthetic drug called 3-MMC in her bag, alongside CBD, a legal substance. The news had an immediate impact on the French press, despite being unverified. More than 500 articles linked her detention to the alleged discovery of drugs, explained Fiona Vanston, Hassan’s press assistant, to Jacobin.

According to Vanston, almost no media outlets reached out to the MEP for her side of the story or inquired whether she disputed the accusation. Most inquiries focused on her place of detention, in an attempt to obtain photos upon her release.

The court’s own analysis quickly dismissed the presence of the illegal substance. The court had the results by April 4. However, they did not make them public until the 9th of that month. Possible drug charges were discreetly dismissed for lack of evidence.

Le Canard enchaîné reported that the leak came from the spokesperson for the Ministry of Justice, Sacha Straub-Kahn. He denied these accusations on the official X account of the Ministry of Justice and announced he would sue the newspaper for defamation, in addition to pursuing a second legal action over the anti-Semitic insults received after the article’s publication.

Meanwhile, Hassan remained detained for 13 hours before being released. Her parliamentary position theoretically guarantees her immunity from such processes for exercising freedom of expression. However, her detention marked an escalation in the judicial campaign against her. The legislator never relied on that privilege as a defense, which represents a political gesture of support for others who do not enjoy similar protection.

The court evaded this expectation of immunity by leaking false news and justifying the arrest on the grounds that she was caught in the act. It was the first instance of a member of the European Parliament being deprived of liberty for a tweet, based on the presumption of having been caught while committing a crime.

An Internal Enemy

During her detention, Hassan alternated between confinement in a small cell and repeated interrogation sessions lasting up to an hour and a half.

She told Jacobin that, in addition to questions about her background, she was asked about her relationship with Islam and whether she was a practicing Muslim. “It was as if they were trying to link me to radical Islamism,” she asserted.

Hassan, who never discusses her religious beliefs, stated that these kinds of questions were clearly racist. Born in Syria to a family of refugees who fled during the Nakba (catastrophe in Arabic), she moved to France at the age of 10 and obtained French citizenship at 18.

I mentioned the case of La France Insoumise deputy Thomas Portes, who has faced sinister accusations of ties to terrorism after meeting with representatives of the Popular Front for the Liberation as well as an NGO since accused of financing Hamas. Portes has yet to be charged with any crime, but he was singled out in a parliamentary report last year due to his connections with these organizations. I asked Hassan if she thought this kind of surveillance against her was an attempt to build a similar case.

The interviewee noted that she considered it unlikely: nothing was found except for the normal movements of her position and some personal trips.

Unlike Portes, who was born in France, she also faces a sustained media and political campaign demanding that her French citizenship be revoked. For Hassan, this is due to both her leftist political stance supportive of Palestine and a pure form of racism from her detractors.

Last July, Marion Maréchal, the far-right politician and niece of Marine Le Pen, stated she considered Hassan «French only on paper.» This is a barely veiled reference to the antisemitism reminiscent of the 1930s, which described Jews and other minorities as compatriots solely by virtue of some document, labeling them as foreigners who poisoned the political life of the country by introducing subversive ideas.

Hassan was also attacked by former Interior Minister Bruno Retailleau, now leader and presidential candidate of the once-powerful conservative organization Les Républicains. Retailleau publicly supported the revocation of the MEP’s citizenship for her political views. He later backtracked, but not because he had changed his mind; rather, because doing so would leave Hassan stateless, which would be illegal under international law.

“I am considered suspicious because of my origins. It’s the rhetoric of the internal enemy, in a context of rising Islamophobia in Europe,” Hassan remarked.

International Obligations

However, the government selectively supports international law. Hassan told Jacobin that the executive not only circumvents internal norms to target her with political repression but also systematically breaches its obligations toward the region under the international agreements it is part of.

She asserts that it is not about whether the French government sympathizes with the Palestinian people. Rather, it has a legal obligation to sanction Israel for its human rights violations, to try to change its behavior through diplomatic pressure, and to execute arrest warrants against its leaders issued by the International Criminal Court. Instead, the foreign minister has repeatedly signed waivers to allow Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to fly over French airspace, despite the government’s obligation to arrest him.

Hassan points out that despite all this, she still believes in the rule of law. She is a member of the European Parliament, not a revolutionary. This makes the repressive tactics aimed at silencing her particularly egregious. The goal, she argues, is to demonstrate that speaking out publicly to try to change the consensus in France regarding the genocide in Palestine has consequences.

An Intensifying Campaign

France is currently under a neoconservative climate of a «war on terrorism.» The left outside La France Insoumise took more than a year to clearly label Israel’s actions as genocide. Unfounded accusations against party leader and 2027 presidential candidate Jean-Luc Mélenchon keep emerging. A recent public radio program, France Culture, manipulated audio clips to falsely assert that he was the “new” Jean-Marie Le Pen, who referred to the gas chambers of Auschwitz as “a detail of history.” A professional journalists’ organization from the station promptly condemned the program.

One of the endless controversies surrounding Hassan involved her sharing testimonies about the Israeli military training dogs to sexually assault Palestinian prisoners. She was quickly accused of participating in a blood libel and received widespread condemnation from the French political-media class. This year, a report by Nicolas Kristof for The New York Times confirmed that this tactic was indeed used. A particularly loathsome journalist posing as a pseudo-leftist working at Libération often mocks her, calling her “Lady Gaza.”

Anasse Kazib, a presidential candidate for the Trotskyist party, Permanent Revolution, was in court last week facing similar charges. The accusations were based on tweets published after October 7, 2023, condemning Israeli colonialism and supporting the Palestinian people’s right to resistance. Mélenchon participated in a demonstration outside the court, and Hassan has repeatedly called for the charges to be dropped.

The MEP asserts that her commitment to the cause and her dedication to expanding the limits of acceptable discourse on issues like the one-state solution represent the true reasons she has been targeted. Furthermore, she has shifted the consensus within La France Insoumise from its historical pro-two-state position to an openness to considering a bi-national state in the region. This, she argues, threatens the interests aimed at limiting the range of acceptable opinions.

The Weight of Words

I asked Hassan if, beyond the constant attacks on her reputation and the judicial persecution against her, she ever feared for her physical safety.

“No,” she replied:

Fear is not part of how I see things. I am very clear about what the Palestinian cause requires. It demands sacrifices. You cannot commit to it if you are afraid. For me… it requires commitment and a degree of sacrifice.

For this reason, Hassan asserts that it is not worth questioning her way of speaking about Palestine. Despite having undergone more than 45 hours of interrogation by the police, she says there is simply no way to know in advance which words to avoid.

“I have received accusations for things that no one could have anticipated, [such as] using the word ‘insurgence.’ “How can you know, when you tweet or make a statement, that you can’t use the word ‘insurgence’ because on the other side they will say you actually mean an intifada (uprising in Arabic)?” Hassan asked.

“I’ve also received accusations for quoting Franz Fanon. I have his books in my house. They are sold in bookstores across France. You cannot live thinking you must avoid using his words because you risk a complaint. These actions clearly demonstrate their abusive character.”

But it is worth it, she asserts, for the demands of the Palestinian cause. Nice speeches about the need for «peace» or gestures like the recent “honorary citizenship” conferred to Palestinians by the Paris city hall, governed by socialists, achieve limited impact.

“For me, it’s a fundamental political issue to understand that, as opposition, we must accept that we need to make sacrifices for the Palestinian cause, that we will be in the spotlight, that we will be taken to court, and that we will be defamed in the press,” Hassan stated. “But those in power have responsibilities and obligations to fulfill.”

Article written by Marlon Ettinger, author of Zemmour and Gaullism and co-host of Flep24, a podcast about the French legislative elections of 2024, originally published in WIRE.