HONORS FOR A TERRORIST IN FRANCE
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887323415304578368031095955670.html?mod=WSJ_Opinion_LEFTTopBucket
A Paris suburb sends a message of ‘peace’ to the Mideast.
Last month the local council of a Paris suburb decided to send a symbolic message of peace to the Middle East—via a convicted Palestinian terrorist. Specifically, the leaders of Bezon voted unanimously to grant “honorary citizenship” to Majdi al Rimawi, who’s currently in prison for his role in the 2001 assassination of Israeli Tourism Minister Rehavam Zeevi.
The suburb’s official statement on the matter, written last week by Left Front Mayor Dominique Lesparre, makes no mention of the late Zeevi. The statement explains only that Bezon conferred the honor on Rimawi as part of its “strong tradition of peace, cooperation and solidarity with the Palestinian people” and its efforts in the “global movement for recognition of the Palestinian state.”
Mr. Lesparre’s statement describes Rimawi as a “resistant to the occupation of his country,” which is one way of putting it. Another way is that Rimawi, an operative of the old leftist-revolutionary Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, was the mastermind of Zeevi’s assassination.
According to the Jerusalem District Court judges who convicted him in 2008, Rimawi supplied the gunmen with cash, weapons, fake identity papers, information about the minister’s whereabouts and an escape route after the deed was done. The ruling, by the way, was based mostly on the accounts of Rimawi’s co-conspirators. The court gave Rimawi life in prison plus another 80 years for Zeevi’s murder and several other attacks and attempts on Israeli civilians.
Perhaps it’s not surprising that Mr. Lesparre seems oblivious to Rimawi’s crimes. The mayor’s statement last week laments that “to date more than 4,500 Palestinians, including women, children and the elderly, languish, mostly without trial in Israeli jails, because, like [Rimawi], they resist the occupation and colonization of their country.”
If he believes that, it’s worth wondering why the town doesn’t go ahead and offer them all honorary citizenship and permanent residency. Not all 4,500 can be serving life sentences, surely, and a few might well enjoy a home outside Paris once they’re released.
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