"Bibas family not murdered" - French politician Rima Hassan defends Hamas

French-Palestinian politician Rima Hassan told France's Radio Sud just a few days after she was denied entry to Israel that the Bibas family was not murdered and Hamas's cause is "legitimate".

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."