(JTA) – A Paris suburb is scheduled to host a ceremony honoring several Palestinian terrorists.
Allam Kaabi and Salah Hamouri, both of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, are among those scheduled to appear Wednesday at the ceremony at the Bourse de Travail building, which belongs to the town of St. Denis.
Kaabi planned and carried out the 2001 assassination of Israel’s tourism minister, Rehavam Ze’evi. Hamouri was arrested for plotting to assassinate Israel’s Sephardic chief rabbi, Ovadia Yosef.
Both were among the 1,027 prisoners exchanged in 2011 for kidnapped Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit, a citizen of France and Israel.
The St. Denis event is being organized by the “national collective for just and viable peace between Palestinians and Israelis,” a group known by its French acronym, CNPJDPI. Also present will be a representative of Amnesty International, Martine Brizemur, according to a statement by the organization. The statement describes the scheduled speakers as “recently released prisoners.”
The Simon Wiesenthal Center in a letter of protest to the Association of French Mayors listed the crimes for which Kaabi and Hamouri were sentenced and the circumstances of their release.
“As we watch the Boston bombings unfold, it is perverse for any official in France to welcome the perpetrators of similar atrocities, whatever their origin or ideology,” Shimon Samuels, the Simon Wiesenthal Center’s director for international relations, wrote in the letter.
Speaking via a video uplink will be Fathya Barghouti, the wife of Majdi Rimawi — a PFLP terrorist who was convicted in 2008 of shooting Ze’evi in Jerusalem along with three other men. In February, Rimawi was made an honorary citizen of Bezons, also a Paris suburb.
