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Rima Hassan
Rima Hassan Mobarak (Arabic: ريما حسان مبارك, Rīmā Ḥasān Mubārak; born 28 April 1992) is a French-Palestinian politician born in the Palestinian refugee camp of Neirab, near Aleppo, Syria. She arrived in France around the age of nine and settled with her family in Niort. After obtaining French nationality upon reaching adulthood, she earned a master's degree in international law from Panthéon-Sorbonne University. Hassan then founded, in 2019, the 'Refugee Camps Observatory', an NGO dedicated to the study and protection of refugee camps worldwide. In 2023, she founded the 'Action Palestine France' collective. That same year, she joined the far-left La France Insoumise to contest the 2024 European parliament election on Manon Aubry's list. She was elected to the European Parliament on 9 June 2024.[1] She has been involved in several controversies relating to support for Terrorism.[2] Family and originsRima Hassan Mobarak was born on 28 April 1992, in the Neirab camp, near Aleppo, Syria.[3] She is the youngest of six children. Her mother, Nabiha (1958-2021), was a teacher, while her father, Ahmad, is a former mechanic in the Syrian Air Force.[4] Her father's parents, Palestinians originally from the village of Al-Birwa located near Acre, were forced into exile to Syria during the 1948 Arab-Israeli War.[5][6] Her maternal grandmother, on the other hand, came from a prominent Syrian Kurdish family, the Hananu.[7] She married a Palestinian refugee from Salfit.[6][8] Because of her notable status and his being a Palestinian communist refugee, she chose to forsake her heritage and settle with him in the camp.[4] Youth and studiesDue to the unhappy marriage and an abusive relationship between her parents, Hassan's mother left the camp shortly after her birth and managed to immigrate to France, where she reunited with one of her sisters.[4] She then spent eight years attempting to regain custody of her children and transfer them to France.[4] Her mother ultimately managed to regain custody, and Hassan arrived in France around the age of nine. She settled in Niort, in the Deux-Sèvres department (district), with her mother,[9] sister and four brothers.[10] She was elected to the children's municipal council in 2003, in Niort.[11] She studied there at Ernest Pérochon Primary School.[12] During this time, her mother did not work as a teacher, her original profession, but instead worked in restaurants to support her family.[4] Hassan was targeted by hate speech during her schooling, including being called ethnic slurs like 'bougnoule' (wog) by her classmates.[4] This led to a progressive loss of her native language, Arabic.[4] She obtained a scientific baccalaureate from La Venise Verte High School in 2011.[12] Stateless until her adulthood, she obtained French nationality in 2010.[5] As soon as she reached the age of majority, she sought to travel to Palestine via Tel Aviv, intending to "finally discover the land of her ancestors", but she was prevented from boarding at Charles de Gaulle Airport.[9] After these events, she pursued studies in law and obtained her bachelor's degree. For this, she spent two years at the University of Évry, then one year at the University of Montpellier, until 2014.[12] She spent a year in Lebanon and completed her master's degree in 2016 at Panthéon-Sorbonne University (Paris 1).[10] She focused on the legal comparison between South Africa and Israel in a master's thesis in international law on the issue of apartheid.[13][14] According to her, obtaining her degree from Panthéon-Sorbonne was a source of great pride for her mother because the university's reputation would have been known even in the Neirab camp.[4] WorkHassan joined the French Office for the Protection of Refugees and Stateless Persons (OFPRA) in 2016,[10] and after 18 months, she worked at the National Court of Asylum Law[5][15] for six years until 2023.[9] In 2019, she founded the NGO 'Refugee Camps Observatory'.[10][16][4][17] The following year, Hassan participated in a roundtable organized by Emmaus for the World Refugee Day, on 20 June.[18] In 2022, the Interministerial Delegation for Reception and Integration dedicated a portrait to her as an "Inspirational Woman".[19][20] That same year, she revisited the notion of "fraternity" from the French national motto in a podcast, along with other participants.[21] On 3 February 2023, she spoke at the French Senate for the symposium "Israel-Palestine: State of Affairs" organized by Paris Senator Esther Benbassa, in collaboration with L'Histoire and the French Research Center in Jerusalem.[14][22] Her intervention addressed the issue of apartheid in Israeli society.[23] Following the Hamas attack on 7 October 2023, amid the bombing of the Gaza Strip and the ground offensive launched by Israel, she terminated her contract with the National Court of Asylum Law and declined an advocacy position on migration issues offered by Amnesty International. Instead, she moved to the Palestinian refugee camp of al-Nayrab, near Aleppo, "to be close to her people" and established the Action Palestine France collective on Telegram.[9] Until November 2023, she also advised L'Oréal on diversity and refugee integration issues.[24] Political careerIn August 2023, Hassan participated in the summer days organized by The Ecologists, alongside the rapper Médine or the politician Clémentine Autain.[25] In the 2024 European elections, Hassan joined the list of La France Insoumise (LFI), where she was placed seventh,[26][27] after also being approached to be on the list of The Greens but in a non-eligible position.[28][29] She was elected.[30] She explains her political commitment to LFI's list by the "urgent need to act politically now" regarding the situation in the Gaza Strip.[31] Political positionsLiving conditions of refugees and reception of migrantsIn May 2020, Hassan expressed concern to Agence France-Presse about the health and security effects of the COVID-19 pandemic in refugee camps.[32] In September 2020, she intervened within a collective and associations to call on the French government and local elected officials to mobilize to welcome refugees and thus help improve the humanitarian situation in the Mória camp in Greece.[33] Israeli-Palestinian conflict Rima Hassan has long advocated the creation of a democratic bi-national state as a solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.[34][28][35] She wrote in November 2023 that "there will be no two-state solution",[36] and that "the solution is a democratic and secular bi-national state."[37] Explaining herself later, she specified that she "dreams" of a bi-national state with peaceful coexistence of Palestinians and Israelis, and is in favor of the two-state solution,[36][38] a solution defended by her party La France Insoumise.[28]She uses the pro-Palestinian slogan "from the river to the sea".[36] Israel-Hamas warFrom the beginning of the Israel–Hamas war, Hassan has supported "the Resistance" to Israel. She stated in an online interview following the Hamas attack that she refused the "political-media" injunction to "transform [this] natural empathy into support for the State of Israel."[9] She condemned equally "Hamas' war crimes", "Israel's impunity", and the "genocide" of the Palestinians.[5][13]. Controversially, she has supported the right of French-Palestinians to join Hamas, Palestinian Islamic Jihad, and other groups proscribed as terrorist organizations in France.[39] ControversiesIn August 2023, Forbes ranked Hassan among the "40 exceptional women who have marked the year and who have made France shine internationally".[40][41] In January 2024, this nomination was contested by Yonathan Arfi, the president of the Conseil Représentatif des Institutions juives de France ("Representative Council of French Jewish Institutions"; CRIF) who accused her of "justifying the atrocities of 7 October" by Hamas[42][43][44] and by the television presenter Arthur who accused her of "apologizing for terrorism".[45][46] Following this controversy, Forbes canceled the awards ceremony.[47][44] In response, Hassan filed a complaint against Arthur for defamation.[48][46] On 30 April 2024, Hassan was summoned by the police for apology for terrorism relating to comments she made on social media in the winter of 2023; she claimed on that occasion that she was "serene" but then denounced "the political pressures aimed at compromising [her] freedom of expression [at] a crucial political moment for the future of the French", referring to the European elections that year.[49] In May 2024, Hassan faced controversy for a message she posted on X (formerly Twitter) accusing the CRIF of having dictated to the French Minister of Foreign Affairs, Stéphane Séjourné, a declaration concerning Israel.[46] In July 2024, The Left in the European Parliament – GUE/NGL proposed Hassan as vice-president of the Human Rights Subcommittee. The day after this proposal, fellow MEP François-Xavier Bellamy (The Republicans) used his connections to block her election to this position by accusing her of "antisemitism". In response, she published several messages on X targeting Bellamy.[50][51][a] Following these messages, Bellamy filed a complaint for "threats and incitement to commit a crime or offence against an elected official", believing that she had "named him for the vindictiveness of Islamist circles". The President of the European Parliament, Roberta Metsola, opened an investigation following Bellamy's complaint, suspecting Hassan of having breached the institution's code of conduct.[50][51] In response, Hassan also filed a complaint against Bellamy for "public defamation and slanderous denunciation".[50] On 22 August 2024, deputies from the presidential Renaissance party announced their intention to appeal to the public prosecutor to have Hassan's parliamentary immunity lifted for having participated in a pro-Palestinian demonstration in Amman, Jordan. They accused her of being "pro-Hamas": placards held during the demonstration paid tribute to the Hamas leader who was recently assassinated in Tehran.[52][53] Hassan denied the accusations by describing this demonstration, which takes place every Friday, as a recurring demonstration in support of the Palestinians and which is not pro-Hamas.[52] They also accused her of fuelling "antisemitism", which she also denied. She stated that those who accuse her are "known for their position of supporting a genocidal regime that [she is] fighting and that [she] will continue to fight with or without a mandate as an MEP."[53] CyberbullyingAmid the events of 2023 and 2024, Hassan became the target of a harassment campaign by a pro-Israel group of about thirty members. Her phone number was reportedly doxxed via Telegram, leading to an onslaught of death and rape threats directed at her.[54] Notes
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