Ahead of June’s European elections, the French left is divided over Gaza. Rima Hassan, a Franco-Palestinian jurist and activist standing for France Insoumise, tells Jacobin why it's shameful for left-wingers to fail to defend Palestinians' rights.
"I | want to be a defender of human rights that takes the letter of international law seriously.” Rima Hassan is clear about how she’ll differ from most members of the European Parliament. A Franco-Palestinian jurist and activist, she is running on the left-wing France Insoumise list for June’s EU elections.
Born stateless in the al-Nayrab camp for Palestinian refugees in Syria, Hassan moved to France in the early 2000s before acquiring French nationality in 2010 at the age of eighteen. Her master’s thesis at the Sorbonne was a comparative study on how international law has treated apartheid South Africa and Israel. She founded the Observatory of Refugee Camps in 2019 and then the Action Palestine collective in the wake of the October 7 attacks and Israel’s ensuing invasion of Gaza.
Hassan sat down with Jacobin’s Harrison Stetler for an extended conversation on the European elections, the current war, and how Israel can be held to account.