Nadine Osman
A Paris mayor has been warned he will be ‘blown up’ after naming a street in commemoration of the thousands of Palestinians forced out of their homes by the creation of Israel.
Dominique Lesparre, 71, has also been hounded by far-right balaclava-wearing Zionists who vandalised the new road sign within hours of it being unveiled on June 12.
Bezons, in the north-west Paris, is now called Nakba [catastrophe] Alley in commemoration of the 1948 exodus of some 800,000 Palestinians expelled from their land because of the foundation of Israel. Many of the Palestinians’ towns and villages were razed to the ground, and they were forced into refugee camps which exist to this day.
Referring to Israel’s first Prime Minister, plaques placed around Nakba Alley read: ‘In memory of the expulsion of 800,000 Palestinians and the destruction of 532 villages in 1948 by the war criminal David Ben Gurion for the creation of the state of Israel.’
The city later removed the plaques after a request by the top central Government official for the Val-d’Oise region, who said they could ‘seriously disrupt public order’.
The plaques fury among Zionists who covered the plaque in graffiti and blacked out the road sign.
Lesparre and his colleagues at Bezons town hall also received ‘a multitude of threatening calls’, where the mayor was branded a ‘Nazi Communist’ and told ‘we will kill you’.
Reports were filed to the police, who suspect extremist pro-Israel groups for the threats.
One, the Jewish Defence League, a group banned the US, has been behind a number of violent attacks around Paris in recent years, with key members ending up in court for their crimes.
As regards to the current controversy, CRIF – France’s main umbrella group for Jewish organisations – released a statement saying the road signs ‘encourage the current acts of anti-Semitic violence by trying to give them historic justification’.
Emmanuel Nahshon, a spokesman for the Israeli foreign ministry, meanwhile said that Bezon was supporting Hamas, the group that runs Gaza, the Palestinian strip of land where dozens of protestors have been shot dead by Israeli snipers in recent days.
Referring to Bezons, Nahshon Twitted: ‘The first Hamas town hall in France’.
Aliza Bin-Noun, Israel’s ambassador to Paris, said the signs were ‘an incitement to hatred’ that supported ‘Palestinian terrorism’.
