After a string of complaints related to a street in the Paris suburb of Bezons named “Nakba Lane,” a reference to the Palestinians’ derisive term for Israel’s establishment, the government ordered the offensive sign’s removal.
By: World Israel News Staff
On Tuesday, Paris suburb Bezons removed a plaque designating a local street as “Nakba Lane” following outcry from local Jewish groups and Israeli officials.
Bezons, which is governed by communist mayor Dominique Lesparre, officially renamed the street near city hall “Allee de la Nakba,” invoking the Palestinians’ preferred term for Israel’s independence in 1948, which they call call the “nakba” (catastrophe).
Plaques in French and Arabic affixed to the street sign 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,” reported Times of Israel.
By Tuesday morning, the plaques had been thoroughly defaced, police sources told AFP.
Eventually, the top regional government official requested the plaques’ removal.
“The first Hamas city hall in France,” tweeted Emmanuel Nahshon, spokesman for the Israeli foreign ministry, in response to Bezons’ Nakba Lane.
Israel’s ambassador to France, Aliza Bin-Noun, also accused Lesparre of supporting “Palestinian terrorism and inciting hate.”
Bezons’ previous flirtations with Palestinian incitement include a commemorative plaque honoring Majdi al-Rimawi, a member of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine terrorist organization. Rimawi received an 80-year prison sentence for his role in the 2001 murder of Knesset member Rehavam Ze’evi in Jerusalem.
During recent years, France has been a hotbed of anti-Semitism and Islamic terror attacks.