The Representative Council of Jewish Institutions in France (CRIF), the local affiliate of the World Jewish Congress, is demanding a parliamentary inquiry into revelations made last week by the former chief of French intelligence that the federal security services agreed to a secret non-aggression pact with a the Abu Nidal Organization, the Palestinian terrorist group that perpetrated a deadly 1982 attack in Paris’ Jewish quarter.
On August 9, 1982, a grenade was thrown at the restaurant and delicatessen owned by Jo Goldenberg, located rue des Rosiers, in the historic Jewish quarter of La Marais, where some 50 diners were gathered. A commando subsequently entered the restaurant and opened fire. In less than three minutes, six people were killed and 22 wounded, and the perpetrators vanished.
Thirty-seven years following the attack, the perpetrators have still not been brought to justice. The restaurant closed its doors in 2006, and only a commemorative plaque – installed in 2011 to replace an original that disappeared in 2011 - preserves the memory of this tragic event.
In a statement, CRIF President Francis Kalifat called for "the establishment of a parliamentary commission of inquiry and the lifting of the defense secret", saying that “if these facts prove accurate, they would be extremely serious and constitute an unprecedented state scandal".
CRIF also called on President Emmanuel Macron to “make all the diplomatic and judicial efforts to ensure that the terrorists responsible for this massacre, who are refugees in Jordan, Ramallah, and Norway, can be heard by the French judges in charge of the case.”
