Mahmoud Hamshari#Assassination

{{Infobox person

| birth_name =

| birth_date = 29 August 1939

| birth_place = Umm Khaled, Tulkarm, Mandatory Palestine

| death_date = {{death date and age|9 January 1973|29 August 1939|df=y}}

| death_place = Paris, France

| death_cause = Assassination

| burial_place = Père Lachaise Cemetery, Paris

| nationality = Palestinian

| alma_mater =

| occupation = Teacher

| years_active = 1960s{{ndash}}1972

| spouse = Marie-Claude Hamshari

}}

File:Père-Lachaise - Division 85 - Hamchari 01.jpg, Paris]]

Mahmoud Hamshari ({{langx|ar|محمود الهمشري}}; 1939–1973) was a Palestinian official who was assassinated by Israel in Paris, France, on 8 December 1972. He was serving as the representative of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) to France when the incident occurred. He died in a Paris hospital on 9 January 1973.

Early life and education

Hamshari was born in a village, Umm Khaled, west of Tulkarm, on 29 August 1939.{{cite news|author=Maher Hassan|title="زى النهارده".. وفاة القيادى الفلسطينى محمود الهمشرى أثر عملية اغتياله في ١٠ يناير ١٩٧٣|work=Al-Masry Al-Youm|date=10 January 2023|access-date=16 October 2023|url=https://www.almasryalyoum.com/news/details/2789184}} The family had to leave Umm Khaled in 1948 when it was occupied by Israel, and the depopulated village was absorbed into the neighbouring town of Netanya. He obtained a PhD in history from a French university.{{cite news|author=Rana Abdullah|title=I Knew a Hero Once: My Uncle Mahmoud, in My Memory, 40 Years On|url=https://www.proquest.com/docview/1349645228|access-date=17 October 2023|work=Palestine Chronicle|date=9 May 2013|id={{ProQuest|1349645228}}}}

Pedagogic career and activism

Hamshari worked as a teacher in Kuwait and Algeria. He was a member of the Fatah. He was tasked to organize the Palestinian students in Algeria and worked closely with Khalil al-Wazir, known as Abu Jihad. Hamshari returned to Palestine in 1967 and established the Fatah cells in the region.

Hamshari was appointed representative of the PLO to France in 1968, being the first head of the Palestine office in the country.{{cite book|author=Khadijeh Habashneh|title=Knights of Cinema: The Story of the Palestine Film Unit|series=Palgrave Studies in Arab Cinema |year=2023|publisher=Palgrave Macmillan|location=Cham|isbn=978-3-031-18858-9|page=37|translator1=Samirah Alkassim|translator2=Nadine Fattaleh|doi=10.1007/978-3-031-18858-9|s2cid=259622256|url=https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-18858-9}} There he founded a branch of the General Union of Palestinian Students.{{cite news|title=49 عاما على اغتيال محمود الهمشري|url=https://wafa.ps/Pages/Details/39412|access-date=16 October 2023

|language=ar|work=Palestinian Information Center|date=10 January 2022}} Through the Union, Hamshari organized the visit of the Swiss film director Jean-Luc Godard to Jordan and Lebanon where he met with the Palestinian fighters in 1969. Elias Sanbar, a member of the Union, accompanied Godard during the visit.

Hamshari was in office until 8 December 1972 when he was badly wounded in a Mossad attack in Paris. After this attack Sadegh Ghotbzadeh, an Iranian who became foreign minister of Iran, temporarily served as the PLO representative in France.{{cite book|year=2006|author=Houchang Esfandiar Chehabi|editor=Houchang Esfandiar Chehabi|title=Distant Relations Iran and Lebanon in the last 500 years|page=195|publisher=I.B. Tauris|location=London; New York|isbn=978-1860645617|chapter=The Anti-Shah Opposition and Lebanon

|chapter-url=https://archive.org/stream/DistantRelations/Distant%20relations_djvu.txt}}

Personal life

Hamshari was married to a French woman, Marie-Claude, and they had a daughter, Amina.{{cite news|title=Olympics Massacre: Munich - The real story|newspaper=The Independent|date=22 January 2006|url=https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/olympics-massacre-munich-the-real-story-5336955.html|access-date=16 October 2023}}

Assassination

Israel assassinated leading Palestinian figures after the killing of Israeli Olympic team members by the Black September Organization in Munich in September 1972.{{cite news

|title=Israeli confirms assassinations of Munich massacre plotters|newspaper=The Washington Post|date=24 November 1993|access-date=16 October 2023|url=https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/politics/1993/11/24/israeli-confirms-assassinations-of-munich-massacre-plotters/254c1ace-51b8-4d93-9012-35a49951ac10/}} Aharon Yariv, the Israeli minister of information, was in charge of the assassination plans targeting Hamshari and other Palestinians. Hamshari was accused by the Israeli authorities and media outlets of being directly related to this incident. They also claimed that he was the leader of the Black September Organization in France.

A Mossad agent acting as an Italian journalist contacted Hamshari for an interview. When he was meeting with the Mossad agent, a group of Mossad operatives allegedly entered his home and inserted a bomb under a telephone. This group was headed by Zvi Malchin.

Hamshari was severely wounded at his home on Paris's Rue d'Alésia street on the morning of 8 December 1972 by a booby-trapped device remotely controlled through a telephone call.{{cite book|author1=Michael Bar-Zohar|author2=Nissim Mishal|author1-link=Michael Bar-Zohar|title=Mossad: The Greatest Missions of the Israeli Secret Service|year=2012|publisher=Ecco|location=New York|isbn=978-0-06-212344-2|url=https://archive.org/stream/pdfy-kxJuN00KtPU1iooO/Mossad+%5BThe+Greatest+Missions+Of+The+Israeli+Secret+Service%5D_djvu.txt

|page=195}} He was treated at the Cochin Hospital but lost his leg in the attack. Hamshari was able to provide the French authorities with details of the attackbefore his death in the hospital on 9 January 1973. He was buried in the Père Lachaise Cemetery, Paris, which was visited by the PLO leader Yasser Arafat on 3 May 1989.{{cite journal|author=Shai Ginsburg|title="The Rock of Our Very Existence": Anton Shammas's Arabesques and the Rhetoric of Hebrew Literature|issue=3|journal=Comparative Literature|volume=58|date=Summer 2006|page=194|doi=10.1215/-58-3-187}}{{cite news

|title=Jeux olympiques de Munich: comment Israël a vengé la mort de ses athlètes à ces jeux avec l'opération secrète "Colère de Dieu"|publisher=BBC|date=6 September 2022|url=https://www.bbc.com/afrique/articles/cg3114pjlmwo|language=fr|access-date=25 October 2023}}

=Aftermath=

The following day, Arab diplomats in Paris organized a three-hour press conference and warned that the French government was responsible for their well-being.{{cite book|author=Aaron J. Klein|title=Striking back: The 1972 Munich Olympics Massacre and Israel's deadly response|year=2005|publisher=Random House|location=New York|isbn=9781400064274 |pages=129–130|url=https://archive.org/details/strikingback197200klei/page/130/mode/2up?q=Mahamoud|author-link=Aaron J. Klein}} Israel also launched an information campaign via Western media outlets such as Agence France-Presse and BBC.{{cite journal|title=The Al-Hamshari Affair and the News Media|journal=Journal of Palestine Studies|volume=2|issue=3|year=1973|jstor=2535765|doi=10.2307/2535765|pages=145–146}} According to Israel, Hamshari was injured while making an explosive device at his home.

After the assassination of Hamshari, the PLO intensified its attacks on Israelis on the orders of Ali Hassan Salameh.{{cite thesis|author=Benjamin A. Dawson|pages=50–51|degree=MA|date=June 2013|location=Naval Postgraduate School|title=Manhunts: A Policy Makers Guide to High-Value Targeting

|url=https://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/document?repid=rep1&type=pdf&doi=7bca7418f3de9836b6b680038477df444b281c31}} The first attack was carried out by Black September in Thailand in an attempt to take the Israeli ambassador hostage. Then Baruch Cohen, a Mossad intelligence officer, was killed by Black September in Madrid, Spain on 26 January 1973. The PLO claimed that Cohen was part of the Mossad squad that targeted Hamshari.{{cite book|author1=Christopher Dobson|page=201|author2=Ronald Payne|title=The Weapons of Terror: International Terrorism at Work|year=1979|publisher=The Macmillan Press Ltd.|author2-link=Ronald Payne|location=London; Basingstoke|isbn=978-1-349-16111-9|url=https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-16111-9|doi=10.1007/978-1-349-16111-9}}

Legacy

In 1973, the Palestine-Mahmoud Hamshari Prize was established in his memory by L'Association de Solidarite Franco Arabe and the magazine France Pays Arabes. One of the Palestinian Red Crescent hospitals in Lebanon, Mahmoud Hamshari Hospital, was named after him.{{cite news|title=Palestinian President contacts Dabbour|work=National News Agency Lebanon |url=https://link.gale.com/apps/doc/A649371869/STND?u=wikipedia&sid=bookmark-STND&xid=889b9be5|access-date=3 November 2023|date=23 January 2021}} A primary school for girls in Tulkarm also bears his name.{{cite news|title=1.2 Million Palestinian Students Start School Year 2015 - 2016|url=https://link.gale.com/apps/doc/A426546434/STND?u=wikipedia&sid=bookmark-STND&xid=03caec45 |access-date=3 November 2023|work=Palestine News Agency|date=24 August 2015|location=Ramallah}}

In popular culture

Anton Shammas's 1986 novel Arabesques mentions Hamshari's grave in the Père Lachaise cemetery. In the novel Shammas draws an analogy between Hamshari and Marcel Proust describing them as a Jew of Time and an Arab of Place because the inscription on Hamshari's grave reads "the man of the lost home" and the inscription on Proust's grave reads "the man of the lost time".{{cite journal|author=Yael S. Feldman|title=Postcolonial Memory, Postmodern Intertextuality: Anton Shammas's Arabesques Revisited|author-link=Yael Feldman|journal=PMLA|volume=114|issue=3|year=1999|doi=10.2307/463377|page=383|jstor=463377|s2cid=163999056 }}

Hamshari is one of the characters in Steven Spielberg's 2005 film Munich.{{cite journal| author=James Schamus|title=Next Year in Munich: Zionism, Masculinity, and Diaspora in Spielberg's Epic|journal=Representations

|volume=100|issue=1|year=2007|doi=10.1525/rep.2007.100.1.53|page=59|author-link=James Schamus}} He was portrayed by Igal Naor in the film.{{cite web|url=https://www.metacritic.com/movie/munich/credits/|title=Munich credits|website=Metacritic|date=23 December 2005

|access-date=16 October 2023}}