French President Emmanuel Macron’s declaration that Hamas is not active in Judea and Samaria is tantamount to denying that the sun will come up tomorrow, Israeli terror victim Shai Maimon told JNS on Thursday.
“Hamas has been operating in Judea and Samaria for decades and conducts terrorist attacks. To say that this does not happen in the ‘West Bank,’ as Macron calls it, is to say something contrary to the truth,” Maimon said.
In his address at United Nations headquarters in New York City on Tuesday, Macron said in French that “Hamas has never operated in the West Bank.”
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu called Macron’s claim “grotesque,” adding that its absurdity was “staggering.”
“On Sunday, the eve of Yom Kippur, just two days ago, Netanel Shukrun, a French citizen and father of six, was murdered in his car by a Hamas terrorist in Judea and Samaria,” Netanyahu noted. “With his final breath, he told his son to run.
“Hamas terrorists carry out attacks against Jews almost every day,” the prime minister said. “Ignorance is no excuse for erasing their blood.”
In 2003, Maimon, then a young IDF officer, and his unit arrested a Hamas squad that had orchestrated the killing of six Israelis in the eastern Binyamin region.
The commander and other terrorists involved in the attack were among those freed in the 2011 deal that secured the release of IDF soldier Gilad Shalit from Hamas captivity in Gaza in exchange for more than 1,000 Palestinian prisoners, many of them with blood on their hands.
The commander, Ahmed Najar, who was exiled to Jordan, remotely planned another attack on June 29, 2015, in which Malachi Rosenfeld was murdered and Maimon was wounded in both legs.
Maimon, then a civilian, and three friends were “coming back from a basketball game, going home in a civilian car, a Nissan Micra. We were driving and were fired at from a distance of five meters. They emptied their magazine on us. There were four of us in the car; all four were wounded, and Malachi was murdered,” Maimon told JNS.
“Then you hear a president of a country who wants to be involved in what is happening in the Middle East, who is supposed to understand a thing or two, making such a statement. The story I told is just my personal story, one of hundreds that prove that Hamas conducts terrorist attacks in Judea and Samaria, and he decides to ignore it,” he added.
Palestinian Authority chief Mahmoud Abbas, Maimon said, has refused to hold elections for 20 years because he knows how strong Hamas is.
“Hamas has been killing Jews in Judea and Samaria for decades. Saying otherwise is like denying that the sun will shine or that Hamas conducted the Oct. 7 massacre,” he said.
Maimon said the attack had a significant physical impact on his life.
“I deal with leg pain, and my nervous system hasn’t fully returned to 100% functionality. On the other hand—thank God—I’m in good shape; I can do everything. I’ve returned to reserve duty, gone back to work and resumed playing basketball. With God’s help, we are moving forward,” he said.
“The event also affects my thoughts and mindset—questioning whether I acted correctly, what I could have done differently, and how it is possible that we somehow allowed them to murder Malachi. Those thoughts are always there; they surface on memorial days or whenever I reflect on the attack. It’s a struggle, but thank God, we are managing to move forward and grow,” he added.
Maimon said his experience drove him to take action. After the attack, he campaigned against the transfer of funds to terrorists and was heavily involved in passing a law against terror funding.
“It propelled me into public service—work I continue to this day—and helped me build connections. The important thing to say is that this was a dramatic event with multilayered effects. With God’s help, we strive and pray that it continues to lead toward growth and positive action,” he said.
