was promptly arrested and deported by Israeli police. Upon his return to France, he was met by dozens of pro-Israeli and pro-Palestinian demonstrators, who scuffled briefly at Paris' Orly Airport. In an interview in 2002 with TV channel Canal Plus, Bové said he believed that the wave of attacks against French synagogues was being either arranged or fabricated by Mossad (the Israeli secret service). "Who profits from the crime?" Bové asked. "The Israeli government and its secret services have an interest in creating a certain psychosis, in making believe that there is a climate of antisemitism in France, in order to distract attention from what they are doing." Considerable outrage was expressed after his remarks, and he later apologized for the statement. His visit to Arafat was denounced in a speech by the head of France's CRIF, an umbrella group for Jewish organisations. Bové has intervened to support the movements of the Tahitians and the Kanaks, the indigenous Melanesian people of New Caledonia. On 23 April 2004 he announced that he would join the People's Congress of Kurdistan (Kongra-Gel). This group has been classified as terrorist by both the European Union and the United States State Department. Civil disobedience In 1976, Bové was sentenced and served three weeks of imprisonment for having destroyed documents belonging to the military, when opposing extension of Larzac military camp. In 2002, Bové was sentenced to three months' imprisonment for his role in the 1999 destruction of a McDonald's franchise in Millau, Aveyron. He served 44 days and was released on 1 August 2002. On 22 June 2003 Bové began serving a sentence of ten months for the destruction of transgenic crops. ATTAC protested and called for him to be freed. A general pardon of prisoners issued for Bastille Day, together with an individual action in his case by President Jacques Chirac, reduced the sentence to seven months. Both supporters and opponents expressed dissatisfaction with the Presidential pardon, saying that it was entirely inadequate and wholly unjustified, respectively. On 15 November 2005 the Toulouse court of appeals sentenced Bové to 4 months in jail for having destroyed genetically engineered corn from a field. Other defendants, such as Noël Mamère, got suspended sentences. In February 2006, Bové was stopped at entry by U.S. Customs and Border Protection agents at New York's JFK Airport. He was traveling to Cornell University's School of Industrial and Labor Relations for