RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/22005/france-antisemitism

Macron did not even have the decency to make his recognition of a non-existent Palestinian state contingent on Hamas releasing the hostages.

Joining Macron in this narcissistic display were other small, soft leaders with large, hard Islamist constituencies — Britain’s PM Keir Starmer, Australia’s PM Anthony Albanese, and Canada’s PM Mark Carney — who followed Macron’s lead in granting international legitimacy to a cause dedicated to terrorism.

The Palestinian Authority continues to operate as an unelected dictatorship, funneling millions into its infamous pay-for-slay “jobs” program — sometimes listed as “welfare” — which grants salaries to terrorists and their families based on how many Jews they succeed in murdering. The more Jews they murder, the higher the monthly stipend. Palestinian schoolbooks still erase Israel from maps, depict Jews as usurpers, and teach children that the ultimate aspiration is martyrdom.

Macron’s recognition, applauded by large sections of Europe and beyond, was not the action of a statesman seeking peace. It was a pitiful lunge to hold onto power by a weakened leader, desperate to posture as a “moral arbiter” abroad while avoiding accountability at home. Macron is willing to betray the Israelis, who are fighting not only for the West but for his own people, the French.

After France’s defeat at the hands of Germany in 1940 came collaboration. France’s Vichy regime did not merely submit to German edicts; it embraced its own homegrown antisemitism. Vichy’s machinery operated with bureaucratic zeal: statutes defining who was a Jew, the exclusion of Jews from professions, property seizures, internments, and ultimately deportations to Auschwitz. The cultivated myth of a France “shielding” Jews while Germany did the harm has long since been demolished by the historical record. Vichy was a French government, enacting French laws to persecute Jews on French soil, and in too many instances, to deliver them to their deaths.

​ The moral cost was enormous. By making stability the overriding priority, French authorities tacitly normalized contact with organizations that targeted Jews and Israelis. These back-channel accommodations blurred the line between counterterrorism and collusion — and served as an early modern example of a recurring French pattern: When domestic tranquility and influence in the Arab world collide with the safety and security of Jews, the balance is often struck in favor of tranquility.

President Chirac, during a visit to Israel in October 1996, erupted at what he called a “provocation” by Israeli plainclothes security guards during a walk in the Old City of Jerusalem — an incident that became emblematic of Paris’s sensitivity to perceived Israeli slights and a readiness to dramatize grievances that resonated with the Arab and Muslim public. Whether the outburst was theatre or genuine indignation, it fed a narrative: France would hold Israel to scrutiny in a way that sometimes felt public and punitive, while remaining discreet, conciliatory, or accommodating toward Arab regimes.

[H]ow come, if Mohammad al-Durrah was shot, there was no blood at the scene? The controversy led to libel suits, heated media debates in France, and a long war of narratives: for many critics, the al-Durrah case became a test of whether French media could be trusted to report dispassionately on Palestine-Israel — or whether powerful images produced abroad would be turned into instruments of political mobilization at home.

For decades, the front pages of Le Monde, Libération, and Le Monde Diplomatique have provided disproportionate framing that vilifies Israel while sanitizing Palestinian violence. Headlines portraying Israeli counter-terrorism as “aggression,” while minimizing rocket fire or suicide bombings, have shaped French public opinion, sometimes more decisively than presidential speeches.

The effect of this editorial slant is cumulative: each cover, each op-ed, each biased image is built into a narrative architecture in which Israel stands as the perennial aggressor and Palestinians as the archetypal victims. This distortion is not merely academic. It affects political choices, emboldens intellectuals who conflate anti-Zionism with moral virtue, and reinforces a climate where politicians know they can score points by signaling distance from Jerusalem. In the long run, media coverage has hardened the double standard and provided cultural cover for diplomatic betrayals.

The 21st century has added a more transactional layer to France’s Arab policy: investment in the French economy. Few states have invested more aggressively in French assets and businesses than Qatar. The oil-rich emirate poured billions into Parisian real estate, media holdings, luxury firms, and sports franchises. The purchase of Paris Saint-Germain football team became a symbol of how deeply Qatari capital has embedded itself into French public life. Alongside investment came soft power: television channels, think tanks, and influence campaigns aimed at projecting Doha’s narratives into French discourse.

Qatar’s record is not benign. For years it has financed Hamas and sheltered its leadership. That France tolerated — even courted — Qatar despite these links testifies to a familiar pattern: geopolitical expediency trumping moral clarity.

Macron’s post on X insisted on conditionality (Hamas must relinquish control and the Palestinian Authority must reform), yet those conditions remain unenforceable in practice. A state without concrete guarantees risks rewarding the very actors — such as Hamas and its patrons — who use terrorism as a policy. Macron’s declaration looks less like statesmanship and more like firing blanks: a symbolic attempt at appeasement to placate vocal constituencies at home and reclaim the moral high ground abroad by offering up a state that someone else — a sovereign nation, far away — is supposed to implement, while offering Israel and the United States nothing at all.

Domestically, Macron’s maneuver landed poorly. Multiple polls indicate that a large majority of the French public — roughly three-quarters — opposed immediate, unconditional recognition of a “Palestine” while Israeli hostages remained in Gaza or while Hamas remained in power. The disconnect between Macron and his electorate is striking. While he sought applause abroad, he was being widely perceived at home as indulging in moral posturing that had little chance of delivering peace and a lot of chance of making matters worse.

On the eve of the Jewish New Year, when families across the world were preparing to celebrate renewal and resilience, French President Emmanuel Macron chose a different symbol.

He formally recognized, at the United Nations on September 23, a so-called Palestinian state — an act that emboldened Hamas, even as the 20 Israeli hostages still believed to be alive remained starved, tortured, and trapped in its tunnels in Gaza. Macron did not even have the decency to make his recognition of a non-existent Palestinian state contingent on Hamas releasing the hostages.