What an amazing phone call President Macron put in to Ben Smith of the Times. The leader of France has, the Gray Lady’s media columnist reports, “some bones to pick” with the Yankee press in respect of, among other things, “our reluctance to express solidarity, even for a moment, with his embattled republic.” That is, Monsieur Macron is irked that our press is loath to support his crackdown on Islamist terror.

Well, let us just say that our eyes are dry. We’re speaking here only for the Sun, of course, and we’d be the first to admit that we often differ with many of the bigger papers. Neither do we mind saying that we have a certain sympathy for Mr. Macron, given his predicament. It’s hard to see, though, how he’s much of an ally in the current war, in which, not to put too fine a point on it, the acid test is where he stands on Israel.

We began pegging this point soon after we picked up the flag of the Sun. Even back in 1897, it had more coverage of the First Zionist Congress than the other leading New York papers. We were the only American paper to back Prime Minister Sharon when, in 2004, amid what we called President Chirac’s “lugubrious statements” on anti-Semitism in France, the Israeli premier called on Jews to quit France while they could.

After Israel’s war against Hezbollah in 2006, France supposedly was going to interdict enemy missiles moving into Lebanon. Chirac’s instinct was to have the Quai d’Orsay open talks with Iran. He was forced, in a humiliating retreat, to abandon that démarche, amid jeers that it smacked of appeasement. That was just after the U.N. Security Council had — unanimously — authorized sanctions against the Iranian regime.

Yet France has never outgrown its aptitude for appeasement. It joined the vote in the United Nations for the Obama-Biden-Kerry Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action with Iran. It did so despite knowing full well that the agreement was opposed — “overwhelmingly,” as the New York Times put it in an editorial — by the United States Congress. It was one of the reasons Americans brought in Mr. Trump as president.

France was among the Security Council members who, in December 2016, voted for Resolution 2334, which ostensibly severs East Jerusalem and the Western Wall from the Jewish state and is among the worst betrayals of Israel ever inked at the U.N. The Obama administration abstained. One of the first acts at the U.N. by Mr. Trump’s envoy, Nikki Haley, was to repudiate 2334. France still refuses to move its embassy to Jerusalem.

So it takes some kind of brass for President Macron to get on the blower with the New York Times and start complaining that he’s not getting the respect he feels he deserves when he vows strong action against Islamist terrorism. We understand that the press he’s complaining about isn’t among the Middle East hawks. In the broader sense, though, that only makes Mr. Macron’s predicament even more acute.

As is the fact that Mr. Trump and Prime Minister Netanyahu — who have, in the relative sense, taken a hard line on Islamist terror — are suddenly reaping rewards. No sooner did we move our embassy to Jerusalem than peace started breaking out with Arab states, led by the U.A.E. and Bahrain. An entente was mooted, too, with Serbia and Kosovo and even Sudan. Would the accession of Mr. Biden to the presidency halt that?

It’ll be illuminating, in any event, to see whether Mr. Smith can solve Monsieur Macron’s problem with the American press. Mr. Smith did suggest that Mr. Macron give an interview to the newspaper’s Paris leg. If Mr. Smith can’t solve the problem, maybe Mr. Macron can call on the pair that the press most loves to hate, Messrs. Trump and Netanyahu, to see if they can help. They might be good for some tea and sympathy.

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Drawing by Elliott Banfield, courtesy of the artist.