There’s an old gag concerning the question of why there are so many trees along the roads of France. The answer is that the Nazis liked to march in the shade. We don’t relish retailing jibes at the expense of France. If one wants to see how such a canard sprang up, though, feature President Macron zooming to Israel amid a war with Hamas in an effort to plump for a Palestinian state. What’s the logic of rewarding the Palestinians for Hamas slaughtering Jews? 

It’s not just Israel. Mr. Macron flew to Moscow in the days before Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, in another ill-timed and ill-advised attempt at appeasement. After he failed to avert the assault on Ukraine, our Aleksandra Gadzala Tirziu reported, he persisted in his feckless diplomacy by phone, prompting Kremlin observers to coin a new term, макронить, translated roughly as “to do a Macron” or “to telephone constantly for no reason.”

The Ukrainians, Ms. Tirziu observed, were less amused, defining the verb “macronete” in Ukrainian, or “macroner” in French, to mean “to be worried about a situation, but to do nothing.” The French president, with his “Jupiterian” conception of his office, “has a storied history of engaging with political strongmen,” Ms. Tirziu noted, as he envisioned a “new Europe” forged “not against or without, but with Russia.”

Monsieur Macron’s diplomatic dabbling in the Russo-Ukrainian War prompted scoffing across the continent. Yet his apparent attempt to meddle in Israel’s attempt to defend itself against the Iran-backed terrorist group Hamas is no joke. Nor is the potential of a second front emerging out of Lebanon via another proxy of Tehran, Hezbollah. Mr. Macron’s meddling could not only amuse. It could do real damage to the cause of the Jewish state.

In Israel, Le Monde reports, Mr. Macron will call for the “resumption of a genuine peace process,” with the goal of forming “a Palestinian state” — and “halting the colonization” of the West Bank. While Mr. Macron’s office says he will convey French “solidarity” with Israel and French citizens there, the tenor of his remarks sound more in line with the far-left’s embrace of Hamas than a constructive contribution to global dialogue over the war.

The idea, as Mr. Macron’s office puts it, is “to open up a political perspective.” Yet the vista afforded by Mr. Macron is one that looks hostile to the nation that breasted the attacks of October 7 and sympathetic to the group responsible, Hamas. Not to mention  those in the Palestinian Arab population who have empowered the terrorist organization. It’s especially concerning that Mr. Macron would adopt the left’s language surrounding Israel as a “colonizer.”

Many far-left Democrats, NBC News reports, have “come to view Israel as the chief villain in the conflict” and “a colonial oppressor of Indigenous people.” This is akin to comparisons of the Jewish state to South Africa before its adoption of equal rights, with leftist groups like Amnesty International calling Israel an “apartheid state” that “enforces a system of oppression and domination against the Palestinian people wherever it has control over their rights.”

It’s shocking that Mr. Macron would endorse such claptrap — and at a critical moment. Agitating to set up a Palestinian state at a time when Israel is still reeling from the carnage of October 7 is precisely the wrong move. Rather than advancing on the Mideast like a Napoleon without La Grande Armée, better if M. Macron takes a page from De Gaulle, who reminded France in her darkest hour that she “has lost the battle but she has not lost the war.”

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The tone of this editorial has been improved from the bulldog at the suggestion of a reader.