Macron’s Muddle on Antisemitism

The best piece we’ve read on the uproar over President Emmanuel Macron’s turn against Israel is the column by our Michel Gurfinkiel. It follows the letters between Mr. Macron and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel and our own ambassador at Paris, Charles Kushner. The rhubarb erupted after Mr. Macron announced his intention to recognize a state for the Palestinian Arabs. Mr. Netanyahu called that “abject” and “appeasement.” Now Mr. Macron is doubling down on his lecturing of the leader of the Jewish state on anti-Jewish prejudice. He released a follow-up letter to Mr. Netanyahu that called the criticism “unacceptable” and “an offense to France as a whole.” No kidding. The Élysée Palace fumes that the “fight against antisemitism must not be weaponized and will not fuel any discord between Israel and France.” Israel notes that antisemitism has “surged” in France. Mr. Macron calls on Israel to end its “murderous and illegal permanent war in Gaza.” What an obnoxious statement. Mr. Macron insists it is “causing indignity” for Israel and placing Israelis “in a deadlock.” Mr. Netanyahu’s position is that France’s call for a Palestinian state “pours fuel on this antisemitic fire.” America’s envoy to France, Mr. Kushner, blames France for fueling violence and endangering Jewish life in France.Mr. Kushner, the son of Holocaust survivors, ventures that in today’s world, “anti-Zionism is antisemitism — plain and simple.” Meanwhile, “antisemitism has long scarred French life, but it has exploded” since October 7, 2023, as “pro-Hamas extremists and radical activists have waged a campaign of intimidation and violence across Europe.” Those observations earned Mr. Kushner, like Mr. Netanyahu, a presidential reprimand.Mr. Macron’s letter despairs that Israel is going “into a spiral of violence which runs contrary to its history, to its origins and to its democratic essence.” This even as hostages are held in Gaza’s torture tunnels and Israel is blamed as the cause of the hate that gusts forth against it from its neighbors and beyond. Mr. Macron seems to be ignorant of the principle that antisemitism is, by what could be definition, never about Jewish behavior.Mr. Macron’s plan, our Benny Avni reports, endorses “ending the near universal recognition, including by France, of Israel as a Jewish homeland.” France now appears to be walking that back. Mr. Macron describes what he takes to be “the losing battle which Israel is currently waging.” Meanwhile, Israel has degraded Hamas, brought Hezbollah to its knees, battered the Houthis, and staggered the mullahs of Iran. For this, France and the Europeans are planning to award the Palestinian Arabs with a state at the UN next month. While Mr. Macron presents himself as the defender of Europe’s largest Jewish community, the story is otherwise. Aliyah of French Jews to Israel increased by 342 percent between 2023 and 2024, and antisemitism surged by 1,000 percent after October 7. Mr. Macron, meanwhile, is facing his own electoral pressures.Which brings us back to Mr. Gurfinkiel. He reckons that what’s really turned Mr. Macron against Israel is the president’s ambition in respect of a third term. He will finish his second five-year term in 2027, when he will be ineligible, because of term limits, to stand immediately for a third term. For that, he must skip a term and come back for the election in 2032. Le Monde reports his fondness for “long-term battles.”Everything Mr. Macron does now is calculated for that comeback. He grasps, Mr. Gurfinkiel writes, that the two constituencies most firmly attached to him today — those under 24 and Muslim immigrants — “are precisely those destined, by demographic momentum, to carry even greater weight in the future.” Yet he lacks the kishkes to say to Messrs. Netanyahu and Kushner that he’s thrown over the Jewish state for his chance for a third term.

Macron’s Muddle on Antisemitism

Macron’s Muddle on Antisemitism

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