France will today officially recognise the state of Palestine at the United Nations General Assembly in New York. In justifying his decision, Emmanuel Macron said that recognition ‘is the best way to isolate Hamas’, adding: ‘Now is the time to act – not tomorrow, not in ten years. If we don’t move, the conflict will only deepen, and the hope of peace will vanish.’
Some are cynical about the timing of the President’s decision. ‘Emmanuel Macron is into performative politics,’ says Pierre Lellouche, who was a (Jewish) minister in Nicolas Sarkozy’s government. ‘He’s going to New York to make people forget the chaos reigning in France’.
Macron’s declaration flies in the face of public opinion. A poll last week commissioned by the Representative Council of French Jewish Institutions (CRIF) reported that 71 per cent of people believe a prerequisite for recognition is the release of all hostages held by Hamas and the surrender of the terrorist group in Gaza.
France has a long history of anti-Semitism on both the left and the right
Coincidentally, 71 per cent is also the number of French people who are opposed to the left’s idea to celebrate the recognition of Palestinian statehood by flying their flag from the rooftop of every town hall. The idea was proposed last week by the head of the Socialist Party, Olivier Faure, and was warmly greeted by many left-wing mayors. Johanna Rolland, who runs the city of Nantes, said it ‘makes sense…in a symbolic gesture of recognition of the state of Palestine’.
On Friday, Bruno Retailleau, the conservative Interior Minister, reminded mayors that flying a Palestinian flag would contravene the ‘principle of neutrality in public service’, and he instructed prefects to take action against any defiant mayor.
Several town halls have ignored Retailleau’s order, among them the communist-run Malakoff in southern Paris. They ran the flag up its pole on Friday and on Saturday were ordered to remove it by an administrative court. Mayor Jacqueline Belhomme says the flag will remain above her town hall until Tuesday. ‘We will not remove it before then, that’s for sure.’
The Socialists, the Communists and the far-left la France Insoumise rely heavily on the Muslim vote in their urban constituencies, and with local elections looming next Spring they are on the campaign trail. There are more than six million Muslims in France so chasing their vote is crucial, as few of the white working class vote for the left.
As for France’s Jews, there are only 500,000 of them so politically they are unimportant. This was borne out by Macron’s decision in November 2023 not to attend a rally in Paris against rising anti-Semitism. It is alleged that he was advised to skip the rally by a Muslim confidante who warned that the President’s presence might enflame the banlieues.
Many French Jews have come to harbour a bitter resentment towards their president. In an interview with Le Figaro last week, Yves Azeroual, who directed the documentary ‘October 7, 2023: Story of a Massacre’, said
The electoral calculation is clear. Even showing up at the march against anti-Semitism in November 2023 was too much for the head of state…he’s courting the Arab vote, and we don’t carry much weight.
Describing the anti-Semitism that has become the norm in France since 2023, Azeroual said many of his Jewish friends felt they’d been abandoned. ‘Not by the French people, but the French authorities on the left, as well as the president.’
But anti-Semitism is also prevalent among the general populace. Last week a poll commissioned by CRIF revealed that 31 per cent of 18- to 24 year-olds in France think it legitimate to attack Jews in the name of the conflict in Gaza. The poll was released in the same week that a synagogue in southern France was vandalised, five academics boycotted a symposium on the history of Jews in France and a group of students at the Sorbonne were revealed to be involved in an online chat entitled ‘Jews, for or against?’.
On Saturday, Macron acknowledged that the country’s Jews were suffering ‘anxiety, loneliness, and fear’, but he reassured them that perpetrators of anti-Semitic acts would be caught and punished. French Jews have heard that line before. Macron pledged to crack down on anti-Semitism at the start of 2019, a vow he repeated in November 2023. On that occasion he wrote an open letter in which he deplored the ‘unbearable resurgence of unbridled anti-Semitism’, and he promised that such hate would never ‘divide’ the country.
But it has, as the polls reveal, and Macron must shoulder a lot of the blame. So terrified is the President of antagonising the banlieues that he can’t even bring himself to name who is driving this resurgence. On Saturday he referred to ‘anti-Semitism and its new forms’.
France has a long history of anti-Semitism on both the left and the right. This new form comes largely from the immigrant population, encouraged by elements within the extreme left. Last week, the Islamic State promulgated a message for its supporters: ‘Strike the Jews and Christians,’ it said, ‘…in the streets and on the roads of America and Europe, and especially in France.’
November will mark the tenth anniversary of the Islamic State attack against Paris, a massacre that took the lives of 130 people. In response to the atrocity, President Francois Hollande told the nation at the time: ‘The terrorists want to divide us, pit us one against the other. They will fail.’
France is more divided than ever in 2025: economically, socially, ideologically and religiously. Macron’s decision to recognise Palestine will only exacerbate these divisions.
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