At the United Nations this week, in his last address there before leaving office, not a day too soon, Emmanuel Macron chose to perpetuate a fraud that collapses under the weight of history and truth. The French president turned the aim of his remarks to the disputed “West Bank” (Biblically, Judea and Samaria) and said Hamas had “never operated” there. He used that claim to ask in whose name “violations” occur daily, and to warn that those acts were destroying “the legitimate right of the Palestinian people to exist.” Typically blaming the victim.
His comment was not a slip of tongue. It is a political deception dressed as history, like the King who was dressed in no clothes. For an ethnic and national group only invented in the 1960s, the very fact that Macron used his last UN speech to talk about the “Palestinian people” is evidence of the fact that there is no challenge to their existence, if only through lies like that of Macron that are parroted by people equally foolish or dishonest.
It’s too bad he didn’t talk about unicorns. He could have made the dreams of millions of little girls come true by speaking them into existence, as he has about the faux Palestinian people.
Excuse moi for letting truth get in the way of his geopolitical fantasy.
No, Hamas does not govern the West Bank the way it governed/s Gaza. Not yet. But there are entire cities, villages, and clans under its Islamist grip. And an untold number of lone wolves who derive their jihadi inspiration from the Palestinian Arabs’ entry into the Moslem Brotherhood network. Hamas runs terror networks, and has recruited, funded, and carried out terror attacks in Judea and Samaria for decades. Just this week, the murder of Netanel Shakron, a 36-year-old father of six, was attributed to Hamas. His family is not the only one that’s mourned victims of Hamas’ jihadi hate for decades. Marcon’s words are not just a lie, but tear open the wounds of countless victims’ survivors.
I feel like Macron grew up on the 1960s American sitcom, “Bewitched,” where Samantha – the blond witch could simply twitch her nose and reality would change. A head of state cannot erase an armed movement from a territory by declaring it absent, no matter how much he twitches his Pinocchio nose.
Macron wrapped his fraud in a larger performance. He recalled that a year earlier a dozen states had recognized “Palestine” in that same hall. He mocked those who call recognition a piece of paper. Then he asked what credibility remains if the world stays “inactive in the face of Gaza,” and if a “supposed peace” has not reopened humanitarian access “for a single second.” In his diplomatic word salad, he called the scene a spectacle that should shame everyone. He charged that “Palestinian” “most elementary rights” are still flouted. He added, as European leaders always add, that two states are also the condition of Israel’s security, to which France remains “attached.”
Merci, Monsieur President. With attachments like these, we’d rather stay single.
According to Macron’s nose-twitching structure, Gaza is shameful. The “West Bank” is a violation without Hamas. Lip service to Israel’s security is a closing courtesy. The Palestinian national movement is treated as a people waiting for a state, not as a political project with a charter, a payroll for attackers, and a curriculum whose very existence is meant to eliminate the Jewish state.
Macron leads the band of Western capitals selling the deception: Hamas is the terrorist brand (and it does not exist in the “West Bank”); the Palestinian Authority (PA) is the reliable address for statehood (thank God they are in control, with its octogenarian president nearing the third decade of the four-year term to which he was elected. No matter that the PA pays salaries and pensions to terrorists on a sliding scale based on the carnage of their attacks on Jews. The PA’s schools and media are flagged, year after year, for celebration of martyrdom, jihad, and the erasure of Israel.
While the world applauds Macron’s decreeing the “West Bank” Hamas-free, the distraction makes them forget that not only is he lying, but the Hamas that he said does not exist is waiting in the wings to take control of Ramallah, Jericho, Bethlehem, Hebron, Nablus and the rest of the millions of Palestinian Arabs not yet under its full grip. Whether by election or “armed struggle,” the Hamas that does not exist is simply waiting to eviscerate the PA as it did in Gaza to two million Gazans in 2007, and as it did in Israel on October 7, 2023. All of Macron’s smoke and mirrors do not change this reality.
But let’s live in Macron’s fantasy for a minute. Imagine Hamas vanished tomorrow. Would Palestinian Arab institutions suddenly teach and embrace that the Jewish people have returned legitimately to their homeland? Would their demand to move millions of Palestinian Arabs into Haifa, Jaffa, and Acco disappear? Would they turn toward building a society instead of continuing a war against Jewish existence? Those questions never reach the UN podium.
Rather than listening to his crystal ball, Macron would do well to listen to the words of one among many senior PLO leaders, such as Zuheir Mohsen in a 1977 Dutch interview: “The Palestinian people do not exist. The creation of a Palestinian state is only a means for continuing our struggle against the state of Israel for our Arab unity…. Only for political and tactical reasons do we speak today about the existence of a Palestinian people.”
None of this denies that Arabs – Moslem and Christian – lived in the land or the reality today. But if Macron wants peace, it needs to start on truth, not through a diplomatic shell game. It needs to acknowledge the Palestinian Arab identity was invented by a clever campaign of Soviet branding disguised as ancient nationhood. It needs to confront the reality that no matter how much Macron wishes Hamas out of existence, Hamas is a cornerstone of the conflict.
Call out the false statement about Hamas. Then stop pretending that is the story. The story is what the national movement was built to do, who helped build it, and how a civilized West still recites a narrative Moscow helped write.
The truth is written in the best-selling book in the world, thousands of years older than the lie that was born in the year I was born.
The Jewish people have survived more than two thousand years of exile and persecution. Even with Jew-hatred rising again, we have never been stronger or better positioned, to defend ourselves, to serve our role as a light unto the nations no matter what people call our nationalism, and to fulfill our prophetic mission as a nation living sovereign once again in our indigenous homeland.
President Emmanuel Macron represents a fine French tradition of never meeting a white flag of surrender without running to embrace it. It’s truly difficult to fathom what degree of absurdity goes into a comment and worldview of the French president to make claims that at best can only be seen as fantasy. Surely the growing Islamist base in his own country is a factor.
But the answer to that is to push back, not to surrender. Unfortunately, modern France doesn’t know much about pushing back and has a long legacy of surrender. That may be the clearest explanation of this obscene geopolitical circus in which Macron wants to be seen as ringmaster.
Despite all this, one should have some sympathy for the Macrons. Loony pundit Candace Owens has blatantly slandered his wife Brigitte, alleging that she is a man and has male genitalia. While I hope the Macrons’ lawsuit against her will be victorious, and Candace will be bankrupted, regardless of the veracity of Mr. Macron’s wife’s gender, what is clear is that by making these ridiculous statements, he clearly does not have the genitalia that is used euphemistically to reference somebody as a real man, or certainly in this case not a leader with any moral backbone. Macron may bankrupt Candace in the bank, but he is bankrupt in his morals.
