French President Emmanuel Macron stood beside Palestinian Authority leader Mahmoud Abbas in Paris. The French leader declared the head of the PA to be a “prince of peace,” echoing Pope Francis’s 2015 description of Abbas as an “angel of peace.” The praise contrasted sharply with the record of a leader whose doctoral thesis in Soviet academia denied aspects of the Holocaust, whose movement descends directly from the terrorist PLO under Yasser Arafat, and whose government still pays stipends to terrorists under the pay-for-slay system. The PA continues to reward murderers with escalating payments based on the number of Jews killed and has failed to implement reforms that Abbas himself signed into law.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu responded immediately, calling Macron’s praise “the opposite of reality.” Speaking to Australian journalist Erin Molan, Netanyahu outlined what Paris chose to ignore: Abbas’s refusal to end terror payments, the naming of public squares after mass murderers, and education materials that erase Israel and glorify violence. Macron nevertheless insisted that France views Abbas as a reliable partner and continues to advance recognition of a Palestinian state.
After their meeting at the Élysée Palace, Macron described Abbas as a leader committed to peace and constitutional reform. He announced a joint legal committee with the PA, French aid to Gaza, and a warning to Israel that any annexation of Judea and Samaria would trigger a European response. Macron repeated his condemnation of so-called “settler violence,” despite a recent 125-page Regavim Movement report analyzing UN incident data that showed more than 98 percent of the cases labeled as “settler violence” involved clashes between Palestinians and the IDF with no Israeli civilians present.
Macron’s embrace of Abbas mirrors growing European momentum to elevate the PA as a state-building partner. It also comes as Abbas—now entering the nineteenth year of a four-year term—again pledged reforms, elections, and a new PA constitution. These promises have been made repeatedly while the pay-for-slay network operates through a rebranded “welfare” mechanism and while the PA continues payments to terrorists who carried out the October 7 attacks.
At the Vatican, similar praise was offered during Abbas’s recent audience with Pope Leo XIV, who called for increased humanitarian aid to Gaza and reaffirmed support for a Palestinian state. The diplomatic push aligns with renewed international pressure for a “Two-State Solution”, an agenda that would create an unprecedented militarized Palestinian enclave within Israel’s borders, ethnically cleansed of Jews, with its exclusively Muslim capital in Jerusalem. This agenda is based on the failed land-for-peace model that resulted in the creation of the Palestinian Authority and Hamas-ruled Gaza.
The prophet Ezekiel described this dynamic with stark precision: “Because they have misled My people, saying, ‘Peace,’ when there is no peace” (Ezekiel 13:10). The verse exposes the gap between declarations from world leaders and the reality on the ground. The Sages taught that false assurances of peace put lives at risk by masking violence rather than confronting it. The Hebrew term shalom means more than the absence of conflict. It requires accountability, justice, and a recognition of truth. Fabricated narratives cannot produce shalom.
The Bible’s standard rejects the celebration of leaders who support or excuse bloodshed. It places responsibility on rulers to stand against violence, not reward it. Abbas’s system of payments to terrorists violates every aspect of biblical justice. Framing him as a “prince of peace” inverts the meaning of the word itself.
