French President Emmanuel Macron has shocked French Jews with his willingness to collaborate with the pro-Hamas and antisemitic hard-left party, La France Insoumise. When Macron’s party, Renaissance lost seats in the European Parliament on June 7, he decided to call a snap election for the French Parliament, gambling that his party would have a better showing in that election. Instead, in the first of two rounds of voting, his party came a distant third, with 20% of the vote, while La France Insoumise, led by the antisemitic Communist Jean-Luc Mélenchon, had 28%, and the big winner, the rightist National Rally, which is stoutly pro-Israel and against Muslim immigration, received 34%. Now Macron has been engaging in political machinations – horse trading — with La France Insoumise, in the hope of defeating the National Rally. Rather than Macron’s Renaissance and La France Insoumise both fielding candidates in the same electoral districts, they have agreed to pull out the weakest candidate, either from Renaissance or from La France Insoumise, so that there would be no split of the anti-National Rally vote. This could mean that La France Insoumise would become the big winner, emerging as the main opposition to the National Rally and possibly in control of the government, though Macron himself will remain as President until 2027. More on this complicated situation can be found here: “Macron’s implicit endorsement of ‘antisemitic,’ ‘pro-Hamas’ far left shocks French Jews,” by Canaan Lidor, Times of Israel, July 1, 2024:
Only two years ago French President Emmanuel Macron received the unreserved endorsement of major Jewish community groups, which regarded his centrist policies and party as the best available bulwark against political radicalism.
But now, many French Jews feel betrayed by Macron, who last week announced snap parliamentary elections that backfired and boosted the far right. And then following his party’s trouncing in the first stage of the elections on Sunday, he proceeded to implicitly endorse a party with a far-left antisemitism problem to counteract the nationalists’ ascent.
Macron, who will remain president regardless of the parliamentary electoral results, “just endorsed a party controlled by pro-Hamas” forces, Yohann Taieb, a French-Jewish journalist, wrote on X on Monday. The Jewish groups that endorsed him were “being taken for a ride,” Taieb added.
This sentiment, shared by many French Jews, stems from a series of unusual choices by Macron throughout one of the most tumultuous political episodes in France’s recent history.
It began with the European Parliament elections of June 9, in which the far-right National Rally party of Marine Le Pen and Jordan Bardella won the largest share of the vote (32%). In a move that stunned the nation, Macron declared an early election to the French parliament to curb the far right’s ascent by uniting its rivals behind his centrist Renaissance party.
This tactic is failing spectacularly in the local parliamentary elections, whose first round was held Sunday [June 30] and whose second and final one is scheduled for July 7. Not only did the far right secure a whopping 34% in Sunday’s snap elections, but Macron’s party also lost its claim to be the main alternative to the far right.
That distinction went to the New Popular Front, a coalition that was hastily established for the elections through a union between the center-left Socialist Party and the far-left France Unbowed party, or LFI [la France Insoumise], of Jean-Luc Melenchon, a communist who many French Jews claim is an antisemite. The New Popular Front received 28% of the vote in the parliamentary elections, leaving Macron’s party in distant third place with only 20%.
Macron apparently thinks the National Rally is more of a threat to France than is the hard-left pro-Hamas La France Insoumise. He would rather have a party come to power that not only has refused to denounce Hamas for its atrocities on October 7, but whose leaders, including Rima Hassan, the Franco-Palestinian who is close to Jean-Luc Mélenchon and stands high in the party’s hierarchy, have accused the IDF of “genocide,” than have the National Rally take power. Macron, like so many on the center-left, cannot shake off the belief in the wickedness of the National Rally. Endless repetition of the epithet “far-right” applied to the NR has its effect, though it isn’t true. Marine Le Pen’s father, Jean-Marie Le Pen, who was the founder of the National Front, and who famously declared that the gas chambers were a mere “detail” of World War II, was indeed an antisemite and “far-right.” But Marine Le Pen expelled her father from the party, and has broken completely — both politically and personally — with him. She should not be blamed for his intolerable views. The National Rally is the only party that has made a halt to Muslim immigration a main plank in its platform. It has also spoken up strongly for Israel. Jordan Bardella, the party’s candidate for Prime Minister, has said that he does not believe in a “two-state solution,” and, when presenting his party’s government plan ahead of the snap polls on June 30, said that “this position [supporting the two-state solution] is made obsolete by the atrocities and attacks of Hamas on October 7. Recognizing a Palestinian state would be recognizing terrorism. I will be a shield for our Jewish compatriots, in the face of an Islamism which no longer only wants to separate itself from the Republic, but to conquer it.”
By contrast, Macron has said that recognizing Palestine was not a “taboo,” but that it should be done “at the right time.” Still worse, the New Popular Front, the alliance of France’s left-wing parties, vowed, in its government plan, to recognize Palestine immediately after taking office. And Macron is now helping the New Popular Front, a group of leftist parties whose dominant component is the pro-Hamas La France Insoumise, to win seats in the Parliament, all because he thinks the National Rally is more of a threat to France than the hard-left. He’s made a colossal error.
Every French voter who cares about the survival of Israel as a country, and of France as a civilization, must vote accordingly.
somehistory says
The Book written by Jews has a word of warning for them and any other readers.
“Do not put your trust in nobles nor the son of earthling man.”
Politicians are in the business of lying.to gain office and power and to keep said office and power. Very few keep to their word.
And pro-terror groups are very popular with politicians these days.
Forest says
Excellent piece Hugh, as always.
Wellington says
Macron is a twit and I have no doubt that if Charles de Gaulle were still around he would concur, though I readily confess that I don’t know how to translate “twit” into French.
somehistory says
WordHippo says “cretin,” Wellington.
Wellington says
Thanks for that, somehistory. Damn, I learn something every day.
somehistory says
You are welcome, Wellington. So do I. If I could only retain all that I learn….