MACRON AND HIS ALLIES HAVE NORMALIZED ANTISEMITISM, REBRANDING IT AS 'HUMAN RIGHTS'

Europe’s embrace of a phantom state is fueling antisemitism

The goal is not statehood. It’s to wound Israel. 

 

By Fiamma Nirenstein 

 

JNS

Jul 29, 2025

 

 

(Left to right) Keir Starmer, UK prime minister, Giorgia Meloni, Italy's prime minister, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, Ukraine's president, Mark Rutte, secretary general of NATO, Emmanuel Macron, France's president, Donald Tusk, Poland's prime minister and Friedrich Merz, Germany's chancellor, pose for a photo at the NATO summit on June 24, 2025 in The Hague. 

 

A father and his six-year-old son were recently assaulted at a rest stop near Milan—for the crime of wearing kippot. In today’s Europe, sadly, there’s little shocking about such incidents anymore.

Nor is it surprising to see French President Emmanuel Macron leading a diplomatic charge to recognize a Palestinian state, rallying the usual bloc of Norway, Spain, Ireland, Slovenia and lobbying Saudi Arabia to add gravitas.

What’s more, 34 former Italian ambassadors—some still holding influential posts—have urged Italy’s Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni to follow suit.

This isn’t diplomacy. It’s performance politics—an ideologically driven campaign to punish Israel. These leaders aren’t seeking peace or stability. They’re pandering to a postmodern public square that cheers slogans like “From the river to the sea” and sees Jewish sovereignty as an affront.

The hypocrisy is glaring. For years, both Hamas and the Palestinian Authority have rejected every reasonable peace offer. Neither faction has shown interest in democracy or coexistence. Yet their Western backers, who know this well, demand nothing in return—no condemnation of terror, no commitment to peace, no pretense of democratic reform.

The goal is not statehood. It’s to wound Israel.

Macron and his allies offer recognition not to help Palestinians build a viable future, but to appease anti-Israel sentiment disguised as virtue. The same phenomenon is reflected on the streets and in the institutions: from a Jewish child beaten in broad daylight to university departments severing ties with Israeli counterparts; from cities canceling partnerships to musicians being thrown out of restaurants in Vienna for speaking Hebrew.

They’ve normalized antisemitism. They’ve rebranded it as “human rights.”

Since Oct. 7, 2025, the signs have been clear. When UN Secretary-General António Guterres claimed that Hamas’s massacre “did not happen in a vacuum,” he handed the terrorist group its first diplomatic victory. And when the world fails to object to a father being beaten for his religion—or to schoolchildren being deplaned for singing in Hebrew—we see the natural consequence of that moral abdication.

Macron’s campaign for Palestinian recognition has nothing to do with two states and everything to do with placating ideological allies and shaming Israel. It’s a hollow gesture at best, and a dangerous one at worst. The 34 ambassadors who signed their names to a demand that Israel be punished for defending itself in Gaza are not champions of peace—they are enabling extremism.

They say the recognition of Palestine is an “urgent political priority.” But there is no urgency for Palestinian reform. No questions asked about the aid stolen by Hamas. No mention of the hostages still held in Gaza. No call for condemning the Oct. 7 atrocities. That silence is complicity.

And while Israelis mourn their dead and continue to search for those still held captive, European leaders draw moral equivalences and promote false narratives.

We’ve seen it before. In 2005, Israel withdrew from Gaza completely—and in return received tunnels, rockets and terror. Now, the international community risks making the same mistake on a grander scale: legitimizing a state built not on peace but on destruction.

Hamas is already starving its own people and will continue to do so if handed a state and billions in foreign aid. The weapons aimed at Israel today will tomorrow be aimed at the West. Yet, as always, the lessons of history are ignored.

The assault on that father and child at a Milan rest stop may seem like a footnote. But it is emblematic of something much larger: a Europe that has chosen to sacrifice truth, security and decency on the altar of postcolonial guilt and fashionable bigotry.

It is not just Israel under siege; it is the very moral spine of the West.