Several top American Jewish groups rejected a meeting with representatives from the French government after President Emmanuel Macron announced that Paris would officially recognize Palestine as a state.
Invitations for a meeting from French Foreign Minister Jean-Noël Barrot were turned down by the American Israeli Public Affairs Committee, the American Jewish Committee, the Anti-Defamation League, B’nai B’rith International, the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations, the UJA-Federation of New York, and the World Jewish Congress on Friday.
In a statement criticising President Macron’s move to recognize Palestine as a state — despite having no clear borders or functioning democratic government — the groups said: “By taking such a unilateral step, France not only emboldens extremists, but risks the security of the Jewish people around the globe, along with alienating moderate voices and undermining the credibility of French diplomacy in the region.”
The Jewish groups said that they “were invited to discuss a policy that appears to have already been finalized” and therefore the meeting with Barrot would have been pointless, The Times of Israel reported.
Echoing accusations from Jerusalem, they went on to accuse Paris of rewarding the Islamist Hamas terror organisation “for its continued brutality and sends a dangerous message that legitimizes terrorism while dishonoring the victims of October 7, 2023.”
The move by Macron was also condemned by the Representative Council of Jewish Institutions of France (Crif), which described it as a moral failure of the French president.
“By granting the Palestinians at the start of the process what they must obtain in the end, this premature recognition will encourage the Palestinian side to no longer make any compromises, favoring the failure of future negotiations,” they warned according to Le Figaro.
On the other hand, the Islamist-aligned La France Insoumise (France in Rebellion/LFI) of far-left radical Jean-Luc Mélenchon hailed the decision by Macron, while claiming that it came as a result of persistent pro-Gaza protests in Paris joined by the LFI.
“It confirms the moral victory that we needed after so many months, so much shelling, so many insults, so much contempt, so much invisibility, so much refusal to face the abominable agony of the Palestinian people and their children, so much demonstration of arrogance from the extreme right of the Jewish community of France,” Mélenchon wrote on his blog.
Conversely, populist National Rally leader Marine Le Pen said that to recognize Palestine in its current form would be to recognize a “terrorist state.”
“If hope has always driven us toward a two-state solution, this decision legitimizes the perpetrators of the October 7 massacres and their trail of suffering, even as hostages are still being held. It therefore constitutes a political and moral mistake, including for the Palestinians who suffer under the yoke of Hamas,” she wrote.
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