French politician Jean-Luc Mélenchon welcomed Macron’s expression of support for Lebanon but urged him to go further.

By World Israel News Staff

Far-left French politician Jean-Luc Mélenchon called on President Emmanuel Macron to lead an international effort to force Israel out of Lebanon, accusing Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of invading and annexing Lebanese territory after Israeli forces crossed the Litani River and seized Beaufort Castle.

Mélenchon, the leader of La France Insoumise and a declared candidate for France’s 2027 presidential election, issued the appeal Monday in a series of posts on X as France and other European governments condemned Israel’s expanded ground operation against Hezbollah.

“Israel is invading and annexing all of southern Lebanon. Netanyahu has planted his flag on Beaufort Castle,” Mélenchon wrote.

“This French name should remind us that we are connected to Lebanon by a thousand years of history. We owe it rescue, affection and solidarity in the face of murderous cruelty.”

He also argued that France should use the symbolism of its naval deployment to send a warning to Israel, referring to the aircraft carrier Charles de Gaulle.

“The aircraft carrier would be a more useful symbol in the Mediterranean than in Hormuz, to remind Netanyahu that his interference in our elections and his invasions of the lands of our friends are perceived as threats by the French,” Mélenchon wrote.

“The UN Security Council must condemn Israel and organize the withdrawal of its army from the territory it has invaded.”

The comments came after Macron said Sunday that regional stability must begin with Lebanon and called for a halt to the fighting.

“As for regional stability, it must begin with Lebanon, where it is urgent for all sides to cease fire, once and for all,” Macron wrote. “Nothing justifies the major escalation now taking place in southern Lebanon. France will continue to support the Lebanese authorities in their efforts to restore the state’s sovereignty and territorial integrity.”

Mélenchon welcomed Macron’s expression of support for Lebanon but urged him to go further.

“Mr. President, I embrace your moral support for Lebanon,” he wrote. “I invite you to strengthen it by promoting the establishment of an international front to repel the invasion and demand the immediate withdrawal of Netanyahu’s army from the borders of this friendly country.”

He said such a front could secure support at the United Nations for a force to oversee an Israeli withdrawal and enforce a ceasefire.

“This front could secure a majority at the UN for sending forces under its military command to oversee this withdrawal and protect the immediate ceasefire that will be imposed on the invader,” Mélenchon wrote.

Israeli forces entered Beaufort Castle, a 900-year-old Crusader fortress, on Saturday.

Netanyahu hailed the move as a sign of renewed strength.

“I remind you that, 44 years ago, this place was a symbol of a heroic battle by our fighters, but it was also a symbol of deep division among us,” Netanyahu said. “Today, we returned to Beaufort differently. We returned united, determined, and stronger than ever.”

Israel says its operations in Lebanon are aimed at Hezbollah infrastructure and are necessary to stop attacks on northern Israel.

The IDF has said Hezbollah used areas around Beaufort Ridge and Wadi al-Saluki to launch projectiles at Israeli civilians and soldiers.

Mélenchon announced in May that he would seek the presidency again in 2027, his fourth run for the Élysée. Macron is barred from running for a third consecutive term.

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Melenchon seemed to single out Israel for criticism, keeping in line with his vocal hostility toward the Jewish state and controversial comments about France’s Jewish community.

By The Algemeiner

The leader of France’s largest leftist coalition in government appeared to have declared open support for Hezbollah as the Iran-backed terrorist organization based in Lebanon continued to clash with Israel.

“Mass killing in Lebanon by Netanyahu’s invading army,” Jean-Luc Melenchon posted on X/Twitter on Monday, referring to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

“The toll is getting worse by the hour. Full support for the national resistance of the Lebanese.”

Then on Tuesday, Melenchon continued to attack Israel on social media, tweeting, “After the terrorist attacks in Lebanon, Netanyahu inflicts bombings on this country up to 130 kilometers deep! The so-called international community lets it happen. The Lebanese are despised and abandoned. Shame on Europe that looks the other way.”

Hezbollah has been pummeling northern Israeli communities almost daily with barrages of drones, rockets, and missiles from its stronghold of Lebanon, which borders the Jewish state, since the Palestinian terrorist group Hamas invaded southern Israel from neighboring Gaza on Oct. 7.

More than 60,000 Israelis have been forced to evacuate their homes in northern Israel and flee to other parts of the country amid the unrelenting attacks from Hezbollah, which wields significant political and military influence across Lebanon.

The conflict has escalated over the past week, with both sides increasing the scale and intensity of their strikes.

However, Melenchon seemed to single out Israel for criticism, keeping in line with his vocal hostility toward the Jewish state and controversial comments about France’s Jewish community.

France has experienced a record surge of antisemitism in the wake of Hamas’s Oct. 7 massacre across southern Israel.

Antisemitic outrages rose by over 1,000 percent in the final three months of 2023 compared with the previous year, with over 1,200 incidents reported — greater than the total number of incidents in France for the previous three years combined.

This year, anti-Jewish hate crimes in France have continued to skyrocket.

Amid the wave of attacks, France held snap parliamentary elections in July which brought an anti-Israel leftist coalition to power, leading French Jews to express deep apprehension about their future status in the country.

“It seems France has no future for Jews,” Rabbi Moshe Sebbag of Paris’s Grand Synagogue told the Times of Israel following the ascension of the New Popular Front, a coalition of far-left parties. “We fear for the future of our children.”

The largest member of the NFP, which gained the most seats of any political bloc but not enough for a majority, is the far-left La France Insoumise (“France Unbowed”) party, whose leader, Melenchon, has been lambasted by French Jews as a threat to their community as well as those who support Israel.

Melenchon has a long history of pushing anti-Israel policies and, according to Jewish leaders, of making antisemitic comments — such as suggesting that Jews killed Jesus, echoing a false claim that was used to justify antisemitic violence and discrimination throughout the Middle Ages in Europe.

Shortly after the NFP’s victory, Melenchon — who in a 2017 speech referred to the French Jewish community as “an arrogant minority that lectures to the rest” — called for France to recognize a Palestinian state.

Supporters of the hard-left coalition, which includes socialist and communist parties, poured into the streets of Paris waving Palestinian flags. French flags were largely absent from the celebrations.

In the wake of the Hamas atrocities of Oct. 7, Melenchon and his party issued a statement declaring the attacks “an armed offensive of Palestinian forces” as a result of continued Israeli “occupation.”

Melenchon also failed to condemn a deputy who called Hamas a “resistance movement.”

Melenchon’s rhetoric and policy proposals have seemingly been unaffected by the rise in French antisemitism, which in many cases has been fueled by anti-Israel animus.

Earlier this month, for example, a kosher restaurant in Villeurbanne, near Lyon in eastern France, was defaced with red paint and tagged with the message “Free Gaza.”

The incident came days after French police arrested a 33-year-old Algerian man suspected of trying to set a synagogue ablaze in the southern French city of la Grande-Motte.

Yonathan Arfi, president of the Representative Council of Jewish Institutions of France (CRIF), lambasted Melenchon at the time for denouncing an “intolerable crime” without mentioning antisemitism while condemning the attack on the synagogue.

“I do not believe in the sincerity of Jean-Luc Melenchon when he condemns this antisemitic act,” Arfi told the French broadcaster RMC, referring to the far-left leader as a “firefighter-arsonist” who incites hatred against Jews.

Arfi referred to the synagogue attack as a “symbol of the antisemitism which has struck French society” since October.

“It must be seen as such, as a tragic illustration of the new face that antisemitism has taken on in recent months,” he added.

“It misappropriates the Palestinian cause to designate Jews as legitimate targets. French Jews are today attacked in the name of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, in the name of Gaza, by guilty shortcuts but also by a certain number of actors who fan this fire, in particular the political leaders of La France Insoumise who have contributed to the fact that today, these issues are inflammable. This unfortunately results in the fact that Jews are attacked.”

The restaurant vandalism also came two months after an elderly Jewish woman was attacked in a Paris suburb by two assailants who punched her in the face, pushed her to the ground, and kicked her while hurling antisemitic slurs, including “dirty Jew, this is what you deserve.”

In another egregious attack that has garnered international headlines, a 12-year-old Jewish girl was raped by three Muslim boys in a different Paris suburb on June 15.

The child told investigators that the assailants called her a “dirty Jew” and hurled other antisemitic comments at her during the attack. In response to the incident, French President Emmanuel Macron denounced the “scourge of antisemitism” plaguing his country.

Around the same time in June, an Israeli family visiting Paris was denied service at a hotel after an attendant noticed their Israeli passports.

In May, French police shot dead a knife-wielding Algerian man who set fire to a synagogue and threatened law enforcement in the city of Rouen.

One month earlier, a Jewish woman was beaten and raped in a suburb of Paris as “vengeance for Palestine.”

Such incidents are part of an explosion of antisemitic outrages across France that has continued since Oct. 7. Last month, then-French Interior Minister Gérald Darmanin warned that incidents targeting the country’s Jewish community spiked by about 200 percent since Jan. 1.

“Two-thirds of anti-religious acts … are against Jews,” the interior minister added, according to French broadcaster BFM TV.

Darmanin appeared to call out the hard left for fostering a hostile environment for Jews during his remarks.

“There is hateful political speech against the Jews of France and it must be denounced,” he said, according to France Info. “We can clearly see that part of the left, unfortunately, is making this speech of encouragement of hatred toward our Jewish compatriots.”

Darmanin’s comments followed him stating earlier last month that antisemitic acts in France have tripled over the last year. In the first half of 2024, 887 such incidents were recorded, almost triple the 304 recorded in the same period last year, he said.

The now-former interior minister also called out Melenchon during his remarks, asking, “How can politicians think antisemitism is residual?”

Darmanin was referring to a blog post published in June in which Melenchon wrote that antisemitism in France was “residual” and “absent” from anti-Israel rallies. Critics argued that Melenchon was downplaying the significance of antisemitism in France.

Darmanin’s successor, newly minted French Interior Minister Bruno Retailleau, said on Monday that Jewish citizens in the country must be protected.

He made the comment during a speech about “restoring order to France’s streets,” referencing heightened crime in the country.

Criticizing what he described as the “laxity” of the Macron administration regarding public security, Retailleau said he was “speaking, and thinking especially, of our Jewish fellow citizens. We must let nothing pass.” He added that crime must not be tolerated against anyone including “women, children, and fellow citizens who, because of their origin, skin color, or faith, are threatened.”

However, the threat of antisemitism may continue to spike as Israel continues launching defensive military operations along its borders.

In recent months, as Israel has imposed devastating losses on Hamas in Gaza to the south, it has increasingly turned more of its attention northward to Hezbollah in Lebanon.

The Israeli military said it struck over 1,600 Hezbollah targets in southern Lebanon and the Bekaa Valley over the past 24 hours as part of Operation Northern Arrows.

Overnight attacks followed Monday’s massive Israeli aerial offensive to prevent the Iran-backed terrorist army from firing rockets across the border.

According to the Lebanese Health Ministry, 558 people were killed and 1,835 were wounded in the Israeli strikes. The ministry’s figures did not distinguish between combatants and noncombatants.

The strikes came after Hezbollah, which openly seeks Israel’s destruction, launched more than 100 rockets and drones at northern Israel in waves of attacks overnight on Saturday and Sunday morning.

The Hezbollah barrage was in response to the thousands of pagers and walke-talkies used by Hezbollah terrorists that exploded in Lebanon last week.

While Israel neither confirmed nor denied responsibility for the sophisticated operation, Iran and Hezbollah blamed the Jewish state and vowed revenge. Several experts and media reports said Israeli intelligence was behind the blasts.

Israeli leaders have said they seek a diplomatic resolution to the conflict with Hezbollah along the border with Lebanon but are prepared to use large-scale military force if needed to ensure all citizens can safely return to their homes.

The post French far-left leader, long accused of antisemitism, backs Hezbollah ‘resistance’ over Israel’s ‘invading army’ appeared first on World Israel News.

As the NFP prepares to wield greater influence, French Jews have expressed concern over what they expect to be even more hostility than what they have been facing.

By Jacob Frankel, The Algemeiner

Following a shocking election in France that brought a leftist coalition to power, French Jews are expressing deep apprehension about their future status in a country that in recent months has experienced a historic surge in antisemitism and souring relations with Israel.

Over the weekend, France’s coalition of far-left parties, the New Popular Front (NFP), won 182 seats in snap parliamentary elections, delivering a blow to Marine Le Pen’s far-right National Rally party (RN), which was expected to perform better.

However, NFP failed to obtain a majority of the 577 seats in France’s National Assembly, meaning it will need to build alliances with other parties in order to pass legislation.

French President Emmanuel Macron’s centrist Ensemble alliance now has the second largest faction with 163 seats. The RN and its allies won 143 seats, garnering the third biggest representation.

The largest member of the NFP is the far-left La France Insoumise (“France Unbowed”) party, whose leader, Jean-Luc Melenchon, has styled himself as the self-appointed leader of the coalition.

His new position of power has French Jews worried.

“Melenchon is a person who is a threat against the Jews,” Yonathan Arfi, president of the Representative Council of Jewish Institutions of France (CRIF), told the Jerusalem Post after the voting on Sunday.

He added that La France Insoumise (LFI) puts “a target on the back of all Jews who support Israel.”

Arfi also blasted LFI on X/Twitter, writing that it “has no place in government,” pledging to fight “its culture of violence and its antisemitic excesses.”

Shortly after the NFP’s victory, Melenchon called for France to recognize a Palestinian state, and supporters of the hard-left coalition, which includes socialist and communist parties, poured into the streets of Paris waving Palestinian flags.

French flags were largely absent from the celebrations.

Melenchon in a 2017 speech referred to the French Jewish community as “an arrogant minority that lectures to the rest.”

Three years later, Melenchon suggested that Jews killed Jesus, echoing a false claim that was used to justify antisemitic violence and discrimination throughout the Middle Ages in Europe.

“I don’t know if Jesus was on a cross, but he was apparently put there by his own people,” he said in an interview with a French TV station. He refused to apologize even after backlash from notable Jewish groups.

In the wake of the Palestinian terrorist group Hamas’ massacre across Israel on Oct. 7, Melenchon and his party issued a statement declaring the attacks “an armed offensive of Palestinian forces” as a result of continued Israeli “occupation.”

Melenchon also failed to condemn a deputy who called Hamas a “resistance movement.”

As the NFP prepares to wield greater influence in the legislature, French Jews have expressed concern over what they expect to be even more hostility than what they have been facing.

“It seems France has no future for Jews,” Rabbi Moshe Sebbag of Paris’ Grand Synagogue told the Times of Israel following the ascension of the NFP. “We fear for the future of our children.”

Meanwhile, Jewish French intellectual Bernard-Henri Levy counseled in a post on X/Twitter, “Pray that Macron does not call on Melenchon [to become the next president] under any circumstances. Urge the social democrats to break their pact with this antisemite.”

NFP’s victory came amid a record surge of antisemitism in France in the wake of the Hamas atrocities of Oct. 7.

Antisemitic outrages rose by over 1,000 percent in the final three months of 2023 compared with the previous year, with over 1,200 incidents reported — greater than the total number of incidents in France for the previous three years combined.

Late last month, an elderly Jewish woman was attacked in a Paris suburb by two assailants who punched her in the face, pushed her to the ground, and kicked her while hurling antisemitic slurs, including “dirty Jew, this is what you deserve.”

In another egregious attack that has garnered international headlines, a 12-year-old Jewish girl was raped by three Muslim boys in a different Paris suburb on June 15.

The child told investigators that the assailants called her a “dirty Jew” and hurled other antisemitic comments at her during the attack. In response to the incident, Macron denounced the “scourge of antisemitism” plaguing French society.

Now with the ascension of the far left, French Jews fear even an even greater spike in antisemitic violence.

In an interview with The National — a UAE-based publication — a French Jew who requested only to be identified by his first name warned against the violence coming from France’s extreme left:

“There is an urgent need to stop the far left, which has allied itself with radical Muslims — if we don’t stop it France will become even more dangerous for Jews.”

In addition to an expected increase in antisemitism, Israel-France relations are expected to nosedive, following comments by the incoming coalition.

NFP has publicly called for the recognition of a Palestinian state and a break “with the guilty support of the French government for the far-right supremacist government of [Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin] Netanyahu to impose an immediate ceasefire in Gaza and enforce the order of the ICJ [International Court of Justice].”

The ICJ is considering an ongoing case brought by South Africa accusing Israel of committing “state-led genocide” in its defensive war against Hamas in Gaza.

The NFP coalition’s platform also demands that Israel release all “Palestinian political prisoners,” many of whom have been imprisoned for terrorism offenses.

Under the Macron government, Israel became increasingly isolated from France.

Last month, French officials banned Israeli arms manufacturers from attending Europe’s largest arms exposition, Eurosatory, citing Israel’s ongoing operations in Gaza.

The NFP coalition will likely seek to block arms sales to Israel as demands for a ceasefire grow.

Meanwhile, on Monday, France’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs released a statement condemning what it described as “colonization in the Occupied Palestinian Territories.”

Although Melenchon has called for Macron to step down, the incumbent president announced that he will remain in office until his term ends in 2027.

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Here is a recap of the top Israel news stories on December 16, 2019.

And in case you missed our last recap…

The post WATCH: Daily Israel News Recap – December 16, 2019 appeared first on World Israel News.