The far-right party experienced a significant loss in the French election over the weekend, and officials in both the Israeli and French diplomatic corps are criticizing the conduct of Diaspora Affairs Minister Amichai Chikli during the French election campaign. Ever since French President Macron called a Snap Election, minister Chikli was publicly and vocally in support of Marie Le Pen and her far-right National Rally Party, saying that Le Pen as president would be “excellent for Israel” and adding that Netanyahu was of the same opinion.
However, when it became clear on Sunday that an alliance of left-wing parties had been victorious, Chikli posted on X that the leader of the New Popular Front, Jean-Luc Melenchon, was “the French version of Jeremy Corby, an Israel Hater in heart and soul who refused to condemn the events of October 7 and to call Hamas a terrorist organization.”
As one can imagine, this conduct has damaged Franco/Israeli relations, with one Israeli official characterizing the Diaspora Affairs Minister’s behavior as a “diplomatic bomb.” They took this misstep seriously enough to prompt a response from Foreign Minister Israel Katz that “Israel does not intervene in elections in France and respects French democracy – just as we expect other countries to respect Israeli democracy.”
This drama, far less scandalous than other diplomatic gaffes surrounding the Israel/Gaza war, is significant nevertheless in that the recognition of Palestinian Statehood was a central promise of the New Popular Front during their campaign. That political party will now be a vocal force within the French Parliament if it manages to stay united and will further increase the socio-cultural normalization of the idea of Palestinian Statehood throughout Europe.
France is commonly referred to as one of the Big Four of Western Europe, along with Italy, Germany and the UK – the major European powers and the only EU countries individually represented as full members of the G7, the G8, and the G20. Therefore, Israel’s anxiety over losing French support is acute and could signal a future cascade failure in unilateral European support for its military action in Gaza and Southern Lebanon.
Since Russia invaded Ukraine on February 24, 2022, NATO countries have presented a generally united front in terms of funding foreign wars and international sanctions. However, the unforeseen and unprecedented global backlash against Israeli military violence in Gaza and the subsequent mass awakening to Israeli interference in Euro-American governments have contributed to a great polarizing event amongst the Western voting public. The future is difficult to predict, but this much is clear – the era of compromise politics is over. The collective West will experience increasing internal strife over these conflicts, highlighting our societal failings, our class differentials, the apparent falsehood of representative democracy, and the perpetuation of conflicts that net the average citizen absolutely nothing.
Is the Left on the Rise? Will the United States, forever ironclad in its support of Israel, eventually be at loggerheads with European powers? Join us tonight on State of Play at Mint Press News as we examine the accelerating fragmentation of the trans-Atlantic world.
Greg Stoker is a former US Army Ranger with a background in human intelligence collection and analysis. After serving four combat deployments in Afghanistan, he studied anthropology and International Relations at Columbia University. He is currently a military and geopolitical analyst, and a social media “influencer,” though he hates the term.
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