Emmanuel Macron’s comments on Israel: Gérard Larcher lectures the president

Tuesday, in the Council of Ministers, Emmanuel Macron said: « Mr. Netanyahu must not forget that his country was created by a UN decision,” to call on the Israeli Prime Minister to support UNIFIL rather than let his army shoot at peacekeepers.

These words triggered the anger of Benyamin Netanyahu, the incomprehension of Crif, but also, this Thursday morning, that of Gérard Larcher. On CNews and Europe 1, the President of the Senate said he was “stunned” by “a lack of knowledge of History” on the part of the President of the Republic. “The birth of the State of Israel did not come as a notarial act only noted by the UN,” argued the head of the senators.

“Israel’s right to exist is neither debatable nor negotiable”

Evoking the “land of origin of Judaism, like other religions elsewhere”, the third personage of the State wondered: “Did Emmanuel Macron remember the Balfour declaration (in 1917, considered one of the first steps in the creation of the State of Israel, Editor’s note)? Was he aware of what happened during the Shoah and after the Shoah? “, he got carried away, affirming that there was “like a doubt” on the fact that the head of state could question the legitimacy of the existence of Israel.

“I don’t suspect anything, I say that Israel’s right to exist is neither debatable nor negotiable,” he insisted. Adding, to fit the context of Macron’s statement, that “at the same time I say: Israel must respect UNIFIL. But in the name of that, we cannot question the existence of the State of Israel,” he insisted.

“It was not the UN resolution that established the State of Israel, but rather the victory achieved in the War of Independence with the blood of heroic fighters, many of whom were Holocaust survivors – notably of the Vichy regime in France”, first declared the Israeli Prime Minister in a press release, not stopping, either, on the historical events put forward by Gérard Larcher to focus only on the war which 1948-1949 pitted the fledgling State of Israel against a coalition of several Arab countries in the region.

Then in an interview with Le Figaro, the Israeli head of state estimated that “the UN recognized the right of the Jewish people to a state, but it certainly did not create it”, estimating that “the Jewish people are attached to the land of Israel for 3,500 years.

Traveling to Brussels for the European Union Summit this Thursday, Emmanuel Macron sees pressure mounting around his recent positions on the conflict in the Middle East. The President of the Republic could respond to his detractors.