President Emmanuel Macron recently announced that France would become the first Western nation on the United Nations Security Council to recognize a Palestinian state. 

The recognition of this fictional nation is as much about the growing Islamism on the domestic front as anything else. Macron didn’t use moral calculus here. He simply took a headcount. 

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There are somewhere around 500,000 Jews left in France. Each year, thousands of them wisely flee France, a nation that has become inhospitable, to say the least. There are about 6.5 million Muslims. Indeed, considering the trajectory of France, now home to more Muslims than Gaza and the West Bank combined, perhaps Macron will soon be wrestling with a breakaway Islamic state at home. 

In May, Macron was handed a report warning him that a Muslim Brotherhood movement in his country had become a “threat to national cohesion” and that if action wasn’t taken to stem the rise of “political Islamism,” it threatened to undermine the “secular” nature of France. The report found that Musulmans de France, an umbrella organization for Islamic societies, acted as “the national branch of the Muslim Brotherhood in France.” Funded by Gulf states like Qatar, one of Hamas’s most loyal backers, over 2,800 mosques are on a “subtle” and long-term mission to subvert French values. As the report noted, the political Islamist movement was losing its influence in much of the Arab world and “focusing its efforts on Europe.” 

These are the people Macron is now trying to mollify. 

In the days after Hamas’s massacre, Macron delivered a national television address declaring an “unreserved solidarity” with Israel, seriously misjudging the French population’s support for the murder, rape, and kidnapping of Israelis. 

Now, French recognition of a nonexistent state built to house a concocted sub-ethnicity over disputed land has no bearing on reality. There is no “Palestine.” There never was any such state. And the French president’s recognition no more changes this reality than Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu recognizing the archipelago of Islamic banlieues on the outskirts of Paris as an independent nation.

But let’s play out this theoretical game.

Mahmoud Abbas, the dictator of the Palestinian Authority in the “West Bank,” is now 89 years old. What does Macron think will happen when he finally dies? The best-case scenario, I suppose, is for another corrupt strongman to take over an independent “Palestine.” Will Macron back that autocracy? Because prospects aren’t great for its survival. Since the Oslo Accords, the Palestinian Authority has relied heavily on Israel’s security apparatus to stay in power. It would almost certainly implode without it.

Then again, perhaps Macron will support open elections in this new nation. Liberté, Égalité, Fraternité, and all that. But what if Hamas, or some other iteration of that organization, wins those elections? Will France recognize such a state? If not, is Macron going to send French troops into Jenin to root out Islamist militants firing Iranian- or Qatari-funded missiles into Jerusalem? 

Whether the French could even win such a war, I suppose, is the better question. 

The probability of the latter outcome is high. The first thing Palestinians did when handed a protostate in 2006 was to destroy over 3,000 greenhouses and modern farming systems that American Jews had purchased for $14 million and handed them, gratis. The second thing they did was put Hamas in charge. 

After the landslide election won by radicals in 2006, the unity government between the Palestine Liberation Organization, the old terrorist group, and Hamas, the new terrorist group, fell apart, and the winners began defenestrating political opponents, as one does in the Middle East. There hasn’t been a real election in the Palestinian territory since. 

“Hamas does not represent the Palestinian people,” Macron claimed during a visit to Ramallah with Abbas in 2023. This is Western elitist twaddle. The unpleasant truth is that Islamists far better represent the people than the “moderate” Fatah party, which is propped up with billions of Western dollars and Israeli assistance. In 2006, Hamas not only won the Gaza elections, but it also won a majority of the parliamentary seats in the PA, which it still holds. In 2024, Hamas and Fatah signed the Beijing Declaration, brokered by Communist China, agreeing to form an “interim national reconciliation government.” Will the French recognize a similar arrangement in the future? 

And what will Macron’s “Palestine” look like? Not once in the dozens of attempts to give Palestinians a state have they accepted any arrangement that failed to include “a right to return” to Israel proper. “Nakba” itself was the result of a war that was launched by local Arabs and their allies who rejected a state. Obviously, Jordan and Egypt could have formed a Palestinian state at any time from 1948 to 1967. Palestinians could have had their own state numerous times during the ’90s and ’00s.

Even if a deal could be struck, what makes Macron believe Palestinians can run their own nation, anyway? Palestinians in Gaza are unwilling to build the basic infrastructure necessary for themselves despite receiving hundreds of millions in yearly aid. Every Israeli restriction on Palestinians in Gaza has been put in place to mitigate violence. When you send Gaza concrete, they build tunnels and military installations under hospitals, not schools or businesses. If you build them infrastructure, they dig up water pipes to make casements for rockets. Will Macron send French civilians into a Hamas-controlled Rafah to recase those water pipes for the locals? When you allow shipments of necessities, they smuggle in explosives. When you send food, they give it to the terrorist army before the children. Unless those children have been recruited to the Islamist cause. 

If Macron is curious about how the Muslim Brotherhood runs institutions, he needs look no further than Gaza. Hamas, an offshoot of the Muslim Brotherhood, was formed around 1967 and legally registered in Israel in 1978 as a nonprofit Islamic association. While its stated goal has always been destroying Israel, the group was initially known for building medical centers and offering locals welfare services — a “subtle” and long-term mission to subvert Arab secularism. Many shortsighted Israeli politicians believed Hamas would be a useful alternative to the PLO. 

Now, of course, Macron says Hamas must be “disarmed” and that Gaza needs to be rebuilt. His recognition of “Palestine” incentivizes the opposite. What does he think Israel has been trying to do? Is France going to disarm Hamas? Is France going to back the over 50 hostages being held and tortured in Gaza? 

Rewarding Palestinians for Oct. 7, not to mention over a century of violence, only prolongs the war. As do the propagandistic efforts to accuse Israel of “genocide” and “starvation.” Is France going to feed the Palestinians? The U.S.-backed, Israeli-led Gaza Humanitarian Foundation distributes millions of meals to its sworn enemies. It is far from a perfect system, but it is also far superior to allowing the U.N. to continue bankrolling Hamas with billions via “humanitarian aid.” 

THE MUSLIM BROTHERHOOD IS A CLEAR THREAT TO THE WESTERN WAY OF LIFE

Hamas can’t be disarmed because its soldiers melt into civilian populations, which they control using fear, food, and supplies. Though Gaza has been pummeled for years, it refuses to surrender, using the suffering it has brought upon its own people as a tool to manipulate the Western Fellow Traveler. Indeed, sacrificing martyrs is the point, as virtually every leader of the Palestinian movement has admitted.   

Macron, like so many international apologists for Palestinian violence, loses nothing with his cynical moral preening. The real world is a lot more complicated.