When Silence Is A Crime
The global support is gradually shifting towards Palestine. Media surveys suggest that those, who have long openly supported the indiscriminate Israeli bombing of Gaza, have started condemning the Jewish Nation for triggering a famine in the Palestinian territory as children die of starvation, as well as treatable injuries, and the malnutrition crisis reaches catastrophic levels.
France is all set to fully recognise the State of Palestine as President Emmanuel Jean-Michel Frédéric Macron made a final decision in this regard after visiting the Egyptian town of Al-Arish on the border with Gaza in April 2025 where he was struck by the mounting humanitarian crisis. As expected, Israel and the US have condemned France’s move, branding it a reward for the Palestinian Hamas Movement that triggered the ongoing war by launching terror attacks on Israel on October 7, 2023.
However, President Macron’s move has made the French Leftists happy. They have started projecting it as evidence of the President’s submission to their demands. The Leftists believe that the move is in line with the Two-State Solution. They have also expressed hope that major European powers and Canada would make a similar move in the near future and put Israel under pressure to stop the war. On the other hand, the French Far-Rights have projected President Macron as a supporter of Islamic extremism.
The question arises here: Is it possible for war-torn Palestine, where one would find nothing left, to pursue legal rights over its territorial waters and airspace as a sovereign state? The answer is: Although it is not possible right now, no one can say with certainty that it would not happen in the future.
Many are of the opinion that the move may help France to come closer to the pro-Palestinian camp on the international stage. According to them, President Macron has made the move in order to get some relief from the guilt of appeasing Israel. However, there are fears that France’s move could create further troubles for Gaza. Israel may become desperate to completely uproot Palestinians from Gaza, as well as the West Bank, and annex the region.
It has become increasingly difficult for France to ignore the Israel-Palestine conflict as Paris has a long-standing relationship with both of them. It may be noted that the anti-Semitic Dreyfus Affair took place in France in the 19th Century. The Dreyfus Affair was a major French political scandal, involving the wrongful conviction of Captain Alfred Dreyfus, a Jewish officer falsely accused of treason, which was rooted in anti-Semitic prejudice and unfolded primarily in the late 19th Century, beginning in 1894 and continuing into the early 20th Century until Dreyfus’ eventual exoneration in 1906. The biblical Promised Land, in a metaphorical way, refers to the ancient history of the Jewish people in Western Asia (modern-day Israel), and the concept of the land being a divinely promised inheritance to Abraham and his descendants as recorded in the books of Genesis. Although post-Second World War France used to maintain close ties with Israel, the administration of Charles André Joseph Marie de Gaulle made some changes in its Israel Policy in an attempt to normalise ties with the Arab World.
However, the religious, as well as cultural, ties between Jews living in Israel and France remained unbroken. In fact, it continued to grow through rituals. There are over 500,000 French-speaking people in Israel and nearly 100,000 of them are French nationals. Therefore, there is a considerable direct influence of Israel on the French media. The French edition of The Jerusalem Post reflects the views of the Israeli Government and State on a regular basis.
After 9/11, French philosopher, journalist, former government official and academic Jules Régis Debray mentioned in an article that the terror attack in New York claimed a number of innocent lives. However, the pain was not so innocent. He further stressed that although various nations and individuals expressed solidarity with victims and raised voice against terrorism, as well as injustice, there was an injustice hidden somewhere else. Debray was actually trying to draw attention to a deep rift between two civilisations: East and West. While a group of wealthy people is able to display their bloodshed and sufferings while concealing crimes (read murders) committed by them in a perfect manner, some unfortunate people are dying silently.
Interestingly, Palestine is an exception to this as it has somehow secured its place in the frame of a Western camera. Perhaps, history has prompted Palestine to involve itself with the destiny of Israel. The Western media have exposed Palestine to the global community by highlighting the Israeli atrocities in occupied Palestinian territories. However, this revelation is tinged with deep deceit from the perspective of the oppressor. Secondly, the Arab-Israeli conflict has helped satellite-based television channels, like Al-Jazeera, to gain popularity over the past three decades. These channels present the reality of the oppressed from a different perspective. It is neither the perspective of the oppressed, nor the oppressor.
In fact, the history of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict is not a continuous one as the two parties agreed to stop fighting at times. For example, one can mention the Oslo Peace Accords signed on September 13, 1993 when Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin and Chairman of the Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO) Yasser Arafat agreed to a Declaration of Principles on Interim Self-Government Arrangements that established the framework for a Palestinian Authority and aimed to lead to a permanent peace, although it eventually stalled. Simultaneously, various untoward incidents have also taken place. On February 25, 1994, Baruch Goldstein, an American-Israeli physician and extremist of the far-right ultra-Zionist Kach Movement, carried out a mass shooting of Palestinians who were offering prayers at the Ibrahimi Mosque (Cave of the Patriarchs) in Hebron. Yigal Amir, an Israeli Right-Wing extremist who was against the Oslo Accords, assassinated Rabin in Tel Aviv on November 4, 1995 after a pro-peace rally. The former Israeli Prime Minister died from his wounds from two shots to the chest and abdomen. However, images of that historic handshake in Oslo and Arafat’s subsequent return to Gaza are forever framed in the mind of French people who have always valued the ideas of liberté, égalité and fraternité.
The scenario has changed abruptly in the 21st Century as a fresh uprising, the Intifada, has begun in Palestine. The French media consider it as a de facto Palestinian uprising against the status quo and peace. They also refuse to accept the fact that the so-called peace hides underlying sufferings, injustice and chaos… a grim face of colonialism and the devastation triggered by the colonialists.
After witnessing the situation in the Gaza Strip a few months ago, President Macron said in an emotional tone: “My presence is a way of saying that one does not have the right to forget Gaza. I saw, and it was overwhelming, children and adults. Some had a look that held something… beyond the pain of grief. When you haven’t… when, deep down, you’ve gone beyond humanity and, when you want to survive.” Earlier (on October 19, 2024), the French President referred to the UN General Assembly’s vote in November 1947 on the plan to partition Palestine into a Jewish State and an Arab State, stressing: “Netanyahu must not forget that his country was created by a UN decision. And, therefore, this is not the time to break away from UN decisions.“
In 1967, Maxime Rodinson, the French Marxist scholar, penned an article titled Israel, a Colonial-Settler Entity (Israel, Fait Colonial?) in the special issue of Jean-Paul Sartre‘s journal Les Temps Modernes. His article explored whether Israel could be classified as a colonial-settler state. It was a seminal work that helped define the debate around the relationship between Zionism and colonialism, becoming influential in socialist and anti-imperialist circles. Rodinson wrote: “It is possible that war is the only way out of the situation created by Zionism. I leave it to others to find cause for rejoicing in this. But if there is any chance of some day seeing a peaceful solution, it will not be achieved by telling the Arabs that it is their duty to applaud their conquerors because they are Europeans or are in the process of becoming Europeanised, because they are ‘advanced’, because they are revolutionary or (almost) socialist and, even less, simply because they are Jews!” He added: “The most that can be asked of the Arabs is that they resign themselves to a disagreeable situation, and that in resigning themselves they make the best of their resignation. It is not easy to get a conquered person to resign himself to defeat, and it is not made any easier by loudly proclaiming how right it was that he was soundly beaten. It is generally wiser to offer him compensation. And those who have not suffered from the fight can (and, I believe, even must) recommend forgiveness for the injuries inflicted. They are hardly entitled to demand it.” Thus, Rodinson exposed each and every lie with which French society carefully conceals the monstrous image of Israeli Zionism.
Rodinson’s view is still relevant to the French (and other) media. It’s time to open up our eyes.
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