Crif criticizes Macron’s attack on the creation of Israel

While weapons speak in the Middle East between Israel, Hamas and Hezbollah, in France relations are complicated between Emmanuel Macron and Crif. The president of the Representative Council of Jewish Institutions of France was indeed moved Tuesday evening by remarks attributed to the Head of State in the Council of Ministers on the role of the UN in the creation of the State of Israel.

“The remarks attributed to the President of the Republic, if confirmed, are both a historical and political mistake,” wrote Yonathan Arfi in a message on X.

Tensions between Paris and Tel Aviv

According to comments reported by participants in the Council of Ministers, Tuesday, Emmanuel Macron considered that Benjamin Netanyahu should not “free himself from UN decisions”, emphasizing that it is a “UN decision” who “created” the State of Israel. A reference to Resolution 181 adopted in November 1947 by the United Nations General Assembly, providing for the partition of Palestine into a Jewish state and an Arab state.

“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 from the Vichy regime in France,” the Israeli Prime Minister then replied. An exchange which arrives while the rag is already burning between Paris and Tel Aviv. Emmanuel Macron in fact asked, shortly before the first anniversary of the Hamas attacks of October 7, for an end to deliveries to Israel of weapons used in Gaza, a choice described as “shame” by Benjamin Netanyahu. The name of the President of the Republic was then whistled several times during a Crif ceremony.

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“To suggest that the creation of the State of Israel was the fruit of a political decision by the UN is to ignore both the century-old history of Zionism” and “the sacrifice of thousands of them to establish the State of Israel,” the president of Crif also wrote on Tuesday regarding the latest reported remarks from Emmanuel Macron. “At a time when anti-Semitism feeds on anti-Zionism, these remarks dangerously strengthen the camp of those who contest the legitimacy of Israel’s right to exist,” added Yonathan Arfi, hoping that, “at “Beyond these regrettable remarks, the friendship between France and Israel will, I hope, continue to prevail.”