From France to America, hatred of Israel is eroding the West - opinion

NOVEMBER 7, 2026 21:54The defamation of Israel and delegitimization of Jews/Zionists is boomeranging on the Western world.Let’s begin with France, which is being consumed by a toxic brew that blends Marxism, Islamism, Palestinianism, and antisemitism into a potent assault on the state and on French culture and civilization.The ideological depravities that undergird the deepening chaos have long and deep roots in French society and politics, particularly in France’s perverted policies toward Jews and Israel.This is the elephant in the room that French President Emmanuel Macron and his predecessors will never admit to: that their ideological elevation of the Palestinian cause into a monster master political storyline has willy-nilly birthed a narrative of nihilism, a swell of anti-civilizational contempt wearing a keffiyeh that goes far beyond Israel.The moral inversions that excuse October 7 as “resistance” and heroize calls to “globalize the intifada” now excuse the torching and looting of iconic French buildings and boulevards. The diplomatic grandstanding at Israel’s expense (“Palestinian statehood now!”) and the indulgence of Islamo-fascist and leftist mobs who hail Hamas have started aeonian fires of self-immolation and devastation.A protester wearing a costume walks next to a burning fire during a demonstration organised by labour unions as part of nationwide protests joined by French high school and university students against the cost of living and rising fuel prices, in Paris, France, October 31, 2026. (credit: REUTERS/Abdul Saboor)My late father, Prof. Henry H. (Zvi Meir) Weinberg, was a scholar of French literature and a keen observer of socio-cultural trends in France. He passed away in Jerusalem almost 20 years ago (after serving as an MK in the Knesset for Natan Sharansky’s immigrant party).Psychological warfare against the Jewish stateForty years ago, he wrote a book called The Myth of the Jew in France 1967-1982 in which he dissected the techniques by which highbrow publications such as Le Monde and the upper echelons of French literary society pursued a long campaign of psychological warfare against the Jewish state.Under the mask of high-minded objectivity and fealty to human rights, they adopted narratives fiercely hostile to Israel, inevitably sliding into the murky waters of anti-Jewish prejudice.My father chronicled the lifting of taboos on public expression of antisemitism in France – beginning with the writer and philosopher Voltaire and the Encylopaedists of the 18th century; to the French laboratories for “scientific” racism and national socialism of the 19th century; leading to French collaboration with the Nazis under the Vichy regime and subsequent far-right French preoccupation with Holocaust denial.Other notable markers on the way: president De Gaulle’s notorious “Sermon to the Hebrews” in 1967; French policies of appeasement toward Palestinian terrorism under presidents Georges Pompidou and Valéry Giscard d’Estaing in the 1970s and 1980s; the vehemence and consistency of French attacks on Israeli policy ever since the First Lebanon War (1982); and the malicious depredation wrought by fashionable antagonism to everything Israeli peddled by French intellectuals.Since then, the “myth,” or defamation, of the Jew and the Zionist in France and other high-minded democracies has only darkened.“Progressive” circles in the West have dived deep into campaigns of vilification against Israel and Zionism. They accuse Israel of genocide and crimes against humanity, and of being a threat to world peace and security. They promote boycott, divestment, and sanctions against Israel.All this, alongside total disregard for the genocidal threats against Israel and Jews from Hamas, Hezbollah and Iran, and deafness to willful distortions of history peddled by Palestinian dictators like Mahmoud Abbas.The preeminent international human rights jurist Prof. Irwin Cotler of Canada (who was a close colleague of my father) has shown that, in addition to legitimizing antisemitism against supporters of Israel such as French Jews, the preoccupation with Israel has the effect of sanitizing other evils – like Iran’s hegemonic dash to nuclear weapons and Marxist-Islamist terror in the streets of Paris.Sure enough, across Europe and even in the US and Canada, flying the flag of “Palestine” while burning the flags of America and Israel has become the glue through which seemingly unrelated grievances can be connected, from air conditioning in French schools to food prices in Michigan.The tragedy is that only societies coming apart need hatred of Jews and Israel as political glue.Jew hatred is always a precursor to violence aimed in all directions, to rioting. And when the revolt is wrapped up to combine causes like Marxist mutiny, jihad fandom, racial revolution, gender and environmental radicalism, militant secularism, and generic anarchism – it morphs into an intersectional rallying call for the downfall of Western (Judeo-Christian) values.Alas, European and other Western leaders are swift and decisive in censuring Israel while extraordinarily slow and timid in confronting their own civilizational and societal failures.Lecturing and punishing Israel is a wonderfully cheap and convenient substitute for genuine governing. Disciplining their own finances, solving unemployment, controlling their borders, and policing the terrorist-toting edges of society is much harder to do.As the blogger Nachum Kaplan has written, condemning Israel is Europe’s favorite escape from reality.Condemning Israel requires little more than a microphone, a press release, and an extravagant sense of moral superiority. “Israel has become the preferred receptacle for Europe’s displaced frustrations, a role that Jews have endured in the European imagination for centuries.”One shudders at the thought that America also might be deteriorating towards politics where Jew/Israel hatred drives both the far Left and the far Right and serves as the superglue that binds them together.When both Abdul El-Sayed (the newly elected radical Muslim Senator from Michigan) and JD Vance (the isolationist US vice president who seeks to be the next president) loudly blame Israel for the ills and mistakes of America, the ground trembles.We know that their complaints ain’t just about policy (whether the war with Iran was smart or not) but stem from a darker place.When Hassan Piker and Tucker Carlson, social media influencers on the hard Left and hard Right, unite in horseshoe fashion to criminalize Israel, all our defense triggers must sound the alarm.We know that their assaults are meant to raise demons and push Jews/Zionists out of public life and even America altogether.The Jewish and broader pro-Israel communities, and whatever remains of the “center” in American society, must pray and act to prevent America from driving itself off a civilizational cliff by falling into the cesspool of Jew and Israel hatred.After all, it never ends with the Jews. Like in France, the orgies of aversion to Jews and Israel inexorably morph into waves of anti-civilizational contempt wearing keffiyehs (as a symbol); violent surges that transcend the Jews and Israel and which existentially threaten the bedrock foundations of Western society.Faced with all this, where does hope come from? Well, my father often would point to the resilience of the Jewish people over the past century. Jews overcame the destructive powers of Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union and proceeded to build a magnificent modern Jewish state in Israel.The Reichstag and the Kremlin were far more powerful than the ICC or the US Senate will ever be, so Israel will ride out ugly lawfare from The Hague, Paris, London, and even Washington.The Jewish people will prevail. My father certainly believed that. If good people bandy together in democracies to divorce the extremists, the West can be saved too.The writer is managing senior fellow at the Jerusalem-based Misgav Institute for National Security & Zionist Strategy. The views expressed here are his own. His diplomatic, defense, political, and Jewish world columns over the past 30 years are at davidmweinberg.com Follow us on Google