In November 2023, the French Parliamentary Delegation for Intelligence (DPR) identified Russia, China, Turkey and Iran as the primary countries involved in “omnipresent and lasting threat[s]” of foreign interference in France and Europe. The committee pointed to “fake news is a weapon of war against the West,” and noted that China has about 250,000 agents on the ground.
The DPR report chastised French society for not doing more, noting “the first vulnerability is naivety, which stems from a lack of awareness of the danger. This concerns public decision-makers (elected representatives and senior civil servants) as well as businesses and academic circles…. These foreign powers are also taking advantage of a form of naivety and denial that has long prevailed in Europe.”
The threat is more than “fake news.” Russia was accused of paying three Serbian nationals of anti-Jewish vandalism in France last week. This is similar to the October 2023 situation of Russians accused of paying Moldovan nationals of antisemitic vandalism.
The French government has not been unaware. In January 2023, France forced Russian-owned media RT to shut down to curtail its negative influence on French society. In October 2020, President Emmanuel Macron announced plans to deport 231 foreigners who held radical Islamic beliefs, two days after a Russian-born Islamist beheaded a teacher in France. The country has continued the policy, expelling a Tunisian imam in February 2024 who had “backward, intolerant, and violent conception of Islam, likely to encourage behaviors contrary to the values of the Republic, discrimination against women, identity retreat, tensions with the Jewish community, and jihadist radicalization.”
In May 2025, the French government declassified a report titled “The Muslim Brotherhood and Political Islam in France.” The 73-page document describes how the organization is destabilizing French society through schools, mosques and community centers. The group is funded by foreign governments and has an estimated 100,000 members in France (about 0.15% of the population).
The French government knows of the dangers of radical Islam outside of the country as well. Hamas, the Palestinian arm of the Muslim Brotherhood, is a designated terrorist group by the European Union, and France stated in December 2023 that it would work with the EU to dry up the terrorist group’s funding. Yet France encourages “inter-Palestinian reconciliation” which would include Hamas in the Palestinian Authority government. France also backs UNRWA, the agency that seeks to move millions of Stateless Arabs from Palestine (SAPs) into Israel, despite them seeking the end of the Jewish State.
So despite France fighting the dangers of radical Islam and foreign influence inside France (which make up a miniscule percentage of the population), it seeks to use the June 2025 United Nations conference it will co-chair, to have several nations pressure Israel to embed radical jihadism inside the Jewish State.
According to Jewish Insider, French conservative intellectual Michel Gurfinkiel said that “the main point of the [French Muslim Brotherhood] report is not what it says about the Muslim Brotherhood. The real point is the conclusion that the French government should make efforts to bring French Muslims into the French fold, and that means … to recognize a state of Palestine. There is a kind of interplay here: the interior minister wanted to publish the report in order to give legitimacy to his own policy against Islamism in France. But it was published with the approval of President Macron … and obviously, the real goal of the president was to tell everybody, ‘I must recognize a State of Palestine because it is the only way for us to fight the Muslim Brotherhood.‘”
Macron’s “France First” policy will attempt to sacrifice Israel to radical Islamism in an effort to buy a few years of peace with the small but growing Muslim Brotherhood in France. He may believe that such move will curtail attacks against the 450,000 Jews in the country as well, despite such maneuvers forcing Israel to continue to battle Hamas, yielding more global attacks against Jews.
There are constructive things that France can do with Saudi Arabia to fight foreign influence and radical jihadism, and it is not to recognize a Palestinian state:
- France and Saudi Arabia should clearly state that they define all aspects of Hamas and the Muslim Brotherhood to be terrorist organizations. It would be banned and a criminal offense for anyone to voice or express support or solidarity with those entities. Consequently, any Palestinian government that included Hamas would be isolated and not receive any funding or support. Both countries will encourage other countries to do the same.
- The SAPs so-called “Right of Return” to homes where grandparents lived will only be settled via financial mechanisms, and no SAPs will have an “inalienable right” to move to Israel. Israel will be the sole party which decides who enters its borders, as every sovereign nation does.
These two steps lay the groundwork for SAPs to reorient their culture from the destruction of Israel towards building a new country. It would be the correct and consistent path for France to combat foreign influence and extremist Islamism, both in France and in Israel.
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Related articles:
What Will France’s “Concrete” Steps Be To Advance A “Two State Solution”? (May 2025)
Does the UN Only Grant Inalienable Rights to Palestinians? (May 2021)
France’s Hypocrisy Expelling Radical Extremist Non-Citizens (November 2020)
{Reposted from author’s blog}
