By Seth Mandel
Thursday, June 04, 2026
European leaders are making a bad habit of echoing the
violent rhetoric of the anti-Zionist activist class. Back in September, it was
Spain’s Pedro Sanchez who lamented that
“Spain, as you know, doesn’t have nuclear bombs, nor aircraft carriers, nor
large oil reserves. We alone can’t stop the Israeli offensive, but that doesn’t
mean we won’t stop trying, because there are causes worth fighting for even if
it’s not in our sole power to win them.”
This casual violence from a European president was a
notable escalation, but it would not be the last.
Jean-Luc Melenchon, the powerful leader of the French
left and prospective presidential candidate in the next national elections, has
a history of voicing his inner anti-Semitic thoughts. He blamed
Jews for killing Jesus in an interview, for example, and defended notorious
British anti-Semite Jeremy Corbin.
French elections often pit the right wing against a
coalition of left and center parties, with those votes coalescing around a
centrist candidate to win in the runoff round. But next year, Politico Europe notes,
the candidate with the votes to make the second round against the right wing
may very well be the far-left Melenchon instead of a centrist.
While there will no doubt be concern about the
opportunity that would open for a nationalist right-wing president, Melenchon
isn’t less extreme in his own politics. Here’s what he said about Israel and
Lebanon this week on social media, flagged
by the Algemeiner:
Israel is invading
and annexing all of southern Lebanon. Netanyahu has raised his flag over
Beaufort Castle. This French name should remind us of the thousand-year history
that binds us to Lebanon. We owe the Lebanese people aid, solidarity, and
support in the face of genocidal forces.
He added: “The aircraft carrier would serve as a more
useful symbol in the Mediterranean than in the Strait of Hormuz, to remind
Netanyahu that his interference in our elections and his invasions of our
allies’ territories are viewed as threats by the French. The UN Security
Council must condemn Israel and organize the withdrawal of its forces from the
occupied territory.”
So Melenchon believes Lebanon is still a French colony,
essentially—that Israel’s seizing of the castle is an act of war against
France. Then he accuses Netanyahu of interfering in French elections,
suggesting that too is an act of war.
But the last part may be the most deranged. Israel took
South Lebanon from Hezbollah, not the Lebanese army. Hezbollah is an Iranian
occupation force. Why isn’t Iran’s occupation of South Lebanon viewed as a
threat to France? Because when he talks about “invasions of our allies’
territory,” the ally is apparently imperial Iran.
If it sounds crazy to think Melenchon sees Iran as an
ally against Israel, it shouldn’t. The Western left has been marching for three
years explicitly cheering Hezbollah and Iran. In fact, it’s been cheering
loudest for Hamas, the Iranian satrapy that carried out the savage murder spree
of October 7, 2023. Hamas recorded its exploits on that day, and admitted to
some of the worst of the crimes not caught on camera. If Melenchon’s
ideological base can celebrate the Iranian militia carrying out a massive campaign
of sexual torture and child murder, why wouldn’t Melenchon also see Iran as the
good guy in this fight?
This is something the West needs to grapple with before
it gets completely out of hand. It is not that the European left, along with
its acolytes in the U.S., want the end of war in the Middle East. It’s that
they want a different war—one that pits Western militaries against
Israel and fights alongside Iran.
That obviously won’t happen—now. But the desire to
reorganize the alliance around Iran and its associated “resistance” movements
is there. And it should be a five-alarm fire in any corner of Europe that has
retained its sanity.
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