Israel‘s defense minister on Wednesday called French President Emmanuel Macron’s decision to ban Israeli firms from exhibiting at a naval arms show “a disgrace” and accused Paris of implementing a hostile policy towards the Jewish people.

The decision to bar Israeli firms is the latest incident in a row fueled by the Macron government’s unease over Israel‘s conduct in the wars against Hamas in Gaza and Hezbollah Lebanon.

It came after French efforts to secure a truce in the conflict between Israel and the Iran-backed terrorist organization Hezbollah in Lebanon foundered and as Israel carries out more airstrikes on targets in the country.

“French President Macron’s actions are a disgrace to the French nation and the values of the free world, which he claims to uphold,” Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant posted on X.

“France has adopted, and is consistently implementing, a hostile policy towards the Jewish people. We will continue defending our nation against enemies on 7 different fronts, and fighting for our future — with or without France.”

French officials have repeatedly said that Paris is committed to Israel‘s security and point out that its military helped defend Israel after Iranian attacks in April and earlier this month.

Euronaval, organizer of the event set to take place in Paris from Nov. 4-7, said in a statement that the French government had informed it on Tuesday that Israeli delegations were not allowed to exhibit stands or show equipment, but could attend the trade show. The decision affected seven firms, it said.

It is the second time this year that France has banned Israeli firms from a major defense show. In May, France said conditions were not right for Israel to participate in the Eurosatory military trade show when Macron was calling for Israel to cease operations in Gaza, the enclave ruled by the Palestinian terrorist group Hamas.

“These measures not only harm relations between our two countries, but also the bonds of trust that they have built, and thus cast doubt on France’s ability to play a leading role on the diplomatic scene to promote peace and stability in the Middle East,” the Israeli embassy said in a statement.

DIPLOMATIC SPARRING

Israeli forces have carried out numerous air strikes and a ground incursion targeting Iran-backed Hezbollah in Lebanon, causing civilian casualties and leading Western allies, including France, to call for an immediate ceasefire.

Diplomatic sparring between Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Macron has increased in recent weeks after Paris had worked with Washington to secure a 21-day truce that would then open the door to negotiations on a long-term diplomatic solution.

France and the United States were caught by surprise last month when Israel launched strikes that killed Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah.

Netanyahu has rejected a unilateral ceasefire that fails to stop Hezbollah, whose stated goal is to destroy the Jewish state, from rearming and regrouping. France has sought to continue to work on a diplomatic resolution.

Macron has irked Netanyahu several times, notably as United Nations peacekeeping forces have been caught in Israeli crossfire in southern Lebanon.

France, with nearly 700 troops in the 10,000-strong UNIFIL peacekeeping force, is one of the main European contributors alongside Italy and Spain.

Macron has called for an end to the supply to Israel of offensive weapons used in Gaza.

On Tuesday, Macron told a cabinet meeting that Netanyahu should not forget that Israel was created by a UN decision, according to a French official.

Foreign Minister Jean-Noel Barrot sought to downplay the comments, saying they had been general remarks reminding Israel of the importance of respecting the UN charter.

But Netanyahu’s office said in response that Israel was established through “the War of Independence with the blood of our heroic fighters, many of whom were Holocaust survivors, including from the Vichy regime in France” — referring to the French government that had collaborated with Nazi Germany.

The post Israel’s Defense Chief Calls Macron a ‘Disgrace to France’ After Israeli Firms Banned From Arms Show first appeared on Algemeiner.com.

Global silence and inaction in the face of gender-based violence by Hamas were condemned at the European Parliament this week, where a panel of experts warned that the denial and rationalization of the rape of Israeli women during the Palestinian terrorist group’s Oct. 7 attack last year legitimized gender-based violence as a weapon of war and enabled other regimes, such as Afghanistan’s Taliban-led government, to continue their oppression of women.

“If the world continues to turn a blind eye, we embolden these regimes and open the door to more atrocities,” said Dr. Charles Asher Small, executive director of the Institute for the Study of Global Antisemitism and Policy (ISGAP), which hosted the event.

“Antisemitism, as history shows, begins with Jews but never ends there. Today, the forces attacking Jewish people are the same ones oppressing women across the Middle East,” Small said.

The event, co-hosted by MEP Fulvio Martusciello and ISGAP, highlighted the deteriorating state of women’s rights in the region since the brutal Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas-led assault on Israel, and came one year after the attack, in which women were subjected to widespread sexual violence, including rape, torture, and mutilation.

Numerous eyewitness accounts, video evidence, and investigations by the United Nations confirmed that these acts were committed systematically, targeting women as part of the broader assault. Victims were found naked or partially clothed, and survivors have since provided harrowing testimonies of the brutal attacks, most recently last week, on the first anniversary of the Oct. 7 massacre.

Dr. Small and other panelists, including Claude Moniquet and Prof. Firouzeh Nahavandi, explored how extremism and political instability have compounded the suffering of women, who are often targeted both for their gender and their identity.

“The Oct. 7 attack was not just an assault on Israel but on the core values we claim to uphold — human rights, equality, and dignity,” Small said. He criticized the international community’s tepid response, noting, “The brutal murders and abductions of Israeli women by Hamas should have sparked global outrage, yet we faced silence, or worse, justifications disguised as resistance.”

The discussion also drew attention to the wider repression of women’s rights across the Middle East, with Qatar and Afghanistan cited as examples of regimes that suppress women’s freedoms while gaining international legitimacy. “Qatar funds radical movements while suppressing women’s rights,” Small noted, adding that the ongoing silence only emboldens such regimes.

“In Afghanistan, women can no longer speak publicly, let alone access education, and the world remains silent,” he said.

Manel Msalmi, president of the European Association for the Defense of Minorities, highlighted the “gendered nature of the violence” in the Oct. 7 attacks, stressing that women were specifically targeted for their gender with “unspeakable brutality designed to dehumanize and terrorize.” She urged the global community to respond with the urgency the atrocities demand.

“Whether in Iran, Afghanistan, or Gaza, women are systematically silenced, subjugated, and stripped of their most basic rights. It is disheartening that the international community has largely failed to respond with the urgency and outrage these atrocities demand,” Msalmi said.

“We cannot claim to stand for women’s rights, equality, or human dignity if we turn a blind eye to such barbarism,” she added.

The post At European Parliament, Urgent Call for Action on Women’s Rights a Year After Hamas Sexual Violence first appeared on Algemeiner.com.

Is there no Jewish subject the New York Times can touch without somehow connecting it back to Israel-bashing?

The Sunday New York Times Magazine features a regular “letter of recommendation” column devoted usually to unreserved endorsements — baseball on the radio, Danish butter cookies. The latest one is about the Talmud. Actually, not quite about “the Talmud,” as the Times headline somewhat misleadingly puts it, but about the “Daily Dose of Talmud” emails published by My Jewish Learning, which are not bad, but which are something different from the full and complete text of Talmud itself, even in translation.

Anyone who expected the Times to treat the Talmud with the same unalloyed positivity and enthusiasm that it applies to cowboy boots, practicing the saxophone outdoors, or other “letter of recommendation” topics is in for a bit of a surprise, because the Times describes the Talmud as useful largely as medicine for the writer’s guilt about Israel’s “brutal” bombing campaign.

“In the days immediately following the attacks of Oct. 7, the Talmudic rabbis felt like a comforting reminder of Jewish resilience. But in the later weeks and months, as the horrors of Oct. 7 gave way to a brutal Israeli bombing campaign, my relationship to the Talmud began to curdle,” the Times article says. “I tried hard to disentangle Daf Yomi from the bombs, from my grief and anger at those who seemed to value retribution over the sanctity of human life and the pursuit of peace.”

The article goes on: “A year later, now, with much of Gaza in ruins and tens of thousands of people killed — tens of thousands of worlds destroyed — I’m still struggling with these questions. Most days, frankly, the only answer I have is to keep reading, to keep returning to the text no matter how angry or ashamed or grief-stricken I might be.”

I guess it’s somewhat reassuring that the Jewish Times writer feels personally connected enough to Israel to be “ashamed” by its actions, rather than entirely disconnected from it. And dealing by studying the Talmud, even a version of it mediated by emails, is better than protesting against Israel on campuses or in the streets.

Yet it takes a certain level of vanity and obtuseness for an American Jew, while Israeli soldiers are risking their lives in Gaza and Lebanon and while Israeli civilians are crowded in bomb shelters to protect against Iranian missile attacks, to be publicly handwringing in the New York Times about his feeling of being “ashamed” by “a brutal Israeli bombing campaign.” The idea that the campaign is about “retribution” rather than itself about the sanctity of life and the pursuit of peace is misleading and simpleminded.

The Times writer, Michael David Lukas, was last noticed in the New York Times back in 2018, publicly proclaiming himself a pork-eater, professing his “fondness for Bernie Sanders,” and denouncing Hanukkah as “an eight-night-long celebration of religious fundamentalism and violence.” At least it’s not just contemporary Israeli violence that bothers Lukas; he didn’t like it when the Maccabees defended Israel, either.

Lukas’s social media feed is full of retweets of non-Zionist and anti-Zionists writers and publications such as Peter Beinart and Jewish Currents and extreme anti-Israel activist groups such as If Not Now.

Leave it to the New York Times to let an article recommending the Talmud drift into an expression of vicarious shame for Israeli brutality. If I drafted such an article as an anti-New York Times parody, people would think it was over-the-top.

So often at the New York Times, in academia, or in mainstream book publishing, though, Israel-bashing is, for Jews, the required price of admission. Lukas, who not only writes for the Times but also teaches at San Francisco State University and is a book author, appears all too willing to perform the public role of American Jew ashamed of Israel. Maybe by the time he finishes the page-a-day cycle a few years from now he’ll wise up. Or maybe by then the Times editors will find some way to write about the Talmud without using it as a vehicle for more Israel-bashing.

Ira Stoll was managing editor of The Forward and North American editor of The Jerusalem Post. His media critique, a regular Algemeiner feature, can be found here.

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