Jean-Luc Mélenchon, a Menace to the West

Jean-Luc Mélenchon is a Communist by belief, and the head of the French political party La France Insoumise (France Unbowed). He wants the French to have open borders. He wants to nationalize all large businesses. He wants to seize the property of the rich. He wants to close down France’s wildly successful nuclear energy plants. He wants to support Vladimir Putin’s aggression against Ukraine.

He wants to leave NATO. He wants government by referendum — that is, inspired heavily by the 2018 Gilets Jaunes (Yellow Vests) protests, he supports the Référendum d’initiative citoyenne that would allow ordinary French citizens to bypass parliament. By gathering a legally designated number of signatures, voters could directly propose new laws, repeal unpopular legislation, or amend the constitution. He admires Robespierre, who began the Reign of Terror. And — but you knew that already — he truly, deeply, really hates Israel. More on this unpleasant character can be found here: “France’s Mélenchon Vows to Deploy Navy to Escort Pro-Hamas Flotillas Challenging Israel’s Gaza Blockade,” by Ailin Vilches Arguello, Algemeiner, November 9, 2026:

The leader of France’s largest leftist coalition in parliament and a 2027 presidential candidate has pledged, if elected, to send French warships to escort pro-Hamas flotillas seeking to challenge Israel’s maritime blockade of Gaza, marking another escalation in his increasingly incendiary campaign against the Jewish state.

Speaking Saturday at a major campaign rally in Le Bourget, outside Paris, far-left La France Insoumise (LFI) leader Jean-Luc Mélenchon — who critics have accused of contributing to the surge in antisemitism across France — outlined his plans for the 2027 presidential race, calling for a more aggressive French stance toward Israel.

Placing the Israeli-Palestinian conflict at the center of his foreign policy agenda, Mélenchon pledged unwavering support for the Palestinians, accusing Israel of committing genocide in Gaza and pursuing the gradual annexation of the West Bank.

The “genocide” charge is absurd. “Genocide” requires intent. Israel, as the whole world knows but persists in pretending otherwise, has made a tremendous effort to minimize civilian casualties. To that end, it has dropped millions of leaflets, send millions of text messages, made millions of robocalls, all to warn civilians away from sites about to be targeted. Furthermore, of the 75,000 people who have died in Gaza since October 7, 2023, 25,000 were Hamas terrorists. Based on historical data, another 24,000 died from natural causes, including accidents and diseases. Another 4,000 died from missiles that Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad fired at Israel, but which misfired and hit civilians in Gaza. Do the math: At most, 22,000 civilians in Gaza died from Israeli fire, which is less than 1% of Gaza’s population of 2.2 million. Does the deaths of 1% of the population constitute “genocide”?

“French ships will, if necessary, escort the flotillas of citizens mobilizing to defend the rights of the Palestinian people,” Mélenchon said during his speech. “We reject the gradual annexation of the West Bank, southern Lebanon, and the Golan Heights. We will also take concrete action to mobilize against the spread of violence targeting Christian communities under siege and facing persecution in Palestine and Lebanon.”

When Mélenchon says he “rejects the gradual annexation of the West Bank,” he is ignoring the fact that Jews have lived in Judea and Samaria (a/k/a the West Bank) for the past 3500 years, and that is where Jewish history was made, not in Tel Aviv or Haifa. He ignores the League of Nations’ Mandate for Palestine, which included all the land from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea; Mandatory Palestine was then intended to become the future Jewish state. Either Mélenchon has forgotten, or has never understood, the significance of the Mandate for Palestine.

As for what he calls the “gradual annexation of southern Lebanon,” Mélenchon is flatly wrong. Israel has no intention of annexing southern Lebanon. It has kept troops in that area only to prevent Hezbollah from attacking northern Israel. Once Hezbollah has been disarmed and dismantled, the IDF will withdraw.

The far-left leader went further, vowing to do everything in his power “to stop the Holocaust in Gaza, the Israeli occupation in the West Bank, the Golan Heights, and Lebanon,” even threatening to “deploy military forces” as part of his proposed intervention….

Shamelessly, Mélenchon dares to call Israel’s war to protect its people from Hamas after the atrocities that terror group carried out on October 7, 2023 a “Holocaust.” The killing of civilians, despite the IDF’s attempts to warn them away from targeted sites, that has amounted to 1% of the Gazan population, is in Mélenchon’s view, comparable to the deliberate murder of six million people.

“We owe the Lebanese people aid, solidarity, and support in the face of genocidal forces,” Mélenchon wrote in a post on X. “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.”

Mélenchon does not realize it, but the “Lebanese people” — the Christians, the Sunnis, and even many of the Shi’a — are eager for Hezbollah, that has brought such misery to the country, to be disarmed.

When he talks about Netanyahu’s “interference in our elections,” what can he possibly have in mind? There has been no Israeli interference in France’s elections. The only foreign power that has been interfering in French politics is Qatar, that has been spending tens of millions of euros in France, as it has throughout the Western world, to gain influence with politicians.

He even called on French President Emmanuel Macron to form an international coalition “to send troops under his military command to oversee the withdrawal of the Israeli army and protect the immediate ceasefire that must be imposed on the invader.”…

He is calling for direct military intervention against Israel, to force it to be squeezed back within the 1949 armistice lines, leaving it with a nine-mile-wide waist between Qalqilya to the sea. It will never happen. And anyway, how do you think the French army would fare in any direct confrontation with the IDF?

Mélenchon is a deep antisemite, in the same galère as Louis-Ferdinand Celine and Maurice Papon. He has not condemned the rise in antisemitism in France; he approves of it. Fortunately, the latest polls give Mélenchon a 17% approval rating, less than half what the anti-Muslim-immigrant and pro-Israel Marine Le Pen is now polling. And every time the rioters whom Mélenchon applauded come out on the streets of French cities to spread mayhem, his approval rating goes down.