Macron's minions are still in love with Israel

Ilana Cicurel, an ally of Emmanuel Macron and Israel.
Eric Vidal European Parliament

Emmanuel Macron and his advisers seem intent on taking contortion to a new limit.

As soon as the French president says something that upsets the Tel Aviv establishment, his entourage twists itself into various uncomfortable positions while trying to strike a different tone.

When Israel announced that it is taking legal action against the alleged exclusion of its firms from the Euronaval arms fair, Macron’s team at the Élysée Palace denied that a “boycott” is taking place. The palace just opposes “any promotion of weapons used in Gaza and Lebanon, which cause unacceptable damage to the civilian population,” Macron’s office has said.

The awkward attempts to fudge important issues should not distract from how quite a few of Macron’s allies are ensconced in the pro-Israel lobby.

Some of his allies may even be using the lobby to advance their careers.

Damien Bertrand-Fortobeaux is a new recruit at the Brussels office of the European Leadership Network (Elnet), a pro-Israel advocacy group. Before taking up that job, he was an assistant to Ilana Cicurel, until recently a lawmaker representing Macron’s Renaissance party.

Cicurel did not reply to a query, asking if she recommended Bertrand for the Elnet job.

Revolving doors

Even if she did not provide a recommendation, Bertrand’s hiring is a case of revolving doors between institutions that theoretically serve the European public and pressure groups serving foreign states.

Then a member of the European Parliament, Cicurel took part in an October 2023 propaganda trip to Israel. The trip was organized by Elnet.

Cicurel has acknowledged that she had frequent contact with the Israeli embassy in Paris during her stint as a lawmaker.

She could be relied on to regurgitate lies circulated by Israel and its lobby. She has amplified the lies that Hamas uses all civilians in Gaza as “human shields” and that Palestine’s school curriculum conditions children to hate.

Cicurel was director-general of Alliance israélite universelle (AIU) before she became a full-time politician. Nominally focused on education, AIU has expressed its total support for Israel during the current genocidal war against Gaza.

In 2015, Cicurel arranged for Macron to visit a French-language school near Holon, a city in Israel. She has spoken of being impressed by how Macron, France’s economy minister at that time, praised Israel’s much-vaunted “start-up nation” ethos and by his stated aversion to the Palestinian call for boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS).

Within a few years of the event at which she hosted Macron, Cicurel had joined the executive of his party (then called La République en marche, now Renaissance).

Even though Macron is now the target of Israel’s ire, he underscores that his devotion to that state is unwavering.

The Israel lobby has allocated considerable resources to courting Macron and his allies.

The European Leadership Network, for example, has undertaken a series of joint activities with Institut Montaigne. That Paris-based think tank played a significant role in drafting the program on which Macron contested (and won) the 2017 presidential election.

Senior figures in Macron’s Renaissance participated in a trip to Israel hosted by Elnet earlier this month. They included Sylvain Maillard, who led the Renaissance grouping in France’s National Assembly ahead of the summer elections.

The antipathy toward Macron expressed by some Israeli ministers should, therefore, be contextualized.

The French president may have become a punching bag for the Tel Aviv establishment. Some of his minions are nonetheless still in love with Israel.