In 1967, just days after Israel’s miraculous victory in the Six-Day War — a war it neither started nor wanted — French President Charles de Gaulle publicly rebuked Jews:

• the Jewish State was “war-like state bent on expansion”
• impugned the Jewish people “throughout the ages” as “an elite people, sure of themselves and domineering,” who had “created ill will in various countries at various times.”

The accusation wasn’t merely tone-deaf — it was malicious in intent. Israel had just repelled a coordinated Arab onslaught aimed at its annihilation. In response, rather than offering admiration or even neutrality, de Gaulle reached for the language of old European antisemitism: that Jews are too proud, too successful, too capable — and therefore must be cut down to size.

Historian Bernard Lewis noted how this framing, after 1967, became a tool not just of European elites but of Arab leaders humiliated by defeat. The Jews had survived — worse, they had won — and for that, they were to be condemned as arrogant victors. He quoted one writer who said “It was bad enough to be conquered and occupied by the mighty empires of the West, the British Empire, the French Empire, but to suffer this fate at the hands of a few hundred thousand Jews was intolerable.”

Fast forward to today.

French President Emmanuel Macron repeats the posture of his predecessor, albeit with 21st-century polish. After Hamas butchered Israeli civilians in their homes on October 7, 2023, Macron offered sympathies — but quickly shifted blame back to Israel.

In the first weeks after Israel struck back at Hamas, Macron accused Israel of collective punishment, while never applying the same outrage to Hamas’s use of civilians as human shields, or to its decades-long charter of antisemitic terror.

And now, Macron leads calls for France to unilaterally recognize a Palestinian state — not as a reward for peace, but as a diplomatic slap to the Jewish state for defending itself too well.

Like de Gaulle, Macron cloaks condescension in the language of law and balance. But the message is unchanged:

When Jews are victims, they earn pity.
When Jews resist, they invite suspicion.
When Jews win — they must be reprimanded.

To call Jews “domineering” after a war of self-defense is to rewrite the story of Jewish survival into one of guilt. France did it in 1967. It is doing it again today.