{"id":61322,"date":"2026-09-23T13:10:12","date_gmt":"2026-09-23T13:10:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/news\/netanyahu-calls-macrons-west-bank-comments-in-un-speech-grotesque\/"},"modified":"2026-09-23T13:10:12","modified_gmt":"2026-09-23T13:10:12","slug":"netanyahu-calls-macrons-west-bank-comments-in-un-speech-grotesque","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/news\/netanyahu-calls-macrons-west-bank-comments-in-un-speech-grotesque\/","title":{"rendered":"Netanyahu calls Macron&#8217;s West Bank comments in UN speech &#8216;grotesque&#8217;"},"content":{"rendered":"<p> <br \/>\n<\/p>\n<div>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\"><b class=\"ssrcss-1xjjfut-BoldText e5tfeyi3\">Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has condemned French President Emmanuel Macron after he criticised Israel&#8217;s actions in the occupied West Bank during his address to the UN General Assembly.<\/b><\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">&#8220;Look at what&#8217;s happening in the West Bank, where day in, day out, we are seeing violations. And in the name of what? Hamas was never very active in the West Bank,&#8221; Macron said in French, according to the UN&#8217;s interpreter.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Netanyahu called the remarks a &#8220;grotesque absurdity&#8221; and said members of the Palestinian armed group there &#8220;carry out attacks against Jews almost every day&#8221;.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">There was no response from Macron&#8217;s office, but one French diplomatic source said there had been a &#8220;misinterpretation&#8221;.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.jpost.com\/international\/article-909407\" class=\"ssrcss-1e0jzsh-InlineLink e1kn3p7n0\">The source told the Jerusalem Post<span class=\"visually-hidden ssrcss-i2z2ig-VisuallyHidden e16en2lz0\">, <!-- -->external<\/span><\/a> that the meaning of the French sentence spoken by the president, &#8220;Le Hamas n&#8217;a jamais s\u00e9vi en Cisjordanie,&#8221; was, &#8220;Hamas has never governed the West Bank.&#8221; <\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Macron also rejected US President Donald Trump&#8217;s assertion that he had ended the war between Israel and Hamas in the Gaza Strip. Violence there has continued despite last October&#8217;s ceasefire, including almost daily Israeli strikes, while humanitarian conditions remain dire<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">&#8220;Some boast of a supposed peace. But that peace has not reopened humanitarian access for a single second,&#8221; he said. &#8220;Are we simply to stand by and watch this spectacle that should shame us all?&#8221;<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">After the address, the Israeli prime minister&#8217;s office said in a statement: &#8220;The grotesque absurdity of Emmanuel Macron&#8217;s statement is staggering.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">&#8220;On Sunday, the eve of [the Jewish holy day of] Yom Kippur, just two days ago, Netanel Shukrun &#8211; a French citizen and father of six &#8211; was murdered in his car by a Hamas terrorist in Judea and Samaria,&#8221; it added, using a biblical term for the West Bank.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">&#8220;Hamas terrorists carry out attacks against Jews almost every day. They have murdered countless Israeli civilians in Judea and Samaria.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">The US ambassador to Israel, Mike Huckabee, also denounced Macron&#8217;s remarks as &#8220;out of touch with reality&#8221;.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Shukrun, 36, was shot dead when a Palestinian opened fire on a group of Israelis at a spring near the West Bank settlement of Neve Tzuf, according to Israeli police. The suspect was arrested later at a hospital in the city of Ramallah, they said.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Hamas praised the attack but did not say it was behind it.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">The group &#8211; which is designated as a terrorist organisation by Israel, France and other countries &#8211; is a rival of the Fatah-dominated Palestinian Authority, which governs parts of the West Bank that are not under Israeli control.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Israel has built about 160 settlements housing 700,000 Jews since it occupied the West Bank and East Jerusalem &#8211; land Palestinians want, along with Gaza, for a hoped-for future state &#8211; during the 1967 Middle East war. An estimated 3.3 million Palestinians live alongside them.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">The settlements are illegal under international law.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<p><br \/>\n<br \/><a href=\"https:\/\/www.bbc.co.uk\/news\/articles\/ck1l6yyg52qvo?at_medium=RSS&#038;at_campaign=rss\">Source link <\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has condemned French President Emmanuel Macron after he criticised Israel&#8217;s actions in the occupied West Bank during his address to the UN General Assembly. &#8220;Look at what&#8217;s happening in the West Bank, where day in, day out, we are seeing violations. And in the name of what? Hamas was never [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":61323,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[44],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-61322","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-middle-east"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/61322","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=61322"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/61322\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":61324,"href":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/61322\/revisions\/61324"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/61323"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=61322"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=61322"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=61322"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}