The late French comedian Coluche famously joked that the reason  the national symbol of France is a rooster is that it is the only bird capable of crowing while standing in its own mess. President Macron seems to have taken that jibe to heart by, after pledging support for Israel, hosting at Paris a conference to raise foreign aid for Gaza.

Incroyable, mais vrai.

Mr. Macron is raising this money for Gaza as nearly 250,000 Israelis are internally displaced in the wake of attacks on its territory from Gaza and southern Lebanon. As far as “pulling a Macron” goes, this is one of the 45-year-old chef d’État’s larger ones. Monsieur Macron’s grand amour for the spotlight has rarely been more clear. 

Not even compared to last year, when he devised a sort of alternative to the European Union, despite boasting of his allegiance to the bloated project. His  special brand of hypocrisy is on repeat with the Gaza parley a month after Hamas slew 1,400 Israelis — and only days after a half-baked pledge to spearhead an international coalition to combat the terrorists who run Gaza.

The irony is that Monsieur Macron is summoning officials from some 50 Western and Arab countries, the UN, and nongovernmental organizations to talk about how to furnish assistance to civilians in the Gaza Strip even as acts of racist violence against Jews in France have skyrocketed since the October 7 Hamas attacks in southern Israel. 

More than 1,000 antisemitic acts have occurred in France in just one month — and those are only the documented ones. The interior minister, Gérard Darmanin, has gone so far as to speak of an “explosion” in the crime rate as it pertains to demonstrably antisemitic acts. Last Saturday a Jewish woman was stabbed at her home at Lyon, and a swastika was graffitied on the premises.

Stars of David have been appearing on buildings at and around Paris, acts seen as advertising Jewish homes as targets. Authorities have tried to pin the blame for the vandalism on “foreign influence,” without providing much evidence of it. Whoever is behind it, desecration of Jewish cemeteries and property is by no means a new phenomenon in France.

Little if anything is ever done to stop it, and it’s part of the reason why so many French Jews choose to emigrate to Israel. No surprise then that on Monday, the European Commission warned of a “spike of antisemitic incidents across Europe” that has “reached extraordinary levels in the last few days, reminiscent of some of the darkest times in history.”

Following that, France’s minister for the European Union,  Laurence Boone — no relation to Daniel, let us just say — told a Senate hearing today, “The Commission has a moral obligation to ask member states to mobilize on the issue of antisemitism in light of the past month.” Is Mr. Macron’s idea of mobilizing on the issue hosting  an elaborate powwow for more aid for Gaza?

Perhaps not, but the Frenchman is clearly virtue-signaling in the wrong direction. No doubt he wants to placate the French street, which has been crowded with sizeable pro-Palestinian protests in recent weeks. France has Europe’s largest population of Muslims, many falling into the category of disenfranchised, underemployed male youths. 

Mr. Macron, though, is nothing if not savvy. Across the English Channel, Prime Minister Sunak has found himself in hot water for lambasting pro-Palestinian protests planned to take place at London on Armistice Day as “provocative and disrespectful.” The French president wants to lower the heat on the leafy avenues of Paris, which after all has birthed more than its share of revolutions. 

By doing so, though, Mr. Macron not only fails to mark the real problem, which is the threat to Israel caused by the continued existence of Hamas. He is also complicit in the false narrative that ordinary people in Gaza are suffering because of Israel’s military campaign against the terrorists and not because of the terrorists themselves.

Although the plight of Gazans caught up in the havoc unleashed by Hamas is not imagined, it may also be overstated. Neither the UN’s humanitarian affairs office, Unicef, nor the World Health Organization have complained of shortages of critical supplies in Gaza. The IDF has taken care to warn residents of the northern part of the Strip to go south, even escorting them to safety.

As heads of state converge on Paris today, it is doubtful any of this will be on the agenda, or the fact that Hamas is using fake casualty figures to inflame sentiments and fake ambulances to conduct attacks and also to spirit its members into Egypt via the Rafah border crossing. Mr. Macron will be focused on rallying his guests to join him in his call for a “humanitarian pause” in the fighting. 

Mr. Macron is also expected to announce more funding for Palestinians in Gaza. Paris has already uncorked an additional $21.4 million in humanitarian aid for Gaza, and sent 54 tons of aid via three flights to Egypt. The EU is the world’s no. 1 provider of aid to the Palestinians, having already spent more than $83 million on them this year.

No wonder then that the European Council chief, Charles Michel, and the European Commission president, Ursula von der Leyen, will also be attending Mr. Macron’s latest folly today. Meantime, the Palais Elysée confirmed  that no one from Israel will be attending Thursday’s conference. Whether any Israelis were actually invited was not immediately clear.