Lost in translation: Israel, Huckabee blast Macron over Hamas

The image of French President Emmanuel Macron wagging his finger at Benjamin Netanyahu while the UN piles on with “war crimes” accusations is almost too on-the-nose. Here you have a leader whose own country is dealing with the fallout of its own internal tensions, lecturing the only functioning democracy in the Middle East on how to deal with neighbors who literally filmed themselves committing atrocities on October 7. Huckabee’s blunt dismissal of Macron’s comments as “lost in translation” was generous. The translation was clear enough; it’s the spine that was missing.

What’s wild is how these international lectures always land on Israel and never on the actual problem. You have President Trump laying down a hard line that Iran will never get a nuclear weapon—a statement of fact that should be the entire world’s position—and instead the UN chamber is filled with delegations clutching pearls over Israel’s right to defend itself. The world somehow finds the self-defense of a tiny nation more offensive than the regime that funds the terrorists attacking it. It’s a bizarre inversion of morality that has become the standard operating procedure at the UN.

Maybe the issue is that Macron and the UN crowd still believe you can negotiate with people who have sworn to kill you. That’s a luxury Israel doesn’t have, and frankly, it’s a luxury France wouldn’t tolerate either if the threat were at its border. Trump’s reset—peace through strength—is the only policy that has ever actually moved the needle in the region. The Abraham Accords proved that. The alternative is what Macron is selling: endless chatter, endless process, and a road map to nowhere that just buys Iran more time. Israel knows the score. It’s time the rest of the world caught up to the reality that they’d rather ignore.