Barrot's anti-Israel crusade: Loud, repetitive and utterly ineffective

French Foreign Minister Jean-Noël Barrot declared Tuesday that "nothing can justify" Israel's continued military operations and prolonged presence in Lebanon, conveniently ignoring the fundamental reason Israel is there in the first place.

Israel did not choose to remain in southern Lebanon. It was forced there by Hezbollah, which reopened the front on March 2 in retaliation for Israeli-American strikes against Iran, despite a ceasefire theoretically in place since November 2024. 

Israel's deepest military incursion into Lebanon since its withdrawal in 2000, including Sunday's seizure of Beaufort Castle, is a direct response to an ongoing threat, not an act of imperial ambition.

Barrot knows this. Yet since the October 7, 2023 massacres, France has adopted a reflexively anti-Israel stance that President Macron and his foreign minister pursue at every opportunity, in press conferences, at the UN, and now on French television.

The minister also warned that Lebanon should not become "a sacrificial victim" of the stalled Iran-US negotiations, a fair point, but one that would carry more weight if Paris directed equal pressure at Hezbollah and its Iranian sponsors, who have consistently sabotaged every ceasefire effort.

Meanwhile, a fourth round of Israeli-Lebanese negotiations is underway in Washington, without France at the table.

That absence speaks volumes. For all its grandstanding, Paris is not advancing peace in the region. It is not gaining diplomatic influence. It is simply making noise, and Israel, like most observers, has long since stopped listening.