Bernard Kouchner, former Foreign Minister of France, in Manhattan, New York, US, Sept. 22, 2018. Photo: REUTERS/Amr Alfiky

JNS.org — “How can you not be antisemitic when you see the damage done by the Israeli army? Look at Gaza, it’s a field of murder and disaster. Families are breaking up,” former French Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner declared on Sunday.

He spoke in an interview on with Paris Jewish radio station Radio J.

He added, “of course there were Hamas attacks on Oct. 7. And God knows that revolted me. But to take revenge with 40,000 dead, if the figure is true,” before being interrupted by the journalist, Frédéric Haziza.

“You’re saying with what’s happening in Gaza, it’s normal to be antisemitic?” Haziza asked him.

“It’s not normal, but the reaction can be that,” answered Kouchner, who was foreign minister from 2007 to 2010 under President Nicolas Sarkozy.

“Antisemitism is the science of fools. It’s a very deep-seated evil. France has always been antisemitic,” he added.

Criticizing Israel’s “disproportionate war” in Gaza, Kouchner said that as a former humanitarian physician (he co-founded Médecins Sans Frontières (Doctors Without Borders) and founded Médecins du Monde (Doctors of the World), he could not help but feel indignant. “A lot of people have been massacred. It’s a murderous reaction. I’m not satisfied with that,” he said. “I’ve spent my life caring for people.”

Earlier this month, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu publicly rebuked French President Emmanuel Macron for calling for a partial arms embargo on Israel.

“I have a message for President Macron. Today, Israel is defending itself on seven fronts against the enemies of civilization,” said Netanyahu. “All civilized countries should be standing firmly by Israel’s side. Yet President Macron and some other Western leaders are now calling for an arms embargo against Israel. Shame on them,” he said, adding: “What a disgrace.”

Israel, Netanyahu said, will “win with or without their support, but their shame will continue long after the war is won.”

The rebuke is part of a deterioration in relations between Israel and France. Macron, a centrist, is under a fierce attack by the left-wing over his country’s relations with Israel and his administration’s attempts to limit anti-Israel rioting.

Macron called for sanctions on Israel in an interview aired with the France Inter radio station on Oct. 5. “I think that today, the priority is that we return to a political solution, that we stop delivering weapons to fight in Gaza. France is not delivering any,” he said.

After the Hamas invasion of Israel, antisemitic acts in France jumped by 1,000 percent in the last quarter of 2023. Since the start of 2024, they have almost tripled, with “887 acts” recorded in the first half of the year, according to figures from the French ministry of interior.

Kouchner was born in Avignon in 1939, to a Jewish father and a Protestant mother. His paternal grandparents were Russian-born Jews who immigrated to France and died later in Auschwitz.