A kabbalist rabbi, popular among Israel’s traditional communities, has urged France’s Jews to “leave immediately for Israel” following President Emmanuel Macron’s decision to recognize a Palestinian state at the United Nations this September.
In a Hebrew video posted late Friday, Rabbi Nir Ben Artzi claimed that “the Holy One, blessed be He, has placed an angel of destruction, the Angel of Death, inside the president’s body. It will now drive the world crazy.”
He asserted that God had “given terrifying power to the Muslims in France to eradicate the Jews,” adding: “French Jews must leave for the Holy Land, flee—before it is too late.”
The 61-year-old mystic said Macron “is afraid of the Muslims in France. Instead of eliminating them, he gives them gifts,” and declared that God had “put Satan in the body of the French president—you can see it on his face—so that Muslims would harm Jews and drive them away.”
Ben Artzi’s fiery message came soon after Macron announced that France, home to Europe’s largest Jewish community, would officially back Palestinian statehood during the UN General Assembly in September.
The French leader stated that the step was necessary to “keep the two-state solution alive” and unlock aid for Gaza.
Recognition of Palestinian state could emboldenextremists in France
Community leaders in France have voiced concern that unilateral recognition could embolden extremists. Antisemitic incidents in the country surged after Hamas’s October 7 massacre in southern Israel; then interior minister Gérald Darmanin said more than 1,000 attacks were recorded in the three months that followed.
Ben Artzi frequently links global politics to divine judgment. In previous sermons, he warned that foreign leaders who “pressure Israel” would suffer natural disasters—predictions that have earned him both a devoted following and outspoken critics. The rabbi does not hold an official position in Israel’s rabbinical establishment, but his weekly homilies draw tens of thousands of online viewers.
France’s recognition, if completed, would make it the first G7 nation to take the step and could spur similar moves by other European states. Israeli diplomats have been lobbying Paris to reconsider, warning that the decision “rewards terror and undermines Israel’s security,” according to a Jerusalem Post report.