French President Emmanuel Macron says U.S. President Donald Trump's recognition of Jerusalem as Israel's capital was an "error" and France has no plans to follow in his footsteps.
Macron met Wednesday with CRIF, the umbrella organization for Jewish groups in France, which urged France to make a similar recognition.
The French leader said he didn't think Trump has "helped with resolving the conflict" between Israelis and Palestinians. He called the U.S. move "a real error in this context."
Macron said that if France did the same, "we would lose this status of honest broker, which is the only useful one for the region" – a status that the U.S. can no longer enjoy.
President of CRIF Francis Kalifat responded to Macron by saying: "If you'll allow me, Mr. President, to make this wish for your next trip to Israel. That France recognizes Jerusalem as the capital of Israel."
Macron also pledged to fight firmly against anti-Semitism wherever it surfaces, whether in the street or online, and to protect the nation's Jews amid growing concerns about intolerance.
He insisted there is no reason for Jews to flee the country, which is home to the world's largest Jewish population outside of Israel and the U.S.
"There are hatreds that are rising again, there are the worse kinds of crimes," Macron said.
"We have understood, with horror, that anti-Semitism is still alive. And on this issue our response must be unforgiving. France would not be itself if Jewish citizens had to leave because they were afraid," he said.
He pledged continued protection for Jewish schools and synagogues and other sites as well as a new government plan to fight racism and anti-Semitism online, which is notably spreading among young people.
Macron also called for a Europe-wide effort to force internet platforms to remove content that feeds extremism.
The latest official figures show that anti-Semitic violence increased 26% last year in France and that criminal damage to Jewish places of worship and burials increased 22%.
Macron also waded carefully into a heated debate that has split French intellectual circles over whether to publish anti-Semitic pamphlets of a renowned writer.
Gallimard, one of the largest, most influential and most prestigious French publishing houses, said in December it planned to republish for the first time since World War II a series of three fiercely anti-Semitic lampoons written between 1937 and 1941 by noted French writer Louis-Ferdinand Céline.
Controversy erupted in literary circles over the publication, between those who advocate total freedom of speech and those who warn against the dangers of such texts in the context of rising anti-Semitism.
"Céline was not a socialite anti-Semite, but a pro-Hitler anti-Semite," Marc Knobel, the CRIF's director of studies, told The Associated Press. "His pamphlets are appalling. They are crime-inducing. With them, Céline expressed his execration for the Jews, called for putting the Jews to death."
Macron said France doesn't have "moral, historic or memorial police," but added, "I don't think we need these pamphlets" to understand Céline.
