As a member of the French parliament who represents citizens of France living in Israel, today I am ashamed.
I am ashamed that our consulate employees exploited their diplomatic immunity to engage in terrorist activity.
I am ashamed because this affair was exposed on the exact day we marked the deadly terrorist attack at the Ozar Hatorah Jewish school in Toulouse, in which three children and their teacher were murdered in cold blood because of the killer's hatred for Israel.
While my country is mired in an all-out war against the jihadists, a war that has claimed the lives of 250 French citizens since 2015, gunrunning for a terrorist organization such as Hamas is an insult to France and its values. Innocent people could be killed as a result of these smuggling efforts.
I spoke at length with the consul general in Jerusalem, Pierre Cochard, who harshly condemned the actions and stressed there had been no prior indications.
With that – and entirely unrelated to the current consul general's future findings on the matter – this affair exposes the longstanding, rampant pro-Palestinian and anti-Israel atmosphere in the French Consulate in Jerusalem. This atmosphere created the fertile ground that bred the actions presently disgracing all of France.
When I say fertile ground, I am referring to France's requests via the consulate to release Salah Hamori, a French citizen who had planned to assassinate late Sephardi Chief Rabbi Ovadia Yosef; the incident several years ago in which a French Consulate employee slapped an IDF soldier in the face; those letters sent from the consulate to thousands of French nationals in east Jerusalem titled "Jerusalem – Palestinian territory"; to the desecration of Holocaust Memorial Day in the French high school in Jerusalem; and of course to the smuggling of $2 million worth of gold and cash by a consulate employee.
However, this affair crosses all the lines.
This affair also exposes drastic failures in the recruitment process for French diplomats. We must re-examine our recruitment infrastructure and its related security components, and this has to be done urgently. Imagine for a moment: How would France react to diplomats from an allied country – as French President Emmanuel Macron has described Israel – smuggling weapons to a terrorist network operating in France?
Additional questions, no less disturbing: What would have happened had Israel's Shin Bet security agency not discovered this activity in time? How many months would this story have dragged on for? And are other French consulates around the world also exploiting diplomatic immunity to engage in illegal activities?
Mere days before French Foreign Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian is slated to land in Israel and lay the groundwork for Macron's upcoming official visit, a decisive and unambiguous French response is imperative.
