France and U.S. Spar Over Left-Wing Violence

By Henry Srebrnik, Fredericton Daily Gleaner

Police in France arrested nine people on Feb. 17 in connection with the death of a 23-year-old student in Lyon. Most are members of the “Young Guard,” an extremist splinter group of Antifa. They also appear linked to Jean-Luc Melenchon’s left-wing La France Insoumise (LFI).

Quentin Deranque was a right-wing nationalist who had been providing security to a feminist group who were protesting the appearance of Rima Hassan at the Institute of Political Studies in Lyon. He was beaten to death. Hassan is a rising star in the LFI and has made a name for herself as a ferocious critic of Israel.

There had been scuffles outside the venue and the violence spilled out into the surrounding streets. Deranque and a couple of other nationalists were set upon by several masked individuals. Such were the ferocity of the injuries inflicted on Deranque that he died in hospital. On learning of the arrest of Favrot, Prime Minister Sebastien Lecornu posted a message on X telling LFI that it “needed to clean out its ranks.”

For many years Melenchon has turned a blind eye to the activities of the Young Guard, which was founded in Lyon in 2018 by Raphael Arnault. Arnault himself has a history of violence, but that didn’t trouble LFI when he was selected as a candidate for the 2024 parliamentary election. He won his seat with the help of the centre-left Socialist party, who urged voters to cast their ballot for him to thwart Marine Le Pen’s National Rally.

But the killing also divided Washington and Paris, after Sarah Rogers, the U.S. State Department under-secretary for public diplomacy, in criticizing the murder, warned about the spread of far-left violence in France. In an interview on Feb. 22, France’s Foreign Minister, Jean-Noel Barrot, scolded her for wading into a matter that “concerns only our national community.”

Barrot accused Washington of trying to make political capital out of Deranque’s death and added that France has “no lessons to receive” from outsiders on political violence. To underline their anger, the French government summoned U.S. ambassador Charles Kushner for a meeting -- but he didn’t show because of “personal commitments.”

In response, on Feb. 23 France temporarily barred Kushner, the father of President Donald Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner, from meeting with any French officials until he clarified Washington’s position. “When these explanations have taken place, then the U.S. ambassador in France will naturally regain access to members of the French government,” Barrot told the broadcaster France Info. Until then, the ban “will naturally affect his capacity to exercise his mission in our country.”

An explanation did come a day later, when Kushner finally called Barrot, who told the American envoy that France would not accept “any form of interference or manipulation of its national public debate,” according to a Foreign Ministry official. “The ambassador took note, expressed his desire not to interfere in our public debate.” As to Kushner’s initial no-show when summoned, Pascal Confavreux made allowances for the American real-estate magnate, who only took up his functions as ambassador to Paris last July, being relatively new to the more genteel world of diplomacy.

(Actually, France had previously criticized Kushner last August after he accused the French government of fuelling antisemitism through its criticisms of Israel.)

Of course that was itself a diplomatic answer to smooth things over. The truth is that no one wanted a diplomatic rupture in this of all years. The date of the June the G7 summit of leading economic countries in Evian was moved to allow for Trump’s birthday. This year also marks the 250th anniversary of what Washington describes as its oldest alliance, as America celebrates the Declaration of Independence. “I know it’s a very important date for the U.S., also for us.  And so there are ups and downs in such a relationship,” Confavreux said.

But President Trump and his allies have long expressed their support for the political right. This was made official in the United States National Security Strategy (NSS) published last December. The document suggests that there is a real risk of Europe facing “civilizational erasure” because of its migration policies and states that the “growing influence of patriotic European parties indeed gives cause for great optimism.”

The Trump administration has been active behind the scenes too, according to Magali Lafourcade, the secretary general of France’s human rights commission (CNCDH). Last April, she raised the alarm about foreign interference with the French Foreign Ministry. Actually, Barrot had already announced a new strategy against foreign interference on Jan. 29, 2025 – just one week after Trump’s inauguration.

The tone of French foreign policy has been toughening in keeping with Washington’s rhetoric. In his New Year’s address to the armed forces, President Emmanuel Macron used strong language. “To remain free, one must be feared, and to be feared, one must be powerful,” he told them. To make his point, Macron visited the French aircraft carrier Charles de Gaulle, deployed to the Mediterranean following Iranian drone strikes on Cyprus March 9.

The French president wants more nuclear warheads as Europe becomes increasingly wary of its U.S. ally, and he will extend the deterrent to cover other European countries, It would be the first time since 1992 that the French arsenal is expanded.

 

 

Israel’s Arab Population Finds Itself in Dire Straits

By Henry Srebrnik, Jewish Post, Winnipeg

There has been an epidemic of criminal violence and state neglect in the Arab community of Israel. At least 56 Arab citizens have died since the beginning of this year. Many blame the government for neglecting its Arab population and the police for failing to curb the violence. Arabs make up about a fifth of Israel’s population of 10 million people. But criminal killings within the community have accounted for the vast majority of Israeli homicides in recent years.

Last year, in fact, stands as the deadliest on record for Israel’s Arab community. According to a year-end report by the Center for the Advancement of Security in Arab Society (Ayalef), 252 Arab citizens were murdered in 2025, an increase of roughly 10 percent over the 230 victims recorded in 2024. The report, “Another Year of Eroding Governance and Escalating Crime and Violence in Arab Society: Trends and Data for 2025,” published in December, noted that the toll on women is particularly severe, with 23 Arab women killed, the highest number recorded to date.

Violence has expanded beyond internal criminal disputes, increasingly affecting public spaces and targeting authorities, relatives of assassination targets, and uninvolved bystanders. In mixed Arab-Jewish cities such as Acre, Jaffa, Lod, and Ramla, violence has acquired a political dimension, further eroding the fragile social fabric Israel has worked to sustain.

In the Negev, crime families operate large-scale weapons-smuggling networks, using inexpensive drones to move increasingly advanced arms, including rifles, medium machine guns, and even grenades, from across the borders in Egypt and Jordan. These weapons fuel not only local criminal feuds but also end up with terrorists in the West Bank and even Jerusalem.

Getting weapons across the border used to be dangerous and complex but is now relatively easy. Drones originally used to smuggle drugs over the borders with Egypt and Jordan have evolved into a cheap and effective tool for trafficking weapons in large quantities. The region has been turning into a major infiltration route and has intensified over the past two years, as security attention shifted toward Gaza and the West Bank.

The Negev is not merely a local challenge; it serves as a gateway for crime and terrorism across Israel, including in cities. The weapons flow into mixed Jewish-Arab cities and from there penetrate the West Bank, fueling both organized crime and terrorist activity and blurring the line between them.

The smuggling of weapons into Israel is no longer a marginal criminal phenomenon but an ongoing strategic threat that traces a clear trail: from porous borders with Egypt and Jordan, through drones and increasingly sophisticated smuggling methods, into the heart of criminal networks inside Israel, and in a growing number of cases into lethal terrorist operations. A deal that begins as a profit-driven criminal transaction often ends in a terrorist attack. Israeli police warn that a population flooded with illegal weapons will act unlawfully, the only question being against whom.

The scale of the threat is vast. According to law enforcement estimates, up to 160,000 weapons are smuggled into Israel each year, about 14,000 a month. Some sources estimate that about 100,000 illegal weapons are circulating in the Negev alone.

Israeli cities are feeling this. Acre, with a population of about 50,000, more than 15,000 of them Arab, has seen a rise in violent incidents, including gunfire directed at schools, car bombings, and nationalist attacks. In August 2025, a 16-year-old boy was shot on his way to school, triggering violent protests against the police

Home to roughly 35,000 Arab residents and 20,000 Jewish residents, Jaffa has seen rising tensions and repeated incidents of violence between Arabs and Jews. In the most recent case, on January 1, 2026, Rabbi Netanel Abitan was attacked while walking along a street, and beaten..

In Lod, a city of roughly 75,000 residents, about half of them Arab, twelve murders were recorded in 2025, a historic high. The city has become a focal point for feuds between crime families. In June 2025, a multi-victim shooting on a central street left two young men dead and five others wounded, including a 12-year-old passerby. Yet the killing of the head of a crime family in 2024 remains unsolved to this day; witnesses present at the scene refused to testify.

The violence also spilled over to Jewish residents: Jewish bystanders were struck by gunfire, state officials were targeted, and cars were bombed near synagogues. Hundreds of Jewish families have left the city amid what the mayor has described as an “atmosphere of war.”

Phenomena that were once largely confined to the Arab sector and Arab towns are spilling into mixed cities and even into predominantly Jewish cities. When violence in mixed cities threatens to undermine overall stability, it becomes a national problem. In Lod and Jaffa, extortion of Jewish-owned businesses by Arab crime families has increased by 25 per cent, according to police data.

Ramla recorded fifteen murders in 2025, underscoring the persistence of lethal violence in the city. Many victims have been caught up in cycles of revenge between clans, often beginning with disputes over “honour” and ending in gunfire. Arab residents describe the city as “cursed,” while Jewish residents speak openly about being afraid to leave their homes

Reluctance to report crimes to the authorities is a central factor exacerbating the problem. Fear of retaliation by families or criminal organizations deters victims and their relatives from coming forward, contributing to a clearance rate of less than 15 per cent of all murders. The Ayalef report notes that approximately 70 per cent of witnesses refused to cooperate with police investigations, citing doubts about the state’s ability to provide protection.

Violence in Arab society is not just an Arab sector problem; it poses a direct and serious threat to Israel’s national security. The impact is twofold: on the one hand, a rise in crime that affects the entire population; on the other, the spillover of weapons and criminal activity into terrorism, threatening both internal and regional stability. This phenomenon reached a peak in 2025, with implications that could lead to a third intifada triggered by either a nationalist or criminal incident.

The report suggests that along the Egyptian and Jordanian borders, Israel should adopt a technological and security-focused response: reinforcing border fences with sensors and cameras, conducting aerial patrols to counter drones, and expanding enforcement activity.

This should be accompanied by a reassessment of the rules of engagement along the border area, enabling effective interdiction of smuggling and legal protocols that allow for the arrest and imprisonment of offenders. The report concludes by emphasizing that rising violence in cities, compounded by weapons smuggling in the Negev, is eroding Israel’s internal stability.