On July 24, 2025, French President Emmanuel Macron announced that France would recognise Palestine at the United Nations General Assembly in September. British Prime Minister Keir Starmer subsequently said the United Kingdom would also unilaterally recognise Palestine unless Israel accepted a ceasefire with Hamas, never mind that even Qatar and Egypt today acknowledge Hamas blocks a ceasefire and that the original October 7, 2023, attack occurred during a ceasefire.
Macron and Starmer virtue signal. They know that an independent Palestine today would be a failed state and a toehold on the eastern Mediterranean for Turkey, Iran, or other terror sponsors. The French and British move would also empower radicals at a time of political transition: Palestinian Authority Chairman Mahmoud Abbas is 92 years old and in the 20th year of his elected four-year term; he has selected no successor, and so Palestinian factions manoeuvre for position.
By handing Hamas a victory and allowing it to claim that its actions enabled independence, both Paris and London show Hamas tactics work and allow it to claim victory.
If Palestine wins independence due to Hamas terrorism, but the peaceful movements in Somaliland, South Yemen, and the Syrian Kurds languish, every potential separatist group—legitimate or not—will learn the lesson that terrorism works.
India will pay the price. Today, Hamas’ greatest financial benefactors—Turkey and Qatar—are also increasingly invested in promoting and legitimising Kashmiri terror. The same groups Qatar funds to promote anti-Israel polemics on campus also stigmatise Hindu student associations or berate Indian academics into silence. Nor is Kashmiri separatism the only terrorist cause Indians will face. On the streets of Europe and on Western college campuses, Khalistan is an increasingly popular cause. Students are too naïve to realise the prominence of Sikh extremists is not organic but rather greased by Pakistani and perhaps Turkish and Qatari money.
Not only Pakistan, but also Turkey and Qatar now believe that by either increasing terrorism—against international targets—or by promoting false narratives of victimhood and human rights violations, they can sway G7 members to legitimise terrorism and embrace terrorists’ goals. Hamas fooled the world with a narrative of famine.
The New York Times tweeted out a story featuring a photograph of a skeletal child to its 55 million followers; it tweeted the correction—that the child had cerebral palsy and a congenital malady that caused malnutrition—on an account with only 80,000 followers. Get ready for the bankers for Hamas terrorism to start promoting equally dishonest anti-India propaganda. The Manipal calumny about anti-Christian religious persecution was just a dry run.
Paris and London have opened a Pandora’s Box of terrorism. Western progressives are useful idiots for terror sponsors; academics, Western journalists, and human rights activists despise strength and embrace any movement that claims victimhood.
Terror sponsors, meanwhile, are experts at determining which tactics and narratives are most effective. Paris and London have ended any debate for terror sponsors; Hamas is a model. Terrorism works. The West’s moral equivalence can transform narratives and interpretations over even the most horrific terrorist attacks. India should beware. Macron and Starmer may not yet realise it, but they have now transformed India into the world’s biggest target for terrorists.
Michael Rubin is director of policy analysis at the Middle East Forum and a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute. Views expressed in the above piece are personal and solely those of the author. They do not necessarily reflect the views of Firstpost.
https://www.firstpost.com/opinion/france-uks-recognition-of-palestine-will-open-pandoras-box-of-terrorism-13917165.html/amp
