National secretary of the Ecologistes party Marine Tondelier (C-L), National secretary of French Communist party (PCF) Fabien Roussel (C) and First secretary of French Socialist party (PS) Olivier Faure (C-R) hold a banner reading “For peace” as they lead a march asking for the “recognition of the State of Palestine and the end of the genocide” in Paris on September 21, 2025.
Bertrand Guay / AFP
By displaying the flag on Rosh Hashanah, Socialist mayors sent a chilling message to France’s Jewish citizens.
What began as a controversial proposal by Socialist Party leader Olivier Faure has now turned into a national scandal: several French mayors chose to fly the Palestinian flag from town halls last night, just as the Jewish people marked the beginning of Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish New Year.
A week ago, Faure openly called for municipalities to display the Palestinian flag on September 22nd, coinciding with President Emmanuel Macron’s long-anticipated announcement at the UN General Assembly that France would formally recognize a Palestinian state. At the time, critics warned that such a gesture, deliberately tied to the Jewish holiday, was not only politically provocative but carried a clear anti-Israel and antisemitic undertone.
The stunt of the left-controlled municipalities has been widely condemned. Jean-Frédéric Poisson, former deputy of the National Assembly, had already denounced Faure’s original suggestion as evidence that “the first destructive enemies of France are on its own territory.” He warned that once the nation awakens, “these vile creatures will tremble.” Teacher and writer Lisa Hirsig described the move as the Socialist Party’s “moral and ideological collapse.”
Even within local governments, outrage was swift. A municipal councilor outside Paris declared that “only the French flag should fly on the front of our public buildings.” Nice’s mayor, Christian Estrosi, blasted the Socialist initiative as a “disgrace,” all the more shocking, he said, while “hostages are still in the hands of Hamas.”
The timing of the flag-raising cannot be dismissed as accidental. By choosing to do so on Rosh Hashanah, Socialist mayors sent a chilling message: their solidarity with a cause tied to terrorism outweighed basic respect for France’s Jewish citizens. This was no innocent overlap of calendars; it was a calculated move designed to insult, to provoke, and to normalize the erasure of Israel’s legitimacy on a day of deep religious meaning.
The scandal comes as some major Western powers recognize Palestinian statehood. At the UN General Assembly, Emmanuel Macron declared France’s recognition of a Palestinian state, and Spain’s Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez urged Palestine’s admission to the UN “on equal footing with other states,” while Belgium, Luxembourg, Malta, Monaco, and Andorra joined the initiative.
The Palestinian Authority welcomed these announcements with applause, while Hamas, responsible for the war in Israel, celebrated the earlier decisions by Britain, Canada, and Australia as a step toward a state “with Jerusalem as its capital.”
Israel has condemned the wave of recognitions, with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu stressing it rewards Hamas and undermines peace efforts. U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio called Macron’s move “a slap in the face to the victims of October 7th.”
Against this backdrop, French mayors flying the Palestinian flag on Rosh Hashanah has only deepened the insult.
Zolta Győri is a journalist at europeanconservative.com.
