Giulio Meotti is an Italian journalist with Il Foglio and a fellow at the Middle East Forum. He writes a twice-weekly column for Arutz Sheva and is the author, in English, of the book "A New Shoah", that researched the personal stories of Israel's terror victims, published by Encounter and of "J'Accuse: the Vatican Against Israel" published by Mantua Books, in addition to books in Italian. His writing has appeared in other publications, such as the Wall Street Journal, Gatestone, Frontpage and Commentary.
Two years after the fall of Bashar al-Assad, Emmanuel Macron was in Damascus to meet the new strongman, the former jihadist Ahmed al-Sharaa, who has never been a man of peace but rather the polished face of the most violent Islamism - the one that disfigured Syria under the banners of jihad and massacred Christians, Druze, and Alawites in collusion with Turkish and Qatari protectors.
The imposing door of the Great Umayyad Mosque opened with a theatrical creak. Macron and his host, al-Sharaa, removed their shoes and entered, followed by the delegations. Built 1,300 years ago on the site of a church, the mosque houses the relics of St. John the Baptist and the tomb of Saladin. Beneath Byzantine-era frescoes, the two signed energy and trade agreements.
Two devices meanwhile exploded near the Four Seasons Hotel where the French president had stayed. “Macron is safe," the Élysée immediately reassured.
It is not a travel incident, but the background noise of a Middle East that has never stopped being itself. Allahu Akbar! Allahu Akbar!
Macron embodies progressivism in sunglasses, believing he can tame radical Islam with symbolic gestures and energy subcontracts. But the Umayyad mosque, built on the ruins of a church, reminds him that Islamic conquest is never just a metaphor and that every Islamic conquest replaces rather than coexists.
France, which invented raison d’État, seems to have replaced it with raison du jour - changeable as alliances of convenience - and raison du ventre.
A few weeks ago, the same Macron who shakes blood-soaked hands in Damascus had ordered the Paris military fair to obscure the Israeli pavilion. Will the same weapons that protect Macron’s plane - taking him first to the NATO summit in Ankara and then safely back to Paris - be the ones used?
Meanwhile, Merz’s Germany continued to install Israeli anti-missile batteries on its own territory, and America was considering moving its Gulf bases - targeted by Iran - to Israel.
Merz knows that next time the Iranians will aim their missiles at Europe; America relies on the only true Western outpost in the Middle East, a region where bombs explode near the hotels of visiting European presidents.
Without a moral and material awakening, Europe will become what it already accepts itself as being: a province of Islamism that has learned to dress it up with Hermès ties.
At this point, I prefer one Javier Milei to ten Macrons - Milei is the Argentine president who recently said:
“Let us keep this firmly in mind: Israel is the bulwark of the West. The fight against Israel - if Israel falls - will then reach the West".
Those who do not defend their outposts today will have to defend their capitals tomorrow.