Since Eric Zemmour—a far-right journalist, television commentator, and provocateur—declared his candidacy in France’s upcoming presidential election, his poll numbers have been high enough to suggest that French citizens are taking him seriously. Zemmour’s signature issue is hostility to immigration in general, and Muslim immigration in particular. His hostility extends to the children of immigrants, although he is himself the son of Algerian-born Jews. Zemmour is also hostile to much else, as David Berlinski explains:

Multiculturalism, women’s rights, homosexuality, American historians, the young, the fat, no-fault divorce, 1968, dowdy women, the Rolling Stones, hairy transsexuals, . . . affirmative action, the feminization of French society? He was opposed to them all, professional French women especially. . . . He is in favor of female modesty, good manners, decorum, the elegance and refinement of life, the arts, fine dining, and the sense of virility that affords a man the pleasant sense that, Thank God, he was not born a woman.

On Islam, Zemmour is unyielding. There is an irremediable clash between French and Islamic civilizations. Should they find themselves in the same room, one of them must get out.

While, Berlinski writes, Zemmour’s political incorrectness can offer a certain kind of transgressive thrill, his dangerousness becomes clear in his treatment Vichy France, and the French role in deporting some 75,000 Jews to their deaths. Zemmour clings stubbornly to long-discredited myths about the war years, such as the claim that French officials protected those Jews who were French citizens.

The Jews whom the French sent to their death, Zemmour believes, were sent to their death because they were not French enough. Citizenship is no longer at issue. A sinister new moral calculus has come into play. In his desire to champion being French beyond the possibility of denial or defection, Zemmour has come close to excusing mass murder.

Anxieties that have affected so many others have affected Eric Zemmour. He is what he seems, an outsider forever burrowing into the center of things but forever consumed by the anxiety that he is not burrowing far enough. It is hardly a surprise that he feels obliged to suggest that 100 years after his innocence was decisively established, Alfred Dreyfus may well have been guilty. . . . Both French and German Jews were consumed almost to the point of madness by the wish to demonstrate that they were French or German enough. It did them no good.

And what exactly, does Zemmour propose to do about France’s Muslim population, about which he is so concerned? He’s never been very specific.

Like the coarser figures in the Vichy regime—the odious Louis Darquier de Pellepoix, for example—he wishes chiefly to get on with it and never mind how. The idea that France has been invaded or otherwise infected or that the French are in danger of replacement by Muslims—these are ideas that drag the soul downward. The word expulsion comes too readily to Zemmour’s lips. It would have been far better had he managed to keep down what should never have come up.

Earlier this month, the Hamas chairman Ismail Haniyeh and several of his colleagues visited Moscow, where they met with Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov and other Russian officials. According to Arabic-language media, Haniyeh came seeking “new ideas” about how to wage war against the Jewish state. The terrorist group has had good relations with the Kremlin for several years, and even maintains an office in Moscow. John Hardie and Ivana Stradner comment on the timing of the visit:

For Moscow, the visit likely reflects a continuation of its efforts to leverage the Palestinians and other issues to pressure Israel over its stance on Russia’s war in Ukraine. Russia and Israel built friendly relations in the decades following the Soviet Union’s dissolution. After Russia invaded Ukraine in February, Jerusalem condemned the war, but made sure to tread carefully in order to preserve working ties with Moscow, lest Russian military forces in Syria disrupt Israel’s strategically important air operations there.

Nevertheless, bilateral tensions spiked in April after Yair Lapid, then serving as Israel’s foreign minister, joined the chorus of voices worldwide accusing Russia of committing war crimes in Ukraine. Jerusalem later provided Kyiv with some non-lethal military aid and a field hospital. In response, Moscow hardened its rhetoric about Israeli actions in the Palestinian territories.

The Palestinian issue isn’t the only way that Russia has sought to pressure Israel. Moscow is also threatening, on seemingly spurious grounds, to shutter the Russian branch of the Jewish Agency.

Moscow likely has little appetite for outright conflict with Israel, particularly when the bulk of Russia’s military is floundering in Ukraine. But there are plenty of other ways that Russia, which maintains an active intelligence presence in the Jewish state, could damage Israel’s interests. As Moscow cozies up with Hamas, Iran, and other enemies of Israel, Jerusalem—and its American allies—would do well to keep a watchful eye.