The Prime Minister’s Office issued an exceptionally sharp response on Tuesday evening to statements made by French President Emmanuel Macron, placing the murder of Netanel Shakron—a father of six who held French citizenship and was murdered in a Binyamin shooting on Yom Kippur Eve—at the center of its diplomatic rebuttal. The PMO denounced Macron’s characterization of Judea and Samaria, declaring: “Ignorance is no excuse for erasing their blood.”
In an official statement released by the Prime Minister’s Office: “The grotesque absurdity in Emmanuel Macron’s statement is astounding. On Sunday, Yom Kippur Eve, just two days ago, Netanel Shakron—a French citizen and father of six—was murdered in his car by a Hamas terrorist in Judea and Samaria. With his dying breath, he told his son to run. Hamas terrorists carry out attacks against Jews almost daily. They have murdered countless Israeli citizens in Judea and Samaria. Ignorance is no excuse for erasing their blood.”
The rebuke followed Macron’s speech before the United Nations General Assembly, in which the French president asserted that Hamas does not operate across Judea and Samaria, arguing that there is no justification to link the terror organization to the wider ‘Palestinian’ population in the area.
Macron addressed the conflict by attempting to draw a strict boundary between Hamas’s military infrastructure in the Gaza Strip and affairs within ‘Palestinian’ Authority territory. The comments triggered immediate indignation in Jerusalem, which cited a steady succession of attacks executed by Hamas operatives across the sector—culminating in Shakron’s murder—as incontrovertible evidence of the group’s active presence in the territory.
Correspondent Eliya Aviv reported that concurrent with Macron’s UN address, Hamas published an operational incitement video calling on Arabs in Judea and Samaria to execute further attacks against Jewish targets. The propaganda video featured an AI-generated rendering explicitly modeled after Sunday’s Yom Kippur Eve shooting in which Shakron was murdered.
The diplomatic clash unfolds against long-standing strains between Jerusalem and Paris regarding French Middle East policy. Earlier this month, France joined Britain and Canada in issuing joint diplomatic statements criticizing Israeli policies, while insisting on their nominal commitment to Israel’s overall security.
Netanel Shakron, a 48-year-old resident of Alei Zahav, arrived Sunday afternoon with his eldest teenage son at the Ein Raya spring near Neveh Tzuf for traditional pre-holiday immersion. A terrorist arrived and opened fire at close range, mortally wounding Shakron, who later succumbed to his injuries at Beilinson Hospital.
Security findings revealed the shooter to be a 37-year-old Hamas operative from the Birzeit area who conducted reconnaissance at the spring 24 hours prior. After an IDF tracker engaged and wounded the fleeing assailant, elite Duvdevan operators and the Shin Bet arrested him inside a Ramallah medical facility. While Hamas stopped short of an official claim of responsibility, the organization publicly celebrated the deadly shooting and urged an expansion of armed terror across Judea, Samaria, and Jerusalem.