It has been a bruising few days for Emmanuel Macron. It began last Friday when he gave an interview to the BBC at the Élysée palace at the conclusion of a peace forum in Paris. In unusually forthright rhetoric, the president said there was ‘no justification’ for Israel’s bombing of Gaza, which was killing ‘these babies, these ladies, these old people’. He added: ‘There is no reason for that and no legitimacy. So we do urge Israel to stop.’ He also reiterated a call for a ceasefire in Gaza.

Macron’s words drew a swift and sharp response from Israel. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said the president’s focus should be on condemning Hamas. ‘The crimes that Hamas [is] committing today in Gaza will be committed tomorrow in Paris, New York and anywhere in the world.’

Deft diplomacy has never been Macron’s strong suit and since Hamas attacked Israel he has looked increasingly befuddled

Two days after his BBC interview, Macron contacted Israel’s president, Isaac Herzog, in what the Times of Israel described as a ‘damage control’ call. The paper said Macron assured Herzog that he ‘does not and did not intend to accuse Israel of intentionally harming innocent civilians in the campaign against the terrorist organization Hamas.’

The lesson for Macron, perhaps, is never give an interview on such a complex and sensitive subject in anything other than your mother tongue. Macron speaks decent English but had he spoken in French he may have couched his rhetoric in more diplomatic language.

Then again, maybe not. Deft diplomacy has never been Macron’s strong suit and since Hamas attacked Israel he has looked increasingly befuddled. Early on in the conflict, one editorial described him as a ‘rabbit in the headlights’, and in recent days he has been savaged by two distinguished commentators. One, Franz-Olivier Giesbert, a confidant of Francois Mitterrand who has just published a book on the Fifth Republic, described Macron as a man ‘with no will and no backbone’.

Then, in a stinging interview with the Conservative magazine Valeurs Actuelles, Pierre Lellouche, the secretary of state for European affairs under Nicolas Sarkozy, said that ‘Macron is proving to the French and the world that he is not up to the job.’

This view appears to be shared by some of France’s diplomatic corps. According to a report in Monday’s Le Figaro, a dozen French ambassadors in the Middle East and North Africa have put their names to a confidential note in which they accuse Macron of pro-Israeli bias.

The identities of the ambassadors have not been divulged but Denis Bauchard, a former French ambassador to Jordan, said he has seen the letter. ‘It’s an expression of concern that France is losing influence, including in countries with which it has traditionally enjoyed good relations, such as Lebanon, Jordan and Egypt,’ he remarked.

He speculated that the ambassadors are alarmed that Macron is showing too much support for Israel, and apparently his visit to Tel Aviv last month sullied his image in the Middle East. ‘The French president has lost his credibility in the Arab world and his reputation,’ said an anonymous adviser to Iraqi Prime Minister Mohammed Shia al-Sudani.

Macron’s challenge, and his great fear, is that the conflict in Gaza could be imported into France. France has the largest Jewish community in western Europe, and the largest number of Muslims.

In 2014 there were violent riots in some inner cities after Israel launched an offensive against Hamas in Gaza, and the following year there was a string of Islamist terrorist attacks in France that killed over 200 people. That is why Macron is treading so carefully, to the point where he now appears weak, contradictory and fearful.

His was the most prominent face absent from Sunday’s march against anti-Semitism in France, although he promised he would be there ‘in heart and thought’. But that’s not the same thing, a point made to him by Yaël Perl Ruiz, a great-granddaughter of Captain Alfred Dreyfus, an army officer convicted of treason in 1894 on trumped-up charges motivated by anti-Semitism. She confronted the president during a walkabout and told him she was ‘disappointed’ he wouldn’t be at the rally.

If that wasn’t embarrassing enough for Macron, it was revealed on Wednesday that last week two of his closest advisors invited Yassine Belattar to the Élysée. The comic is popular in the banlieues, although less so in other circles given the company he keeps and his suspended sentence in September for issuing death threats.

The reason for Belatter’s invitation to the Élysée was to use his him as a ‘thermometer’ to take the temperature of the banlieues. The French press claim that Belatter warned Macron’s advisors: ‘Be careful not to make the irreparable mistake that will give the neighbourhoods cause to catch fire.’

The Élysée deny Macron was scared away from marching against anti-Semitism but many aren’t buying it. Marine Le Pen tweeted: ‘The Head of State therefore sought advice on his participation in the march against anti-Semitism from Yassine Belatar, who was recently convicted of death threats and is known for his links with Islamists.’

The Holocaust historian George Bensoussan reflected that Macron had committed a ‘political error’ by not attending the march, and said: ‘Can you imagine General De Gaulle seeking the advice of a comedian before taking such a major decision?’

Macron defended himself on Wednesday evening during a visit to Switzerland, claiming that he was there in spirit on Sunday and stressing that his ‘role is to continue, at this time, to preserve the unity of the country and never to turn one side against the other.’

His critics argue that in trying to keep the peace in France he is destroying his own credibility and that of the country.