ISSUES
“Liberté, Egalité, Fraternité, Sieg Heil-ité…” Part Deux
Sharon says, “get out of Le Dodge”
This is basically an update to a story about French anti-Semitism I wrote a few days ago. Today Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon advised Jewish families still living in the spiraling European state to make aliyah (or homecoming) to Israel as soon as possible. Citing the rapid expansion of hate crimes in the French nation known for lecturing the United States on moral matters great and small, Sharon said “About France, on one hand we see the spread of the wildest anti-Semitism there”, according to a BBC article first cited by the Drudge Report today.
Israel is known to have one of the best intelligence-gathering forces in the world. The Massad is credited with helping the Israeli army win its early wars and many also think it was one of the main intelligence-gathering forces for the U.S. in both Desert Storm and Operation Iraqi Freedom. It has also been cited in recent months for having discovered what it says are positive and independently verifiable WMD’s in the Desert just inside the Syrian Border. The WMD’s, they say, were smuggled in under cover of darkness by Saddam loyalists and Syrians and buried to hide their existence. Some U.S. government experts have come out to concur with the findings, however officially the State Department has been mum (in addition, when asked about the WMD’s, White House National Security Advisor, Dr. Condoleeza Rice refused to add anything to the record). However, one should ask what might the Massad know about France that we have not yet found out. Sure it could be political, but my hunch is they have something verifiable here. But then again, maybe it’s just common sense.
Paris responded almost immediately and predictably by calling Sharon’s decision to make the statement, “unacceptable”. What is not clear is whether the nearly 100% increase (according to the most recent statistics, which were quoted by a BBC article) in crimes against the French Jewish population received an equally visceral reaction from French President Jacques Chirac’s government.
The newest figures pointed out by the BBC are as follow:
“The latest French government figures show 510 anti-Jewish acts or threats in the first six months of 2004 – compared to 593 for all of last year.”
Meanwhile, French media has chosen to show only interviews with French Jews who oppose Sharon, but I’m more than certain given a few days, that spin on the truth will come to its end.
Sharon is right to say what he did. If France won’t take the problem seriously, then every Jewish man, woman and child there is at serious risk. There is too much at stake as the Islamofascists and NAZI sympathizers continue to gain ground in that country and I think it is only waiting to become yet another European Hell-hole. If they allowed civilians to own guns, maybe it would be different, but being unarmed in a country where you know the criminals who want to get you are armed and will likely avoid prosecution are bad odds.
Even the exodus to Israel from North America is back up to the tune of 20% this year, after a slight drop seen the period before. The information was unclear whether it was mostly from The US or from Canada, which has also seen a sharp rise in anti-Semitic violence in the past few years.
But, Chirac’s own government is especially well-known for its shades of anti-Semitism. One only needs to recall the now-infamous statement made by former French Prime Minister Raymond Barre , who when commenting on a spat of anti-Jewish crime in 1980 said that the government needed to deal with the problem in order to protect “both Frenchmen AND Jews”. The statement to many smacked of Hitler’s notion of “Deutschen und Juden.” That was of course just another quip made by French leadership. Daniel Bernard, the French ambassador to England also used an expletive to discribe what he called a “little nation”. Though outraged british statesmen condemned the statements remarking that the “remarks were ‘eerily familiar from the French’”, the French government “stood by Mr. Bernard, dismissing the charges of anti-Semitism as ‘malevolent insinuations’”, according to one BBC article. And of course most recently Chirac again seperated all men from Frenchmen by saying, “we are witnessing racial events involving our Jewish and Muslim compatriots. … Sometimes just simple Frenchmen are attacked,” Martin Peretz of the New Republic, said.
Response to the statements of Mr. Bernard by former New York Mayor, Ed Koch came in an article in which he said the French would do well to remember some perspective before leaning any further in the direction of anti-Semitism,
“The response by Benjamin Disraeli, prime minister of Britain during the reign of Queen Victoria, to an anti-Semite seems particularly appropriate, “Yes, I am a Jew, and when the ancestors of the right honorable gentleman were brutal savages in an unknown island, mine were priests in the temple of Solomon.”
And we should remember that the Francs were not even yet marauders bent on conquering a Roman Empire which did not even yet exist. Bernard of course died in April of this year.
Sharon, a fairly moderate political figure in Israel and by no means a Netanyahu (whom Blogbat personally favors) inserted dire urgency to his statements when he added that it was “a must…”. And how long should they wait to make their exit? Sharon continued, “…and they have to move immediately.”
Related:
France Pledges Support to “Palestinian” Arab Cause
- Blogbat
ISSUES
