By the way, I think Muhammed Al-Dura was 12 years old…not
matter. Great interview with Karsenty, though the sound quality did get in the way.
I have always been struck by how biased the French media
are, not only the government-owned but even those outlets not owned by the
government. I’m not even sure that the conservative paper, Le Figaro, differs
much from Le Monde when it comes to foreign affairs. I’ve read Le Monde from
time to time over the years, sometimes comparing it with coverage by other
papers of certain events, and I’ve often found that the paper’s biases and failings
in its reportage to be egregious. I’ve also seen articles about Israel that were
outright examples of anti-Semitism. Vile stuff. Yet many Frenchmen seem to take
the paper very seriously. It’s their paper of record, yet it only serves, especially in
the case of Israel,
as a record of the prejudices and vested interests of the French
elites.
As for Muhammed Al-Dura, my guess is that the French media
will bury the story as soon as possible, and hope that the public will forget.
I was surprised that Enderlin and France2 decided to appeal the decision, since
that will only allow the issue to draw further attention. It’s possible that they think
they might get a more sympathetic judge, as they did during the first trial (which was a joke). But, with Sarkozy instead of Chirac at the Elysée, they won’t
get much help from the French government. That’s one advantage of having
Sarkozy at the helm: He’s relatively sympathetic towards Israel.
I don’t know what gives with the Israeli government. Maybe
they think they’re being very “Realist” and terribly clever, defending what
they think is a good behind-the-scenes relationship with the French. Maybe it’s
because so much of Israeli trade is with the E.U., and Israel doesn't want to offend a major member. Maybe the Israelis don’t want
to embarrass Sarkozy. It’s idiocy. Even Sarkozy won’t step too far out
of his way to defend the Israelis, and most of the French political
establishment is anti-Zionist, anyway.
Perhaps Sarkozy ought to forget about the Israeli government
and instead hook up with organizations and think tanks within Israel. I don’t
mean right-wing political parties, as that will only hurt his credibility, but
maybe with think tanks (Shalem
Center?) and
intellectuals (even writers like A.B. Yehoshua), or perhaps prominent
journalists there.
BTW, for what it’s worth (and that’s not much), I wrote the
Israeli embassy p.r. department in Washington,
at an e-mail address provided by their website. Of course, I got no answer. I
wonder if anyone even read it. Perhaps in the US, someone could organize a
massive letter-writing campaign. Or, better, do it in Israel and
publicize it well. Forget about the French government for the moment: It’s time
to embarrass the Israeli government into doing something. At least Olmert would
have an excuse for acting, since he could shrug his shoulders and tell Sarkozy,
“Sorry, but the pressure was too strong. I had to do something.”
Regarding the attitude of French Jews: I think that goes
back to the traditional tendency of upwardly mobile French Jews (also British, Austrian, and
German Jews) to try to win acceptance by insisting vehemently that Judaism is
only a religion, not an ethnic/cultural identity. So, instead of being French
Jews or Jewish Frenchmen, they are Frenchmen of the Israelite faith. Pathetic.
I once met up with a young up-and-comer in the Gaullist party whose unfortunate
last name was Levy. He said with a sneer, “Yes, there are many people in New York with this name.”
The couple of friends I had who were (half-) Jewish were extremely
uncomfortable with that part of their identity. They made no secret of the fact
that they didn’t value it at all.
And there is the influence of left-wing conventional wisdoms
on French Jewish intellectuals, who have historically adhered to the Left.
There was always the major of exception of Raymond Aron, and then later Alain
Finkelkraut, André Glucksman and Bernard-Henri Levi, but I think they remain
exceptions.
There is also the tendency in French political culture, or at
least there was until the Muslims became militant, to view any different cultural
identity within France
with disdain. If you claimed that you were a Breton or a Jew, YOU were the
bigot, because you were guilty of “particularism.” One Gaullist of Tunisian
descent told me in the mid-1990s that the French gay, or Jewish, or Muslim, or Protestant
communities didn’t need their own political leaders. They can rely on their
representatives in the National Assembly to convey their concerns to the
government. When I asked him how that would have worked for American blacks in the
1950s and 1960s if they didn’t have Martin Luther King to be their advocate, he
fell silent.
I have the impression that any cohesiveness in the Jewish
community in France is due
to those Jews who migrated there from Algeria after the Algerian War.
They are unabashed Jews, whereas the Ashkenazim had spent generations being
acculturated into an extreme assimilationist ethic. I read that, after seeing
their community being revived by these Sephardim and Mizrahim, the Ashkenazi
Jews started streaming back. So, we have a lot to thank the
Sephardim and Mizrahim for.
Oddly enough, a lot of French Jews, of whatever origin, are
being awakened by other developments in recent years. True stories abound of hate crimes,
like that of the young Jewish disc jockey in Paris whose throat was cut. Now you hear of
Frenchmen saying that there is no future for Jews in France. A few thousand have already
left the country, and more are apparently are thinking of doing so. Most have gone to Israel, but some have also left for Miami
and Montreal.
Sorry for the overlong comment, but I had a lot to get off
my chest on the topic.
