Guy Millière is one of the few non-Jewish political commentators who writes cogently about the deepseated hostility in France against Israel. Needless to say he is not invited by the mainstream media and that most French Jewish journalists and intellectuals are critics of the policies of Israel.
Guy Millière @ the Gatestone Institute:
- France today is one of the main enemies of Israel -- maybe its main enemy -- in the Western world. France's disregard of the threats faced by Israel is more than simple willful blindness. It is complicity.
- At a time when Mahmoud Abbas constantly encourages terror and hatred against Israel, and when murders of Israeli Jews by Palestinian Arabs occur on a daily basis, France's anti-Israel relentlessness can only be seen as the latest extension of France's centuries-old anti-Semitism.
- France's "Arab policy" has gone hand-in-hand with a massive wave of Muslim immigration. France has quickly become the main Muslim country in Europe. More than six million Muslims live in France, and make up approximately 10% of the population. The Muslim vote is now an important factor in French politicians' decisions; the risk of Muslim riots is taken into account.
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| In 1967, then French President Charles de Gaulle (left), a few months after imposing an arms embargo on Israel, and with ironically little self-awareness, publicly described Jews as an "elite people, sure of themselves and domineering." At right, Iranian Foreign Minister Javad Zarif hugs then Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius at the close of nuclear talks in Geneva, Nov. 23, 2014. |
On International Holocaust Remembrance Day, January 27, Hassan Rouhani, President of the Islamic Republic of Iran -- a regime that denies the fact that the Holocaust occurred and does not hide its intention to commit another holocaust -- arrived in Paris for an official visit. [...]read more
No French journalist or politician mentioned International Holocaust Remembrance Day. French journalists spoke only of Hassan Rouhani's "moderation" and "openness," despite Iran's dire human rights violations. Hollande evoked the rebirth of a "fruitful relationship" between Iran and France.
No French journalist or politician mentioned the Holocaust denial or the genocidal intentions of the Iranian regime; that Iran's leaders regularly chant "Death to Israel" and "Death to America"; the malignant contents of Palestine, a book recently published by Ali Khamenei, Iran's supreme leader, or the dangers still inherent in Iran's nuclear program. Every newspaper article and politician's speech in France was about the contracts French companies could sign with Iran and the return of Iran to a harmonious "concert of nations." Iran was presented on every side as a "reliable ally" of the West in the fight against the Islamic State.
France's willful blindness concerning the very real threats Israel faces is characteristic of general attitude of France toward Israel for the last fifty years.
In the second half of the 1960s, after the end of the Algerian war, France adopted an "Arab policy." It consisted of the creation of close ties with Arab dictatorships and, more broadly, with the authoritarian regimes of the Muslim world. The aim of the "Arab Policy" was to enable France to retain influence, whatever the price, even if it had damaging effects on the rest of the Western world. It also consisted of severing strategic and military links between France and Israel. [...]
To please its new Arab friends, France decided to impose an arms embargo on Israel in June 1967, at the beginning of the Six Day War, at the moment when Israel faced mortal danger. The embargo later became permanent.
In 1973, during the Yom Kippur War, France refused landing rights to U.S. military supply planes flying to Israel.
In the early 1970s, France developed close ties with the PLO and became an ardent supporter of the "Palestinian cause." France used its influence, just two years after the massacre of Israeli athletes in Munich, to have Yasser Arafat invited to speak before the United Nations General Assembly in November 1974.[3]
President François Mitterrand, in 1978, received Yasser Arafat on an official visit to Paris, and granted him all the honors reserved for a head of state. In 1979, France voiced its disagreement with the Camp David Accords because the PLO had not been involved in the talks. In 1982, France saved Arafat, who was besieged by the Israeli army in Beirut, and allowed him to seek asylum in Tunisia, a client state of France, to continue his incendiary activities.
France continued to support Arafat until his last moments, and treated him in a French military hospital. When Arafat died, President Jacques Chirac held an official ceremony for him before sending the coffin to the Middle East in an official aircraft of the French Republic. French diplomatic circles never condemned terrorist attacks against Israel, but always condemned Israeli responses as "disproportionate." French diplomatic circles never ceased to support the creation of a Palestinian state, in the "1967 borders" (in reality, 1949 armistice lines).
Hamas, designated a terrorist organization, by the United States, was defined several times by French ministers as a "possible interlocutor." A French Cultural Institute exists in the Hamas-ruled Gaza Strip.
France intends to create a National Museum of Palestine in Ramallah, and French officials declared that the museum will open when a "free and sovereign Palestine" will be born. For now, the museum is housed in the Arab World Institute in Paris, the largest Arab and Muslim cultural center in a Western country.
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