J'ACCUSE or Betrayal: France, the Arabs, and the Jews (Book Review)

As I write, it is exactly a year since the desolate banlieues of France erupted in an orgy of violence, on a scale which had not been seen for generations. At the time, these riots were blamed on social exclusion. Since then, it has become clear that the rioters are not just 'immigrants' or 'youths', but are first and foremost Muslims. When they set light to a car, their cry is often: 'Allahu akhbar!' ('Allah is great!')

The violence, moreover, is endemic and ubiquitous. In 2005, there were 110,000 incidents of urban violence, including 45,000 vehicles burnt out. This year, there has been an average of over 100 incidents a day. Since the riots supposedly subsided last January, some 3,000 police officers are reported to have been injured. France is quite deliberately being made ungovernable...

...Like so many misfortunes, this one has its origins in the megalomania of the Bonaparte clan. For more than two centuries, since Napoleon's expedition to Egypt, French diplomacy has been gripped by a delusion of grandeur: the idea of France as une puissance musulmane, 'a Muslim power' - a phrase that has a new and sinister echo now.

"...French diplomats, determined to outdo their British and German rivals in great-power politics, were also convinced that France had a special mission civilisatrice in the Islamic world. Yet their sentimental orientalism was entirely compatible with an institutional anti-Semitism that is documented in shocking detail by Pryce-Jones. The rise of Zionism transformed this anti-Semitism from a mere prejudice, odious perhaps but peripheral to foreign policy, into a distorting mirror which motivated and reinforced the fatal misjudgements that have led France to its present predicament...

"...Only now, when the country is in the grip of an Islamist jihad, has Chirac acknowledged that anti-Semitism - the existence of which in France he had long denied - is so serious that 'an attack against a French Jew is an attack against France'. It is David Pryce-Jones's great merit to have documented the conflict between this affirmation of the rights of French Jews at home and their denial abroad by French foreign policy. Whether the French public will heed this English indictment of their political class is more than doubtful, but Betrayal should resonate among those for whom Zola is still not a footballer but the author of J'accuse...

Many are the discussions on FR that France is becoming a Muslim nation; actually, this has been their policy since the time of Napolean. Antisemitism comes easy!

Hundreds of cars torched overnight (guess which country...)
Reuters | 1/1/2007
Posted on 01/02/2007 8:13:14 AM EST by StoneGiant
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1761218/posts

Hundreds of cars torched overnight ["French Fry Alert!]
Mercury | 1/1/07 | Reuters
Posted on 01/01/2007 7:58:33 PM EST by melt
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1761079/posts

Erdogan urges Turk immigrants to avoid French riots
Reuters | 08 Nov 2005
Posted on 11/08/2005 6:59:51 AM EST by ncountylee
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1517908/posts

Turkey warns of terror wave if EU membership is rejected
EU Observer | Dec 13 2004 | Lisbeth Kirk
Posted on 12/15/2004 1:10:42 AM EST by SunkenCiv
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1301677/posts

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