France Says It Must Not Be Arab-Jewish Battleground

Reuters ^

[RCW2001]

France Says It Must Not Be Arab-Jewish Battleground
Last Updated: April 02, 2002 12:10 PM ET
By Rebecca Harrison PARIS (Reuters) - France must not become a battleground where Jews and Muslims re-enact the bloody Middle East violence, national leaders said Tuesday after a series of attacks on Jewish targets in the country. Unknown arsonists tried to burn down a building at a Jewish cemetery in Strasbourg Monday night, following attacks on synagogues and a Jewish butcher's shop over Easter weekend. Right-wing pro-Israeli activists clashed Tuesday with Palestinian supporters waiting at a Paris airport for militant French farmer Jose Bove, deported from Israel after visiting Arafat in his besieged office. "Showing solidarity over the Middle East conflict is one thing. But it's totally unacceptable that this leads to conflict between communities, that some blame Jews for what is happening there, and others Arab circles," Socialist Prime Minister Lionel Jospin told RTL radio. President Jacques Chirac decried the violence after meeting a delegation of Jewish students. Police quickly stepped in to break up the fighting at Paris-Orly airport but the pro-Palestinian group continued to chant: "We are all Palestinians" and "Fascist Zionists." In Germany, a gang of seven or eight men attacked two American Jews walking on one of Berlin's smartest streets on Sunday after visiting a synagogue. In Brussels Monday, unknown assailants hurled firebombs at a synagogue. BATTLEFIELD ANNEX? The French daily Le Figaro voiced concern about rising tension between France's Jewish community -- Europe's largest -- and its four to five million Muslims, suggesting the country could become "an annex of the battleground in the Middle East." Jewish leaders in France said the attacks might signal a fresh wave of anti-Semitism reminiscent of the Nazi era. Israel's ambassador to France said young Arabs were behind recent anti-Jewish attacks that were directly linked to the worsening Middle East violence. Tuesday Israeli troops with tanks invaded more West Bank towns after a wave of Palestinian suicide bombings. "I am worried about all these acts," ambassador Elie Barnavi told LCI television. Some Jewish leaders say violence against Jews in France has shot up since the start of the Palestinian uprising against Israel 18 months ago. They accuse the French government of turning a blind eye to what they call organized terrorism. "The French government is very good at speaking out against right-wing extremism. But it has laryngitis when it comes to anti-Semitism," Abraham Cooper, associate dean of the Simon Wiesenthal Center monitoring neo-Nazi activity worldwide, told Reuters by telephone from the center in Los Angeles. The European Union's European Monitoring Center on Racism and Xenophobia said it had recorded a rise in attacks on Jewish communities in Europe, but said this followed the September 11 attacks and was unrelated to Middle East violence. In January, Israeli Deputy Foreign Minister Michael Melchior said France was "the worst western country for anti-Semitism." Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon made similar comments. Saturday, the day after Israeli tanks surrounded Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat's headquarters in the West Bank town of Ramallah, thousands joined pro-Palestinian protests across France, one of the first western nations to advocate an independent Palestinian state. (Additional reporting from Brussels and Berlin)

[wideawake]

You could not be more wrong. Find out more about the FN. They are more conservative than most Republicans.

While US Republicans pretend that the immigration problem doesn't exist, the FN is on French TV and in the newspapers calling uncompromisingly for a complete end to Third World immigration, forcible defense of French borders from illegals and a reaffirmation of traditional French culture (Christianity, agriculturalism, integral families, rolling back of sexual license, etc.)

While US Republicans are in love with the federal government the FN, in a much more centralized society than ours, calls for local control over education, taxation, etc.

[aBootes]

The Eurocrats will blame the Jews for all their problems as they did seventy years ago.

Yes, that is one possibility, and the most likely if Muslim rage remains fairly narrowly targeted on Jews and Jewish interests.

On the other hand, if the death and destruction spreads to venues that are clearly and uniquely French, then I can see a French response tries to take some very strong measures against the perps. And I'll be interested to see how effective they are.

[wideawake]

If you can find the article, please link it. I'd love to read more.

[grumpster-dumpster]

PLEASE! All Arabs and Jews...
Do not take your war to France .... they won't know in which direction to surrender.

[wideawake]

You are correct. He bulldozed a McDonald's. Then, some imitators of his took it a step further: Communists in Northern France killed a woman working the drive-in window at a McDonald's in Normandy. Bove is a Syndicalist from Southern France.

He managed to live down the copycat crime by saying that while it was okay to destroy other people's private property it was not okay to kill people outright, maybe.

He is now idolized by the Chomskyan left in the US and the antiglobalism protestors (i.e. Maoists) in Europe. Apparently he's trying to extend his franchise into the Middle East to improve his speaking fees.

[lavaroise]

But it will. The french have so well described what France should be but is not.

[quebecois]

Two thoughts about this article:

1) You cannot allow your country to be overrun with immigrants from the third world and expect that they won't bring their baggage with them. France is now a battleground of the middle east conflict precisely because of their (and, for that matter, our) idiotic immigration prolicies. I have a really wild idea: how about France for the French?

2) The victims of this most recent wave of attacks (the French Jewish community) has been most vocal in its attacks on right wing Frenchmen who have opposed continued third world immigration. Every time a Le Pen rises to speak out against the tidal wave, the lefties (many of whom are Jewish) have a fit and start using the usual "racism, etc" catcalls. Looks like this chicken is coming home to roost.

[cicero's_son]

Oh this is just too rich.

France--overlord of the new European Superstate--couldn't cut off ties with her cousin Austria fast enough a few years back when Haider's party was elected. Why? Well, "xenophobia" of course. You see, Austria simply wasn't "European" enough to participate in the EU.

And now France is the new killing field for European Jewry.

No surprise, given that more people attend Mosque than Mass in France now, anyway. I guess we should be grateful for this statement from the French. They may even beat out Turkey as the world's most moderate Muslim state.

[wideawake]

Pascal was a Port Royaliste and a semiJansenist. Not precisely mainstream.

Of course, he had no desire to cause a rift in the Church and could not have foreseen the abuses which would arise after his death. He was within the limits of orthodoxy, but not in the mainstream.

Descartes never technically overstepped the bounds, either. One of the biggest problems modern critics have with Descartes, amusingly, was that he "remained trapped all his life in the Thomistic problematic".

[null and void]

Only France would consider a terrorist attack as the victim's fault.

You haven't looked in on DU lately have you?...

[Kermit]

Let's see, in the past year there have been 400+ attacks on Jewish facilities in France. So, this is then a "Arab-Jewish Battlegroud"? One side is attacking, but it's still the Jews fault. Creeps.

[aBootes]

Let's see, in the past year there have been 400+ attacks on Jewish facilities in France. So, this is then a "Arab-Jewish Battlegroud"? One side is attacking, but it's still the Jews fault. Creeps.

Were those 400+ attacks by Muslims or by neo-Nazi groups or ??? Or to come at the question from another angle, does the current spike in reports of unrest represent a true deterioration or a heightened interest in an existing situation? Just asking.

[aBootes]

You can only import one side of a party at war, not both. If you do you import the conflict itself. In a sense the attack on the WTC has everything to do with the US allowing the immigration of two conflicting parties into the US.

We have immigrants from both sides of several different conflicts within the US. Occasionally they go after each other but to the best of my knowledge, nothing that can be compared to 911.

That being said, it seems more likely to me that bin Ladin's real problem is with the House of Saud. Striking directly at the House of Saud is not feasible right now, but we support the House of Saud, so we become a target. And the Palestinian issue is merely a cover, sufficient for the naivete that runs rampant in the Middle East... Corrupt and despotic Arabic kingdoms are the real problem.

[Maceman]

Right-wing pro-Israeli activists clashed \\

Reuters is too "objective" to use the word "terrorists" when referring to people who deliberately target and kill innocent civilians for political objectives.

But it has no problem using a slippery label like "right wing" in a context where it has absolutely no definable meaning. I mean, I we all know that Hitler was right wing (according to the leftists), so it amazing to learn that he would have been "pro-Israeli."

No bias here.

[Blood of Tyrants]

I am proud to say that I have NEVER looked at DU.