Sins on the Seine--Betrayal: France, the Arabs, and the Jews

Azure ^ | 3-7-07 | NOAH POLLAK

[SJackson]

Sins on the Seine
		Reviewed by   NOAH POLLAK
		DAVID PRYCE-JONES
		Betrayal: France, the Arabs, and the Jews
		Encounter Books, 2006, 171 pages
		On July 12, 2006, Hezbollah militants launched rockets and mortars into Israel to divert attention from a simultaneous ambush on an Israel Defense Forces border patrol, in which three soldiers were killed, two were abducted, and five more were killed in the rescue attempt that followed. Two days later, French President Jacques Chirac pronounced Israel’s nascent military response “completely disproportionate” and added that “One could ask if today there is not a sort of will to destroy Lebanon.” While many other nations condemned Israel, most were careful to include the kind of perfunctory reproach to Hezbollah that would create the appearance of evenhandedness. But for France, not so much: Five days into the conflict, Chirac sent Prime Minister Dominique de Villepin on a “solidarity” mission to Beirut. For the Israelis confined to bomb shelters, no such tidings were forthcoming from France. In the days that followed, the denunciations and allegations reached a crescendo. Kofi Annan declared, with no evidence, that a fatal United Nations observation post bombing was the result of “apparently deliberate targeting” by the IDF. Such carefully choreographed comments were vital to creating an international consensus of outrage sufficient to force cease-fire negotiations, and naturally, France took the lead in stewarding a diplomatic process whose overriding goal was the prevention of Hezbollah’s defeat on the battlefield. France endorsed Arab calls for an immediate cease-fire, which were rejected by Israel, the U.S., and Britain, on the grounds that Hezbollah would be left in place to fight again at a time of its choosing. Throughout the war, the Anglo-Saxon alliance plus Israel insisted that anything less than the elimination of Hezbollah’s military capability against Israel would be dangerous and counterproductive. On August 4 France and the U.S. agreed on a draft Security Council resolution that would send a division-size international force into southern Lebanon empowered with robust rules of engagement that would effect the disarmament of Hezbollah and the prevention of its re-supply. But under Arab League pressure a few days later, France balked and endorsed a new version with much vaguer rules of engagement, but for which France maintained its commitment to lead a military force that would ensure the long-term pacification of southern Lebanon. With the French promise to lead the international military effort undiminished, the United States assented, and on August 11 the Security Council adopted this plan as Resolution 1701. It was loudly declared that this time, the spirit and the letter of the UN resolution would be enforced, that the decades of deadly indifference to the Taif Accord (1989) and Resolution 1559 (2004) were over -- in short, that the UN and the Europeans were serious. But as soon as the fighting stopped, all of the promises France had made to secure American, Israeli, and British support were cast aside: Instead of leading the UNIFIL effort with thousands of its soldiers, France offered 200 troops and refused to send more, on the grounds that it could not put its soldiers in harm’s way under such vague rules of engagement -- the very rules of engagement France itself had insisted on. Here were all the hallmarks of contemporary French diplomacy: The exhibitionistic declarations in favor of peace that are intended to turn aggressors such as Hezbollah into victims of “disproportionate” reprisals; the proffering of false guarantees to gullible allies in order to channel negotiations to the favorable terrain of the United Nations; and the use of its influence to muddle and undermine the resolution of conflicts, thus ensuring the future need for more French diplomacy. Add to this list an addendum on behalf of David Pryce-Jones and his new book: Positioning itself as the foremost Western defender of Arab honor, at the expense of Israel and America. Betrayal: France, the Jews, and the Arabs started as a long essay in Commentary, but even in its extended form is only a slender 171 pages. It is nonetheless a devastating catalogue of both France’s depredations, first against the Jews, and now against Israel, and its institutionalized policy of favoritism toward the Muslim Middle East. Pryce-Jones’ central charge is that France’s desire to be the Middle East’s most ostentatiously helpful European ally, combined with its governing elite’s enthusiasm for anti-Semitism and anti-Zionism, has caused France to enter into a Faustian bargain with the Muslim world -- an arrangement that has repeatedly proven destructive both to France’s foreign policy interests and to its own vaingloriously celebrated values. France’s posture toward Muslims, Pryce-Jones declares, “has been what the Maginot Line was militarily, a masking of reality, a standing invitation to self-deception.” France became involved in the Middle East by several routes: Napoleon’s 1798 campaign in Egypt; the 1830 invasion of Algeria; France’s perception of itself as a guardian of Catholicism and Christianity in the Holy Land; and France’s desire to compete with Britain in colonial acquisitions. The institution charged with conceptualizing, administering, and guarding the traditions of French diplomacy was the country’s foreign ministry, known as the Quai d’Orsay, and it is in the archives of this institution that Pryce-Jones spent the largest part of his investigatory energies. The staff of the Quai d’Orsay was dynastic and relied upon by transient political leaders; entry, said one historian, was determined by “nepotism, patronage, and political persuasion [which was] Catholic and hostile to Jews and Protestants and the parliamentary system.” What Pryce-Jones found in its archives is a delightfully detailed record of the French diplomatic community’s centuries-long hostility to Jews and then to Israel, and its self-conscious ambition to co-opt the Muslim Middle East, all written by the articulate and prolific members of this self-selected academy of France’s internationally minded aristocracy. From the beginning of the Quai d’Orsay, anti-Semitism was the approved mindset, and it influenced both the institution’s foreign policy and its members’ understanding of their superior positions in the social order. In the parlance of the ministry, Jews were an “anti-national” faction loyal to an ambiguous but forebodingly powerful international Jewry. Jews were said to be repositories of numerous (and contradictory) pathologies: They were filthy ghetto-dwellers, disloyal agitators, money-grubbing exploiters, or a secret cabal seeking to infiltrate France. The Zionist movement that flourished in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries not only confirmed among the French elite their conviction of Jews as a subversive international element, but stirred strategic fears that Zionism would threaten France’s Catholic protectorate in the Levant, the expansion of its power in the region, and its relations with Arabs. The French response was two fold: Calumny was heaped upon Zionism, and the Quai d’Orsay sought strengthened connections to the Arab world, hoping to ensure that the Holy Land would never be a hospitable place for Jews. Pryce-Jones notes, for example, that “paying for the meeting in Paris in June 1913 of twenty-three Arabs from Syria and the Holy Land, the Quai d’Orsay effectively launched the Arab nationalist movement.”  Following World War I and the dissolution of the Ottoman Empire, France sought to control a swath of the Levant that today includes Syria, Lebanon, and Israel. But Palestine went to the British, so French diplomats sought to suppress Zionist ambitions by convincing their British counterparts of the undesirability of opening the region to Jews. After the Balfour Declaration, France duly warned the British against “arous[ing[ unrealizable expectations in the Jews… the Zionists must understand once and for all that there could be no question of constituting an independent Jewish state in Palestine, nor even forming some sovereign Jewish body.” Beyond its obvious hostility to Jews, France had another reason to agitate against a Jewish state: The Zionist movement was being led by British Jews and abetted by British Protestants, and the endeavor left no room, the French realized, for the expansion, or even participation, of French power. “It became the accepted position in French diplomatic circles,” Pryce-Jones writes, “that ‘the British and the Jews were conspiring together against French interests,’ having formed an ‘Anglo-Jewish policy.’” France’s leading diplomat in the Levant, Robert de Caix, visited the British high commissioner, Sir Herbert Samuel, in Jerusalem in 1920, and his account of the meeting illustrates with brutal perfection the manner in which French anti-Semitism was put in the service of French foreign policy. “This well-mannered English Jew, scraped clean from the ghetto, has been completely taken up in Jerusalem by his tribe and he attends synagogue, accepts no invitations on the Sabbath and on Holy Days goes only on foot… you may be sure that the complete Jewry of both hemispheres will apply a policy consisting of rejecting our frontier to the north of the Hauran and to the banks of the Litani.” Likewise, the head of the Quai d’Orsay’s department for religious affairs concluded a memorandum on the subject of his meeting with Chaim Weizmann by saying, “Jewish nationalism is a mistake and [the Jews] can find peace only through assimilation.” During World War II, the French diplomatic elite took naturally to collaborating with the Nazis and settled easily into the Vichy government, the most satisfying point of agreement being the necessity of ridding Europe, and preferably the world, of Jews. Jean Giraudoux, a high-ranking Quai d’Orsay official who enjoyed socializing with Nazis, offered in 1939 that “The Jews sully, corrupt, rot, corrode, debase, devalue everything they touch.” Paul Claudel, who in the 1920s was the French ambassador to the United States and who combined diplomatic and literary careers, referred to Jews as “lice with a human face,” and in a play has a Jewish character say, “But for us Jews, there’s no little scrap of earth so large as a gold coin.” After the war, says Pryce-Jones, “the institutional mindset of the Quai d’Orsay survived intact,” and the ministry resuscitated its campaign to undermine Zionism, viewed in the postwar era as “more of a danger than ever to what French diplomats believed would otherwise have been a smooth and advantageous relationship with Arab countries.” Seeking to foster good relations with the Arabs, from behind the scenes France aggressively sought to derail the UN vote to partition Mandatory Palestine, and in 1949 France’s ambassador to Israel informed the French foreign minister that “The manner in which Israeli leaders have proceeded recalls Hitler’s Reich.” In this long and appalling history, there was one fateful period of good relations. Pierre-Etienne Gilbert was the French ambassador to Israel from 1953 to 1959, and was “the first French diplomat openly to admire Israel.” During his time in Israel, Gilbert learned Hebrew, lobbied vigorously for a genuine collaboration between the two nations, and suppressed the Quai d’Orsay’s role whenever possible. In 1956, Israel secretly allied with France and Britain to break the Egyptian blockade of the Suez Canal, and while much of France’s willingness to partner with Israel was located in its desire to make Gamal Abd el-Nasser suffer for his incitement of Algerian insurgents, Israel’s success in the Suez War solidified its gains in the 1948 War of Independence and, at a particularly perilous time in its history, pacified the Egyptian threat for the ensuing decade. After the Suez War, Gilbert, allied with the French defense establishment and openly antagonistic to the diplomatic elite, helped marginalize the Quai and pushed through the nuclear deal that supplied Israel with its reactor in Dimona. When De Gaulle came out of retirement in 1958, the Quai d’Orsay was emboldened and the disengagement from friendly relations with Israel commenced. An official report to De Gaulle in 1963 stated that good relations between France and Israel “in no way give France any credit in Arabia,” and indeed that sentiment has been the driving force behind French policy toward Israel ever since: In the run-up to the Six Day War France embargoed arms shipments to Israel, and during the war De Gaulle told British Prime Minister Harold Wilson that “some day the West would thank him, as from then on France would ‘be the only Western power to have any influence with the Arab governments.’” De Gaulle’s successors continued the tradition of open hostility to Israel in ways significant and petty. In 1969, President Georges Pompidou, during a visit to the United States, declared in a speech that Israel must stop being “a racial and religious state” and demanded that Israel cease asking for support from diaspora Jews. When Syria and Egypt invaded Israel in 1973, France’s foreign minister wondered aloud, “Is it unexpected aggression to try and set foot in your own house?” With the emergence of terrorism as a regular feature of the Arab-Israeli conflict, France easily sided with the Arabs: In 1977 it supplied one of the leaders of Black September with a visa so he could escape from Beirut to Paris, and in response to furious international criticism President Valery Giscard d’Estaing defended rescuing the murderer by simply saying, “France and its people have no lessons to learn from anyone.” Meanwhile, Giscard d’Estaing approved contracts (negotiated by then-Prime Minister Jacques Chirac) to build two nuclear power plants for Iraq. Francois Mitterand, himself a former Vichy official, commenced his presidency by announcing an attempt to rehabilitate France’s image as implacably hostile to Israel, but his foreign minister for the first three years of his presidency had close friendships with members of the Palestine Liberation Organization and once declared, “My condemnation of Zionism is absolute.”

France’s ambitions in the Muslim world also took form in the symbiotic relationships it nurtured with three of the most consequential Muslim political figures of the past several decades. Ayatollah Khomeini, Saddam Hussein, and Yasser Arafat indulged France’s self-important desire to ingratiate itself with Muslim leaders, while France attempted to use its influence with them, greased with lavish patronage, to advance its own objectives in the region. When the Palestine Liberation Organization broke onto the Middle East scene, France quickly endeavored to help it gain representation in the United Nations, and when Israel invaded Lebanon in 1982, Pryce-Jones recounts, “France sent ships to Beirut to evacuate thousands of PLO gunmen to Tunis, and Paul-Marc Henry, the French ambassador to Lebanon, placed Arafat under the cover of his own diplomatic immunity.” The Fatah organization was invited to establish itself in Paris as the political arm of the PLO, bringing Middle Eastern-style bombings and shootings to France. To the end, France helped inflate and mythologize Arafat, even to obsessive degrees of pettiness. Jacques Chirac made a much publicized visit to Arafat on his Paris deathbed, and as Pryce-Jones recounts:

When Arafat then died, Chirac arranged ceremonies suitable for a head of state, with a guard of honor of French soldiers to carry the coffin to the aircraft transporting it back to Ramallah. At this event, his eyes watering, he declared, “With him disappears a man of courage and conviction.”

With Arafat also disappeared an important detail of his life: His truthful place of birth. French officials altered his medical file to indicate Arafat’s birthplace as Jerusalem, not Cairo.

In 1977, upon being forced from his exile in Najaf, Iraq, by Saddam Hussein, Ayatollah Khomeini was offered a compound in suburban Paris, complete with guards and international communications equipment, from which to foment the Iranian revolution. France correctly hedged that he would become the next Iranian strongman, and saw in him an opportunity for a prosperous relationship with the new Iran. Khomeini remarked that the French government was “kind to us and we could publicize our views extensively, much more so than we expected.” When the shah fled Iran in 1979, Khomeini arrived triumphantly in Tehran on a chartered Air France jet; to a notable degree, France had helped midwife the ascension of the world’s first Islamist government.

Jacques Chirac, as prime minister in the mid-1970s, formed an adulating friendship with Saddam Hussein, toasting the dictator extravagantly on his trips to France and taking him on personal tours of French arms factories and nuclear plants. Hussein purchased billions of dollars in French weaponry, and used it to attack Khomeini’s Iran in 1980. It is generally not a good state of affairs when two of your allies are fighting each other, but France made the best of a bad situation and sold weapons to both: Publicly to Iraq, and covertly to Iran.

 

David Pryce-Jones notes that France’s position over the last century and a half as a self-styled puissance Musulmane, a Muslim power, has been not just a strategic failure, but a betrayal of France’s national identity as a champion of democracy and human rights (although one must observe that France has always been notably absent among the nations who actually take French national values seriously). There has scarcely been a Middle Eastern thug, despot, or fanatic whom France has not sought to befriend, and for all of the mythologizing of French sophistication in the diplomatic arts, there is little evidence demonstrating how, exactly, France has benefited from these often one-sided romances. Such evidence certainly is not located in France’s banlieus, which are aflame with righteous anti-French violence. It cannot be found in the failure to frustrate Zionism and thwart the creation of Israel; it is absent in France’s support for Nasser, as the Egyptian despot, perhaps having taken a lesson from the French school of foreign policy himself, covertly supplied arms and propaganda to the Algerian insurgents who bloodied and then expelled France from its last colonial holding. The half-century of aspersions intended to isolate and demoralize Israel never quite succeeded in either seriously wounding the Jewish state or winning the affection of the Muslims on behalf of whose delicate sense of honor France professed to endeavor. France’s promotion of Hussein and Khomeini did nothing but encourage the war, terrorism, and sectarian misery those despots unleashed on the Middle East, undermining any opportunity for the expansion of French power and influence. And what did championing the PLO achieve? Fatah’s failed nationalism is rapidly being eclipsed by Hamas’ Islamism. France’s devotion to its Middle East rogues’ gallery has accomplished little more for French interests than the provocation of American intervention in the very region that France wished to bring into its own sphere of influence.

Pryce-Jones continues that “much of what France now undertakes amounts to mere pinpricks in the international spectrum, but still of nuisance value to the parties at the receiving end, while precipitously degrading to France itself.” But France’s role in the post-cold war world is hardly so frivolous. French elites have always felt chagrined by the unipolar world and the global sweep of American military, diplomatic, cultural, and commercial power. In response to this challenge, France, seeking a role in the world worthy of itself, envisions itself as the organizer and leader of an alliance of European countries that would act as a counterweight to Anglo-Saxon dominance. In this pursuit France exerts power where and when it can, which usually means leveraging its seat on the United Nations Security Council to dilute American influence, to insert itself into world affairs and crises, and to empower alliances hostile to the United States.

The first success of this new diplomacy was in the run-up to the Iraq war. In 2002, the UN Security Council unanimously passed Resolution 1441, which required Iraq to disarm itself of weapons of mass destruction, to allow the return of weapons inspectors, and to comply with all previous UN resolutions. The penalty for non-compliance would be “serious consequences” -- the phrase is now famous -- which was understood to mean military action. The United States believed that it had struck a compromise with France in which the United States would allow inspectors a final chance to verify Iraqi weapons, and France would support a military response in the case of Iraqi non-compliance. When Iraq continued to thwart the inspectors and the United States pursued a resolution authorizing force, France shocked the Bush administration by summarily dismissing any chance of supporting a new resolution, under any circumstances. The bait-and-switch worked: France’s position as the leader, at least temporarily, of a Russian-German-French counterweight to the Anglo-Saxon alliance was inaugurated, and America was handed a sensational and highly public defeat.

In the cases of both the Iraq and Hezbollah wars, France coaxed Anglo-Saxon engagement in the United Nations with an affectation of responsible statesmanship and guarantees of desirable compromises, and once its adversaries were fully committed to the labyrinthine requirements of the UN, the rug was pulled out -- the very terms that solidified a consensus were cast aside. Such perfidious diplomacy accomplishes something much more valuable than simply the successful entanglement of an American-led resolution to a conflict: They ensure that no resolution whatsoever is accomplished. France today leads a group of nations that use diplomacy as a means of preventing, rather than coordinating, action.  Diplomacy channeled through the UN does not serve as a deterrent to groups like Hezbollah and nations like Iran, it serves as a deterrent to the Anglosphere’s ability to do anything about Hezbollah and Iran. That is precisely the point, and it is a far more grave state of affairs -- especially concerning nuclear weapons -- than a pinprick.

[SJackson]

If you'd like to be on this middle east/political ping list, please FR mail me.

High Volume. Articles on Israel can also be found by clicking on the Topic or Keyword Israel. or WOT [War on Terror]

----------------------------

[NicknamedBob]

(... during the war De Gaulle told British Prime Minister Harold Wilson that “some day the West would thank him, as from then on France would ‘be the only Western power to have any influence with the Arab governments.’”)

Yeah ... How's that working out for you, Charley?

[happygrl]

The famous picture of the weeping Frenchman standing on Les Champs Elysees while the Nazis parade by comes to mind.

This is how the obsession with the Arabs will end, with Jackboots again on the French boulevards.

[Atlantic Bridge]

The reason for the lack of French cooperation concerning Israel is quite simple: Israel is a small country with roundabout 7 million inhabitatants. Although the Israelis are quite prosperous they are economically irrelevant compared to the other Arab nations (a traditional market for French goods) for France. In difference to Germany they have no historical obligation to stand on the side of Israel. Since the Frogs do not have such a huge Jewish lobby like the US either, they see no reason to support the Jewish nation. Religious causes (holy land - like in America) also do not play any role in greater Europe.

The French understand Israel as a unpleasant source of irritation. Nothing more and nothing less. Neverthetess it is nessecary to know that not all of Europe shares this view. In political Germany the situation is completely different i.e..

[baubau]

Old and meaningless article.

Where is the lead-in?

[Atlantic Bridge]

The famous picture of the weeping Frenchman standing on Les Champs Elysees while the Nazis parade by comes to mind. This is how the obsession with the Arabs will end, with Jackboots again on the French boulevards.

Nope. The current muslim population in France is far from "taking over the power". They are the rioting underdogs in a unjust socialist society that lack the education and intelligence to act concerted. It is indeed true that some of them are dangerous but they not dangerous enough to change the whole society into a caliphate. Quite a simular situation to the Los-Angeles-riots in 1992. America was also always far away from becoming a new Zimbabwe.

[jerryem]

It is great to be reminded every now and then what a Cesspool france is

[dervish]

"they are economically irrelevant compared to the other Arab nations"

That is a September 10 mind set, one that spells the demise of European Civilization.

[Vicomte13]

"The reason for the lack of French cooperation concerning Israel is quite simple"

No, there is considerably more to it than that.

The French, as a culture with a long tradition of secularism, do not like the very idea of a confessional religious state which has de facto degrees of citizenship based on religious belief. They especially don't like it in a NEW state, founded since World War II. Ancient states with deeply entrenched systems and bigotries are one thing, but to start a new state from scratch, and build it on religious lines: the French oppose this as fundamentally wrong.

There is much more, but that is one of key root problems. In the French view of a world, an explicitly religious, discriminatory state should never have been built in the 20th Century.

[dervish]

"de facto degrees of citizenship based on religious belief"

Please substantiate this comment which is false. And deeply ironic if in fact France really feels this way. Consider the slums and de facto third world status of the Mulsim French citizens in the banlieus (French Ghettos), you know the ones who are unemployed, on generational weklfare, and whose youth rioted for strictly secular reasons that they are mistreated by the stratified classist French society including being denied their place in French government.

Or are you giving France the "Ancient states" free pass?

[Vicomte13]

"Please substantiate this comment which is false."

May non-Jewish immigrants to Israel retain their previous citizenship as well? Jewish immigrants can.

It's not false. It's true.

[dervish]

I do not understand your post. Please clarify. Are you contending that an American Christian must surrender their US citizenship in order to become an Israeli citizen? Not so. Both Israel and US permit dual citizenship.

Are you referring to the Law of Return?

That exists in many countries whose populations were not subject to ethnic cleansing, countries whose founding purpose was not to give shelter to a religious group who had been persecuted over centuries culminating in the death at the hands of a 'civilized' Europe of one half its members. In fact Germany, perhaps the country where racism was made a brand name, did not reform its citizenship laws until 2000. The primary basis of citizenship still is "Jus Sanguinis" which sounds remarkably racist. Until the 2000 reform, a requirement of EU participation, non-ethnic Germans were sometimes third generation and were still not given citizenship. Ethnic Germans are still given preferential treatment.

....................


"Repatriation laws are generally not controversial. The exception to this is the Law of Return in Israel."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Repatriation_laws



Armenia
Article 14 of the Constitution of the Republic of Armenia (1995) provides that "[i]Individuals of Armenian origin shall acquire citizenship of the Republic of Armenia through a simplified procedure."[1] This provision is consistent with the Declaration on Independence of Armenia, issued by the Supreme Soviet of the Republic of Armenia in 1989, which declared at article 4 that "Armenians living abroad are entitled to the citizenship of the Republic of Armenia".


[edit] Belarus
Citizenship act of the Republic of Belarus (2002) states that permanent residence terms may be waived for ethnic Belarusians and descendants of ethnic Belarusians who were born abroad before applying for Belarusian citizenship.


[edit] Bulgaria
According to the Constitution of Bulgaria, Article 25(2): "A person of Bulgarian origin shall acquire Bulgarian citizenship through a facilitated procedure."[2]

Chapter Two of the Bulgarian Citizenship Act is entitled "Acquisition of Bulgarian Citizenship". The first section of that chapter is entitled "Acquisition of Bulgarian Citizenship by Origin", and provides at article 9 that "[a]ny person ... whose descent from a Bulgarian citizen has been established by way of a court ruling shall be a Bulgarian citizen by origin." Separately, article 15 of the Act provides that "[a]ny person who is not a Bulgarian citizen may acquire Bulgarian citizenship ... if he/she ... is of a Bulgarian origin".

Ethnic Turks who were born to refugees or immigrants from Bulgarian lands (and thus have Bulgarian origin) also have a right of return.


[edit] China
Chinese immigration law gives priority to returning Overseas Chinese — ethnic Chinese who were living abroad. As a result, practically all immigrants to China are ethnic Chinese, including many whose families lived outside of China for generations.

The Chinese government encourages the return of Overseas Chinese with various incentives not available to others, such as "tax breaks, high salaries and exemptions from the one-child policy if they had two children while living abroad".[3]

The "rights and interests of returned overseas Chinese" are afforded special protection according to Articles 50 and 89 of the Chinese Constitution.[4]

The term Overseas Chinese may be defined narrowly to refer only to people of Han ethnicity, or more broadly to refer to members of other Chinese ethnic groups. As a result of this ambiguity, people who are not Han but were born in China and subsequently left, including refugees, are not necessarily eligible for the same preferential treatment.


[edit] Croatia
The Croatian law on citizenship (Zakon od hrvatskom državljanstvu), article 11, defines emigrants (iseljenik) and gives them privileges by excluding them from certain conditions imposed on others.

The Croatian diaspora makes use of this to obtain dual citizenship or to return to Croatia.


[edit] Czech Republic
In 1995 the Czech Republic amended its Citizenship Law to provide the Interior Ministry with the discretion to waive the usual five-year residency requirement for foreigners that had been resettled in the Czech Republic by 31 December 1994. This amendment was aimed particularly at several hundred ethnic Czechs which had been brought by the Czech government from the Ukrainian region of Volhynia, and was of a limited duration.[5]

The amendment was consistent with what the Czech Ministry of Labor and Social Affairs has identified as "the Czech government's policy principles regarding the resettlement of foreigners of Czech origin living abroad."[6] A private fund, the People in Need Czech TV Foundation, worked with government authorities between 1995 and 2001 to effect this resettlement in the specific instance of Russian and Kazakh citizens of Czech origin, and had resettled approximately 750 such persons as of 2000.[7] The strength or prominence of this policy within the Czech government may be uneven, however, and the state appears to have rebuffed dual citizenship overtures from ethnic Czechs living in the comparatively large diaspora of former Czechs in Western countries.


[edit] Finland
The Finnish Aliens Act provides for persons who are of Finnish origin to receive permanent residence. This generally means Karelians and Ingrian Finns from the former Soviet Union, but United States, Canadian or Swedish nationals with Finnish ancestry can also apply.

The Finnish Directorate of Immigration website states on its Returnees page that;

Certain aliens, who have Finnish ancestry or otherwise a close connection with Finland, may be granted a residence permit on this basis. No other reason, such as work or study, is required in order to receive the permit.
Receiving a residence permit depends on the directness and closeness of Finnish ancestry. If the ancestry dates back several generations, a residence permit cannot be granted on this basis.
People who may be granted a residence permit based on Finnish ancestry or close connections with Finland can be divided into the following three groups:
former Finnish citizens: [8]
persons of other Finnish origin: [9]
persons from areas of the former Soviet Union: [10].

[edit] France
What might be historically the first law recognising a Right of Return was enacted in France in 1790, as part of the French Revolution putting a decisive end to the centuries-long persecution and discrimination of Huguenots (French Protestants).

Concurently with making all Protestants resident in France into full-fledged citizens, the law enacted on December 15, 1790 stated that : 'All persons born in a foreign country and descending in any degree of a French man or woman expatriated for religious reason are declared French nationals (naturels français) and will benefit to rights attached to that quality if they come back to France, establish their domicile there and take the civic oath.'

Article 4 of the June 26, 1889 Nationality Law stated that: 'Descendants of families proscribed by the revocation of the Edict of Nantes will continue to benefit from the benefit of the December 15, 1790 Law, but on the condition that a nominal decree should be issued for every petitioner. That decree will only produce its effects for the future.'

Foreign descendants of Huguenots lost the automatic right to French citizenship in 1945 (by force of the ordonnance du 19 octobre 1945, revoking the 1889 Nationality Law).

See Huguenot#End of persecution and restoration of French Citizenship.


[edit] Germany
German law allows persons of German descent living in Eastern Europe (so-called Aussiedler, see Volga Germans) to move to Germany and be granted German citizenship. As with many legal implementations of the Right of return, the "return" to Germany of individuals who may never have lived in Germany based on their ethnic origin has been the object of controversy. The law is codified in Article 116 of the Basic Law for the Federal Republic of Germany, which provides access to German citizenship for anyone "who has been admitted to the territory of the German Reich within the boundaries of December 31, 1937 as a refugee or expellee of German ethnic origin or as the spouse or descendant of such person".[11]

The historic context for Article 116 was the eviction, following World War II, of an estimated 9 million ethnic Germans from other countries in Central and Eastern Europe. Another 9 million Germans from former eastern German provinces, over which Stalin and eastern neighbour states extended military hegemony in 1945, were expelled as well. These expellees and refugees (known as Heimatvertriebene) were given refugee status and documents and resettled by Germany; discussion of possible compensation is ongoing. Some German expellees desire to resettle in their territories of birth, youth and early life, but legal procedures often make remigration difficult, even after Poland and the Czech Republic joined the European Union.

In contrast to Aussiedler, persons of German descent living in North America, South America etc. do not have an automatic Right of return and must actually prove their eligibility for German citizenship according to the clauses pertaining to the German nationality law.


[edit] Greece
"Foreign persons of Greek origin", who neither live in Greece nor hold Greek citizenship nor were necessarily born there, may become Greek citizens by enlisting in Greece's military forces, under article 4 of the Code of Greek Citizenship, as amended by the Acqusition of Greek Nationality by Aliens of Greek Origin Law (Law 2130/1993). Anyone wishing to do so must present a number of documents, including "[a]vailable written records ... proving the Greek origin of the interested person and his ancestors."


[edit] India
A Person of Indian Origin (PIO) is a person living outside of India and without Indian citizenship, but of Indian origin up to four generations removed. It is available to persons of Indian origin anywhere in the world as long as they have never been citizens of Pakistan or of Bangladesh. This unusual type of citizenship by descent is an intermediate form of citizenship in that it does not grant the full portfolio of rights enjoyed by Indian citizens.

The Citizenship (Amendment) Act 2003 and Citizenship (Amendment) Ordinance 2005 make provision for an even newer form of Indian nationality, the holders of which are to be known as Overseas Citizens of India (OCI). Overseas citizenship is not substantially different than PIO rights.

Holding either PIO or OCI status does, however, facilitate access to full Indian citizenship. An OCI who has been registered for five years, for instance, need be resident for only one year in India before becoming a full citizen.


[edit] Ireland
Irish nationality law provides for Irish citizenship to be acquired on the basis of at least one Irish grandparent. If a person outside of Ireland who is entitled to claim Irish citizenship elects not to, that person may nonetheless pass that right on to her or his own children, even if the basis for the entitlement being passed on is a single Irish grandparent. To do so, that person must register her or his birth in Ireland's Foreign Births Register.

Separately from this right, the Irish minister charged with immigration may dispense with conditions of naturalisation to grant citizenship to an applicant who "is of Irish descent or Irish associations", under article 15 of the Irish Nationality and Citizenship Act, 1986.

Japan
A special visa category exists exclusively for foreign descendants of Japanese emigrates (Nikkeijin) up to the third generation, which provides for long-term residence, unrestricted by occupation, but most Nikkeijin cannot acquire Japanese citizenship.


[edit] Lithuania
From the Constitution of Lithuania, Article 32(4): "Every Lithuanian person may settle in Lithuania."[15]


[edit] Norway
The Kola Norwegians were Norwegians who settled along the coastline of the Russian Kola Peninsula from approximately 1850 to the closure of the border in the 1920's. It is estimated that around 1000 Norwegians lived on the Kola peninsula in 1917. The Kola Norwegians were deported to or put in camps in other parts of Russia during the course of World War II.

It was only after 1990 that many of the Kola Norwegians again dared to emphasise their background. Only a few had been able to maintain a rusty knowledge of Norwegian. Some of them have migrated back to Norway. There are special provisions in the Norwegian rules of immigration and citizenship which eases this proces for many Kola Norwegians. These provisions are in general stricter then in some other countries giving "Right of return". In order to obtain a permit to immigrate and work in Norway a Kola Norwegian will have to prove an adequate connection to Norway such as having at least two grand parents from Norway.[1] Citizenship will then be awarded according to regular rules.[2] As of 2004 approximately 200 Kola Norwegians had moved back to Norway.[3]


[edit] Poland
From the Constitution of Poland, Article 52(5): "Anyone whose Polish origin has been confirmed in accordance with statute may settle permanently in Poland."[16]


[edit] Serbia
Article 23 of the 2004 citizenship law provides that the descendants of emigrants from Serbia, or ethnic Serbs residing abroad, may take up citizenship upon written declaration.


[edit] Spain
Upon the rediscovery of Sephardi Jews during the campaigns of General Juan Prim in Northern Africa, the Spanish governments have taken friendly measures towards the descendants of Jews expelled from Spain in 1492. The motivation for these measures were a desire to repair a perceived injustice, the need of a collaborative base of natives in Spanish Morocco and an attempt to attract the sympathy of wealthy European Sephardis like the Pereiras of France. The Edict of Expulsion was revoked. The Spanish diplomacy exercised protection over Sephardis of the Ottoman Empire and the independent Balkanic states succeeding it. The government of Miguel Primo de Rivera decreed in 1924 that every Sephardi could claim Spanish citizenship. This right was used by some refugees during the Second World War, including the Hungarian Jews saved by Ángel Sanz Briz and Giorgio Perlasca. This decree was again put to use to receive some Jews from Sarajevo during the Bosnian War.

Emigrants of Spanish origins (mainly exiles of the Spanish Civil War) and their children are eligible of recovering Spanish nationality without the requirement of residing in Spain, they also have the right of maintaining any current nationality they posses.

Children of original Spaniards that were born within the Spanish territory can apply for Spanish citizenship without age or time restrictions or residence requirements. They have to renounce any foreign nationality they posses except if these nationality is of an Ibero-American country, Portugal, Andorra, Philippines or Equatorial Guinea.

Children and Grandchildren of original Spaniards born outside of Spanish territory (the children of a person that had Spanish citizenship at the moment of their birth) can also access Spanish nationality on softer terms than other foreigners: They require just 1 year of legal residence, and they are exempted of work restrictions. Currently there is a reform process underway that when passed will allow the children of original Spaniards to be able to apply for Spanish citizenship on the same terms as those that had their parents born in Spain; grandchildren are not covered in the current draft.

Ibero-Americans and nationals of other countries closely related to Spain (Portugal, Andorra, Philippines, and Equatorial Guinea) also have a Right of Return: They can apply to Spanish nationality after 2 years of Legal residence and they have the right to keep their birth nationality[4]. .


[edit] Taiwan
Taiwan's immigration law gives priority to returning overseas Taiwanese, Taiwanese who were living abroad, and encourages their return.


[edit] Other
A non-exhaustive list of other countries believed to have similar laws is South Korea, Hungary and Slovakia. Similarly, the Liberian constitution (currently defunct and being rewritten) allows only people "of Negro descent" (regardless of ethno-national affiliation) to become citizens. As with other laws enacting rights of return, many of the laws in these countries appear to reflect a desire by governments to guarantee a safe haven to diaspora populations, particularly those assumed to be living under precarious conditions.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Right_of_return

[Vicomte13]

Remember that you are criticizing the French for their stance. France doesn't have a law of return, and hasn't since Israel existed.

An French JEW doesn't have to surrender his US citizenship when he becomes an Israeli, but a French Gentile?

[colorado tanker]

So, the French have decided to re-fight the Battle of Tours and let the Muslims win?

[steveyp]

Belly girl, please.

[dervish]

"Remember that you are criticizing the French for their stance. France doesn't have a law of return, and hasn't since Israel existed."

I am criticizing any country/org/person who selects Israel as worse and more worthy of criticism when in fact they are more worthy of praise. Israel is often, as you did here, criticized for policies/laws that are vastly better than their neighbors, and in fact better or the same as France's neighbors or France itself.

Here is your vaunted French citizenship law:

"French nationality law is historically based on the principle of jus soli, according to Ernest Renan's definition, opposed to the German's definition of nationality formalized by Fichte. However, elements of jus sanguinis have been included in the French code, especially during the 1992 reform, which forced children born in France of foreign parents to request French nationality at adulthood, instead of being automatically accorded it (no conditions are required to acquire it, but it forces children of foreigners to go through a bureaucratic process, while children of French citizens - whether immigrants or not - cut through all the red tape). As in most other countries, but differing from the US, children born in France to tourists or short term visitors do not acquire French citizenship by virtue of birth in France: residency must be proven. As immigration became more and more of a political theme in the 1980s, albeit a lower immigration rate (see Demographics in France), both left- and right-wing governments have issued several laws restricting more and more the possibilities of being naturalized."

"Birth in France
The principle is that Birth in France does not automatically confer nationality."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/French_nationality_law


"An French JEW doesn't have to surrender his US citizenship when he becomes an Israeli, but a French Gentile?"

Huh? So now we are talking about a French Jew with US citizenship now seeking to become an Israeli citizen???

Did you mean surrender French citizenship? Links please. I dislike arguing with myself. Wikipedia which is not pro-Israel, concedes that repatriation laws which are common are only controversial if the country is Israel.

The fact that we are having this discussion and not discussing why no Jews can become citizens of most Arab countries, period no exceptions, speaks volumes to your pre-existing bias. Get out more. Read more that is not printed in the Euro press.

[Vicomte13]

The issue with Israel is that there is a term of citizenship based on RELIGION. Not who one's parents were (lex sanguinis) or where one was born (lex solis). Those things are entirely appropriate in a secular state.

Differentials in the law based on what one's religion is are offensive. Israel has distinctly pro-Jewish laws. It is founded to be a Jewish state, not just ethnically Jewish, but religiously Jewish, and the religious component of Judaism determines aspects of one's juridical treatment by Israel.

This is offensive.

Of course, Greece had similar laws until recently, and may still if they have not been changed. The Greek law is offensive as well, and EU pressure should be gradually brought to bear on these holdover religious artifacts in law. Thus would say the French.

Israel's laws are vastly better than France's?
That is a joke?

[Vicomte13]

"The fact that we are having this discussion and not discussing why no Jews can become citizens of most Arab countries, period no exceptions, speaks volumes to your pre-existing bias."

The answer to this statement is simply that Arab lands have oppressive governments, for the most part, and the Arab world has taken up this cause of eliminating Israel, and so targets Jews specifically for harsh treatment and discrimination. Also, a good deal of Islamist fanaticism has been built up by playing off of Arab obsessions with the Israeli problem. Israel has become a "boogey man" used to provoke a lot of irrational and self-destructive behavior on the part of the whole Middle Eastern world.

It's all quite tragic, but then, so is the Taiwan and North Korea situation, and Darfur is more tragic than any of these. And all four of those flashpoints: Israel, Taiwan, North Korea and Darfur, are outside of the main French spheres of interest. If Taiwan falls to China, that will be sad for democracy on Taiwan, but France doesn't have anything to do with it. Ditto for the Korean issue. And, for the most part, ditto for Israel. From the French perspective, the main issue with Israel is that the perennial problems between Israel and the Arabs cause problems for the French relations with the Arabs.

But really not a very great problem, so this is just another one of those diplomatic fever points to be managed, but that's about it.

I understand that you are focused upon and fascinated by Israel. Many Americans are. Very few French are. The Arab-Israeli wars are viewed as more of a nuisance than anything else.

[Atlantic Bridge]

The French, as a culture with a long tradition of secularism, do not like the very idea of a confessional religious state which has de facto degrees of citizenship based on religious belief. They especially don't like it in a NEW state, founded since World War II. Ancient states with deeply entrenched systems and bigotries are one thing, but to start a new state from scratch, and build it on religious lines: the French oppose this as fundamentally wrong. There is much more, but that is one of key root problems. In the French view of a world, an explicitly religious, discriminatory state should never have been built in the 20th Century.

Agreed, but it is also the ongoing negative economic and political impact for Europe that has its origin in the existance of Israel. There is a reason why most Europeans see Israel among the most dangerous nations in public-opinion polls. The jewish nation is a annoyance to many French politicians, since it simply complicates the European-Arab relationship. We Europeans have no benefit from that. Germans accept this fact since they see the historical dept they owe the Jews, Frenchmen do not. Maybe you remember the French ambassador who called Israel this "shitty little country". That hits the point from the French view.

BTW - not only the French oppose Israels judaistic basement as totally wrong. I remember Scandinavic and other European politicians comparing the fact, that even today all Israelis have to be married by a rabbi (a practice which makes marriages between Israelis and Arabs de facto impossible), with the German Blutschutzgesetz (law to safe the German blood) of 1935. A comparison that is not that wrong if we look at the practical effect although such a statement is of course politically incorrect. Israelis who want to marry Arabs have no choice but to head abroad. Many end up flying to nearby Cyprus.

Nevertheless I think it is idiotic that Israel still splits the west into two different "camps". Israel critics like France and the Benelux on one side and more pro-Israel nations like the US and Germany on the other. The Brits are somewhere in between. Nobody has a benefit from a west en désaccord. Therefore it would be helpful if France could give up its fundamental opposition concerning Israel. We might not like everything about this nation, but on the other hand it is the only real democracy in the middle east. Everything else there is autocratic, theocratic or pseudo-democratic BS. This should be reason enough to give them some support.