EuroPundits points to this interesting interview with French philosopher Alain Finkelkraut in Le Figaro.
Finkelkraut is right that the far left and the far right in France are starting to become more and more anti-Semitic as they become more and more anti-Israel until the lines between the two are beginning to blend. Both the far-left Greens in France and the far-right Front National have both seized on condemnations of Israel that have quickly become justifications for genocide.
What is especially interesting about Finkelkraut is that he’s no sycophant to the United States. He speaks against the US’ Cold War policy in very clear and vociferous terms, but he also realizes that the ideologies of the left have begun to embrace the oldest hatred.
He sees continental anti-Semitism (and certainly France isn’t the only country guilty of fostering anti-Semitism) as being an outgrowth of anti-Zionism. The logic is this: that as one becomes more vehement in one’s criticism of Zionism the rhetoric has become little more than justification for those who kill innocent Israelis in inhuman attacks.
Indeed conversations about Israel always center around Israel’s supposed and real sins, as if Israel’s actions exist in a vacuum and are not in response to terror.
Nothing Israel does justifies the murder of innocent Israeli schoolchildren, any more than France’s colonial past would justify Africans murdering French citizens. Yet the continental left seems to reserve all their criticism for Isreal and cannot seem to condemn the actions of groups like Hamas and Hizb’Allah that openly advocate the complete destruction of the Jewish people in Israel and elsewhere.
In the end, such a position is one that justifies anti-Semitism. If one cannot condemn genocide and the deliberate targeting of innocent civilians by Hamas, then one is providing a tacit justification for such barbarous acts. While Israel’s policy is certainly ripe for criticism, there is no policy that any government can make that justifies the deliberate and cold-blooded murder of hundreds of innocent civilians. Once one provides such a justification, they invite those who disagree with them to use the same methods.
occupation armies are meant to be sliced up by the population they are invading. This justification alone is sufficient to be desesperate(not cold-blooded).
What do you expect people in palestine to do?:eat dust and feel happy about it?
Jay,
Your selective attention to what you designate as “French antisemitism” would be just disappointing if it weren’t also adding insult to unfairness & inaccuracy. Moreover you’re just a tiny -& very late- element of the whole brainwashing machine that’s producing Francophobia, a convenient mind manipulation intended to conceal US failures (no casus belli, repeated lies, killing of innocents, UN-law violation, oil stealing, infrastructure mismanagement or lack of management, astronomical incompetence in managing peace & State-rebuilding, staggering loss of credibility, economical problems, failure to fight terrorism, extraodinary ability to fight oldest allies & smile to terrorist States like Saudi Arabia, Pakistan etc).
There’s a parallel between your desperate attempt to depict France as a mean backstabber because she designed a new World order that suits more nations rather than only the USA on the 1st hand, and your vicious, hate-salivating, revolting collaboration to witch-hunt against France out of forged moral reasons (antisemitism) on the other hand.
France gave Jews full French nationality in 1791, well before any other western country. She also gave full citizenship to any Jews living under Napoleon rule. French Jewish community is the 2nd largest in the World (Israel excluded): ~ 650.000 French people of Jewish religion/background (not to mention foreigners). French Jewish community is also one of the oldest in the World: more than 2.000 yo. France’s Jewish community is also very complex & not monolithic. All Jewish diaspora may be found in France. French people of Jewish background are to be found in all scopes of public matters: presidents, ministers, ambassadors, high-profile civil servants, army generals, writers, musicians, top businessmen, scientists, and of course theology or Talmud-studies which are renown in the whole World.
Jay: come to France! You won’t be able to spot a French citizen from another, irrespective of their creed or traditonal background. Real France isn’t the country you’re developping in your worst nightmares. If you want to do France harm, try something more elaborate. Otherwise you’re bound to fail. Just like your army in Iraq.
So that justifies murdering schoolchildren? How about emergency room doctors? How about people who had nothing to do with the occupation?
It’s just as I said, you can’t claim to not be anti-Semitic if you argue that it’s okay to kill the Jews.
It’s called non-violent resistance, which would have given them a state and complete political autonomy long ago.
You say ‘Finkelkraut is right that the far left and the far right in France are starting to become more and more anti-Semitic as they become more and more anti-Israel until the lines between the two are beginning to blend…’
You didn’t read this article, do you? This is not what Finkelkraut is saying. He opposes the old rightist anti-semitism that was racist -and that is no longer a real threat in France- to a new far-leftist anti-sionism that is based on anti-racism and that is not immediately perceived as condemnable, yet is more pernicious as it leads to a new anti-semitism, which I think is highly debatable.
You should refrain from quoting Finkelkraut, who would never endorse your biased site one second.
So, Hamas is going to hell for blowing up some schoolchildren, but the Israeli’s get carte blanche to use Palestinian children as human shields? How is that not anti-Muslim? It’s not anti-Semitism to point out that Israel isn’t exactly smelling like a rose from their side of the conflict. After all they’ve killed more than twice the number of children that Hamas has.