Chirac: Israeli prime minister not welcome in Paris

[Negative]

Road > It's not just a few Jewish lobbiest. The Jewish lobby, as Americans should know, is one of the most powerfull ones in the world. In Belgium for example, the entire diamond-industry (the biggest in the world) is run by Jews. That's not something you can ignore.
I don't know if the government incorporated the "no nazism"-law as a gesture towards this community, or if it was pushed by the lobby... The Jewish lobby is the only one though that is strong enough to make the government make changes to free speech-laws.
There are no other free speech-laws (there's no law against anti-muslimism, anti-black-ism,... except for fair employment-laws and the likes), and that tells me that the Jewish lobby is involved... might be wrong, though.

[djscribble]

it is not only the fact that the Jew's own such powerful businesses, but it is also that the US supports them, so it is not only the french, but the big stick that the US has (and just loves to use)

Personally, i am against the french (no offence intended to anyone). They seem like hippocrites (that and i hate chirac with a passion idk why)

[RoadClosed]

Perhaps the law is there for a humble reason, supression of possible future desires or repression of a past; urged to be forgotton.

[Tiger Shark]

France, like many European countries, is making a lot of efforts to make the Jews feel "at home".

That, of course, has nothing to do with the fact that their immigration policy has utterly flooded them with muslim immigrants from North Africa...... To the point they are tring to legislate against religious dress/images/icons......

[Negative]

If you know that 99% of all anti-Semitic attacks in France are committed by North-Africans, you can't blame them... the difference though is that North Africa doesn't have a strong lobby, although 10% of Frenchmen are Muslim, versus only 1% Jew.

[Tedob1]

French President Jacques Chirac has let it be known that Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon is not welcome as a guest in Paris. Mazel tov! Can you actually imagine Chirac putting out a genuine welcome mat for the Israeli leader who has shown that all of France's interventions in the area have brought nothing good: more of terror, more of Arafat, worst of all, more of Palestinian suffering, all to succor the illusion of French influence in the region. But this latest donnybrook between the two leaders focused not on the dispute with the Palestinians but about anti-Semitism in France itself. Chirac has for years been denying that the ugly phenomenon even exists. Finally, when day after day, evidence mounted that the country has not expelled the virus of Jew-hatred from the body-politic and that it is now becoming more malignant, even Chirac himself has had to sound the tocsin. And Sharon sounded it, as well, when this week he called on French Jews to make aliyah or "go up" to Israel. (Would that some Israeli leader had a quarter century ago called on the Jews of Argentina to immigrate.) This really got Chirac's goat. But not before he demonstrated in an off-hand remark that, for him, neither Jews nor Muslims, for that matter, are really genuinely French: "we are witnessing racial events involving our Jewish and Muslim compatriots. ... Sometimes just simple Frenchmen are attacked." This is an ugly dichotomy. But it is not new. After the terrorist bombing of the rue Copernic synagogue on October 3, 1980, Raymond Barre, the French prime minister, alluded to this "odious act which intended to strike Jews [and] struck innocent Frenchmen." Of course, Chirac and Barre are from the center-right and right where anti-Semitism has always nested. But such views are now a staple of the oh, so enlightened left, as well. French hatred of Jews now goes wall-to-wall. And French hatred of Israel, too. A few days ago, France went into a frenzy to mobilize the countries of the European Union at the UN to vote "yes" on the General Assembly resolution calling on Israel to take down the security barrier it is building against Palestinian terror. Many fatuous reasons were mustered to support this demand. But the real reason that France and some others oppose the fence is that it works.

http://www.tnr.com/doc.mhtml?i=express&s=peretz072104

[hypronix]

Palestinian terror? Who invaded who?

In a survey that ran through Europe Israel was identified as the biggest international security problem. Not only France is involved, but I guess there's a hype about them since they did not want to support the US interventions.

But it's all about the strength of the Jewish lobby groups. That's why, no matter how far right the US gets [unless the ANP takes over or something], it is unlikely that the Jews will be persecuted. They control too much of the wealth of the States to be so easily ignored.

[darkes]

What survey did you have in mind?

In case you don't realise it, France is extremely unpopular in the expanded EU, together with countries like the UK, because it always opposes the US, regardless of the merits of each case. As far as France is concerned the EU is their new empire, and everyone else must bow to French demands, otherwise they are 'anti-European'.

Fortunately, now that the EU has expanded, France together with Germany have lost their majority, and we can hopefully expect to see the EU taking a more sensible, and a less partisan line. And yes, that means we need to tell France to STFU.

This doesn't mean I agree with the US view, but the French position is absurd, as they do not represent the view of the EU, despite the fact they claim to do so.

[hypronix]

No I agree that France might have come across as trying to be the spokesperson for the EU when they don't have the right to do so. But that is something that must be regulated within the EU.

On the other hand each country is free to have whatever internal/external policy it desires. There are always consequences no matter the choice, so France is taking a chance by being a bit more anti-Semitic than other countries are [outspokenly].

As for the survey... the link is somewhere in Cosmos, that's where I read about it. The original survey link is in that thread too.

[jinxy]

Nihil Actually if i remeber rightly the argies used mainly Skyhawk fighter bombers armed with Exocet missiles

Actualy super Etandards carried the exocet. There was also land launched exocet. Skyhawks dropped bombs not launch missiles.