The New York Times, on France's coexistence with Bush, round two:
The French are also convinced that the only way for what [French foreign minister] Mr. Barnier calls "a new relationship" with Washington to begin is if the Bush administration understands the urgency of making peace between Israel and the Palestinians. For France, with its large Arab, Muslim and Jewish populations, the Israeli-Palestinian crisis is not a far-away conflict but one that has struck the heart of Europe and is fought on a daily basis in its streets. Throughout France's diplomatic crisis with the United States over Iraq, Mr. Chirac and other French officials expressed the view that for France, the Palestinian crisis was much more important than the overthrow of Saddam Hussein. Terrorist groups are moving throughout Europe and elsewhere, and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is one of the essential origins of terrorism in the world, one of the participants in the meeting with the senators paraphrased Mr. Chirac as saying. Mr. Chirac was said to have added that when militants are asked about their motivation, "they always come back to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict as one of the main drivers."
Argh. But what if these "militants" (terrorists, no?) in France are, as Bernard Henri-Levy argued in December, wrong in seeing the Israeli-Palestinian conflict as at all relevant to their lives? What if they're bought certain anti-Semitic and anti-Israeli myths, and have mistakenly convinced themselves that anything upsetting they encounter (say, racism coming from the predominantly Catholic French population) is the fault of the Jews and of Zionism? Must French, and even U.S., foreign policy be determined by what some terrorists in France think is the most important thing in the world? The ongoing violence in Israel is tragic, and the international community may at times have to intervene, but the conflict's overblown importance in the minds of non-Palestinian Islamic terrorists (and also in the minds of the French non-Muslim keffiyeh-sporting left) should not be taken as a call to Europe and America to drop everything and focus on Israel.
Monday, February 07, 2005
Militants' motivation
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2 comments:
My sense is that the French are especially conflicted by the Palestinian-Israeli conflict because they perceive it as a choice between anti-Semitism and anti-Islamism, both of which have a particularly ugly history in the country. The conflict is most acute in the French Left, which sees itself (not without cause) as the heir of the Dreyfussards and also as the champion of les damnés de la terre. The latter allegiance is reinforced by the positions of the Left and Right during the Algerian war.
In all, I think that the mere presence of a large Muslim population which, with or without reason, identifies with the Palestinian independence movement triggers a reaction in l'Hexagone that has more to do with France's historical scars than with actual internal pressures exerted by the French Muslim population.
That all sounds perfectly reasonable. I guess what I'm not seeing, though, is why the U.S. would go along with France's desire to put the Israeli-Palestinian conflict first.
Also, it cannot just be accepted as normal that the conflict should be playing itself out in the streets of French suburbs and towns--French Jews are not Israelis, nor are French Muslims Palestinians, there's no fight over territory in France...basically, France should be more concerned with the conflict within its own country than with trying to fix what it sees as a root conflict in the Middle East. The French left isn't helping matters by seeing Israel's actions (or existence) as a legitimate reason for French Jews, who have, of course, been around for a while, and who were historically fiercely opposed to Zionism, to be treated as representatives of a country other than their own.
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