Sunday, August 14, 2005

Old Dreyfus, new weirdness

Not sure, not sure at all, what to make of this parody of attempts at improving Franco-Israeli relations. An excerpt:

Gerard [Depardieu]: Tell me Monsieur Dudu, you have heard of ze famous Tomb of Napoleon in Les Invalides? No more! We have kicked Bonaparte's body out, and now, in honor of ze Jews, it is the Tomb of Dreyfus!

Bracha [an Israeli woman]: The actor? I didn't know he was dead.

Gerard: Non monsieur, not ze actor, zis is Alfred Dreyfus, ze famous French traito , er, war hero. But zat iz not all....


But it gets weirder:

Gerard: Monsieur Dudu, do not be so stupide az to believe ze Americain propaganda. But no matter; We French have already given zo much to your little country; ze Dimona reactor, Shmuel Flatto-Sharon, ze falafel

Bracha: The falafel? I thought we got that from the Arabs.

Gerard: Oh Madame Bracha, pardonnez moi, but it waz ze French colonists who brought ze falafel first to Algeria, and from there it spread across ze Levant. Every French schoolchild knows zis food was invented by a Paris patisserie chef, Pierre Falafel, who ran out of flour one day and used ze chickpea to make les bonbons.


Oh dear. If an equivalent dialogue, complete with faux-Israeli-accented French, ever appeared in a major French paper, you can be sure the backlash would be considerable. I didn't realize francophobia was such a thing. All the references to French women sleeping around and French men being weak, but why? If a French paper called Israeli women overbearing and Israeli men sleazebags, that would count as anti-Semitism, so what's supposed to make this any different? I don't know if France has the best of intentions in improving relations with Israeli, but it beats the alternative. If I were Chirac reading this, though, I might reconsider.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Not to mention that France did its best to take Flatto-Sharon back.