Ashkenazi. Lior Ashkenazi.

Just got back from seeing the latest Bond installment. From the get-go, all I could think was that Lior Ashkenazi is James Bond. It's that simple. Israelis--and I say this with all due respect--make much better tough-guy, macho, cold-as-ice good-guys than do the Brits. And Ashkenazi looks quite a bit like Daniel Craig, only not so scary-muscular and, thank god, not blond. A blond Bond, why? But beyond that, Ashkenazi's fight scene in "Walk on Water" is enough to qualify him as not just Bond, but the ultimate Bond, even if, as Alex pointed out, an Israeli Bond would be a bit confusing for an audience who found an Australian Bond a bit too non-British. I'm far from being in the movie business, but if I were, I'd see about making Ashkenazi the next Bond, but as it is, will have to settle for hoping some new Israeli movie comes out soon, as there seem to be about five Israeli actors, so there's a good chance he'd be in it...

Although I'm not in the movie business, I am not entirely business-free. Seeing as I make it my business to figure out all things French-Jewish, I now take a break from official research into such matters to ask a tangentially related question of the WWPD audience, should one still exist: Would French affirmative action end up benefitting the French Jewish population? Not in the sense of gaining from a more fair and diverse society, but in the sense of actually receiving a bit of positive discrimination. In America, much is made--reasonably, most of the time-- of the fact that Jews were quite thoroughly discriminated against by schools and universities, and yet today are considered an overrepresented minority and thus not among affirmative action's direct beneficiaries. However, the few who happen to be both Jewish and something underrepresented count. And so I'd imagine, in France, where so many Jews are North African, and where North African descent is presumably what French affirmative action might concern itself with, for both historical and contemporary reasons... Yeah, so anyone with thoughts on this, comment away.