Because you came here for francophilic Zionism...

WWPD reader and fellow French major Lauren pointed me to this story (well, a site linking to that story) about Le Monde's conflation of "the Jews" and "some Israelis." I guess those of the "the Jews are a nation" school of thought would not consider Le Monde to be racist and would not consider their choice of wording to be an example of conflating two separate ideas. The problem is, the French mainstream take on these things is--and has been since the emancipation of French Jews, albeit with certain notable gaps in the early-mid 20th century--that the Jews are a religion and not a nation. You know how people always say communism is great in theory but terrible in practice? ("People" does not include me, but that's for another time.) Well, the French take on Judaism is great in theory but somewhat lacking in practice. If France were a truly secular and label-and-hyphen-free nation, in which all are Frenchman regardless of religion or ethnicity, then hurray for secular France. But France's version of liberalism only works if the French Jews get to be French, because it's common knowledge that Israel would be happy to have them but they nevertheless choose to remain French, and, in theory, France happily permits them to stay so.