Israel Matzav

BAKED ON THE PREMISES: ALLEZ LES BLEUS

Defense Minister Michèle Alliot Marie, interviewed on Radio J today, said the Bleus are a reflection of French society. I didn’t know she read Eurabia! Les Bleus are black and beur, with a few token whites. I’m not suggesting the team was composed according to what the French call “positive discrimination,” no, if they followed those rules I might be goalie. No, the team is just made up of good players. MAM, as she’s called, was asked what France is doing to liberate the Franco-Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit, kidnapped two weeks ago and held hostage in Gaza. Note that Gilad is Franco-Israeli on the Jewish radio station. He is just plain Israeli in the mainstream media.

The charming Defense Minister let it be understood that French diplomacy was essentially encouraging Egyptian diplomacy to encourage Hamas to release the soldier while encouraging the Israelis to eventually release a thousand or five thousand Palestinian prisoners. The diplomacy is all in the “eventually.” Because everyone knows that Israel won’t bargain with Hamas today. So French diplomacy is exceedingly discreet, that’s why no one here in France knows it’s doing anything. On a more general level, French diplomacy has, according to MAM, asked the Palestinians to unconditionally liberate Gilad Shalit and stop “sending” rockets to Israeli towns. Yes, that’s the word she used, “sending.” And don’t forget, she’s Defense Minister, she has the whole military vocabulary under her hat. And, simultaneously, France has asked Israel to end the Gaza incursion and liberate the Hamas leaders they captured. Asked in which order these things should be done she replied that whoever could should begin. Can you guess who could? Who always can? Because you’re older and you know better, so even if your little brother stabbed you in the back, you should give him back his knife and stop quarreling.

MAM went on to explain that everybody on both sides, Israel-Palestine, wants peace and the good life. Everything should be done to calm the tensions. And of course get back on the negotiating path. Utter nonsense. But did anyone tell you that the Defense Minister has a beautiful soft elegant voice? She speaks French at its best. It is a pleasure to listen to her. She articulates clearly but without artifice. Her discourse is free of all tics and mannerisms. It is clear as a mountain stream and elegant as porcelain. And, by contrast, the Ségolène Royal that everyone loves to adore has a harsh voice that breaks and tatters. Every second word is dipped in humanism, socialism, caring for the downtrodden, but her voice is sharp and shallow. She looks young and graceful, she is a model mother, but her voice closely resembles the querulous spinsterly tones of that old far-left battlehorse Arlette Laguillier. Ségolène has taken a back seat to Les Bleus these days. Her paramour François Hollande is campaigning for the French Beur vote with a two-day a visit to Algerian president Bouteflika, who recently declared that the French colonization of Algeria was the most brutal in human history, You’ve got to understand, he wasn’t around for the jihad conquest.

The French can’t worry about a kidnapped Israeli soldier (they say he was captured) and nobody really has time to linger over the Palestinian victims of the Israeli incursion. The usual remonstrations are pronounced, but it stops there. The pro-Palestinians can’t get it up at the UN this time. Only the audience of the Méditerranée FM talk show are still devoted to the cause. Host Tawfik Mathlouti outdoes his callers in spewing fire at the Zionist entity, that brutal, criminal, colonial, oppressive, genocidal, army guilty of every war crime in the book. Their logic is worth examining. Palestinians have the right to elect a Hamas government, Hamas has the right to fight to exterminate the Zionist entity, smash it with rockets, kidnap its soldiers, call for UN protection and international condemnation of the Zionist enemy. Israel might eventually have the right to toss a few rockets at Gaza and kidnap one soldier. But that’s all. Otherwise it’s not a fair fight. And that’s why if only Hamas had the military might it deserves, it would massacre every inch of the Zionist entity.

Pro-Palestinian mobilization is at an all-time low in France and the Jewish community is standing up for itself with exceptional determination and unity. Everyone from the Chief Rabbi Joseph Haim Sitruk to the Jewish Defense League will be supporting the rally Monday night at the Bataclan organized by the Union des Patrons et Professionnels Juifs de France and LIBBY. They expect thousands inside and thousands in the street to express our utter exasperation with the way the media are covering events in Gaza. I won’t be able to attend but I’ll post a note on how it went.

posted by Carl in Jerusalem @ 12:53 AM