Israel Matzav

French behavior nothing new, Sarkozy sends another letter to Netanyahu

The behavior of French President Nicolas Sarkozy should surprise no one who has looked at French history, writes Giulio Meotti. The French have a long history of antipathy to Jews and to Israel.

Just consider what French President Nicholas Sarkozy did to Israel in the past month. After Paris endorsed the Palestinian membership at UNESCO, President Sarkozy said that the idea of a Jewish state is “silly,” and later branded Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu “a liar” in a conversation with US President Barack Obama.

A few weeks earlier, Sarkozy ordered that school textbooks avoid the use of the word “Shoah” to describe the Holocaust, preferring the term “anéantissement”, a word that merely means annihilation.

Those familiar with Paris’ hostile attitude to Israel and the Jewish people in times of crisis are not surprised. It was just seven decades ago that France’s collaborationist Vichy regime, headed by Marshal Petain, enthusiastically took part in rounding up French Jews and turning them over to the Nazis. Some 110,000 French Jews were murdered in the gas chambers, a number that would have been far lower had it not been for the shameful manner in which the French cooperated with Hitler’s Final Solution.

In the 1967 Six-Day War, when Israel’s life was threatened, France’s President Charles de Gaulle took a pro-Arab policy and instituted a weapons embargo on the Middle East. He also characterized the Jewish people “an elitist and domineering people.” This marked the first time since World War II that a head of state had directed an anti-Semitic remark at Israel and the Jewish people.

Read the whole thing.

Israel Radio just reported (10:00 pm) that French President Sarkozy has sent another letter to Prime Minister Netanyahu.

French President Nicolas Sarkozy pledged his friendship to Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu in a condolence letter on the loss of his father-in-law Shmuel Ben-Artzi, who died last week at age 97.

The letter comes one week after Sarkozy was overheard calling Netanyahu a "liar" in a conversation with US President Barack Obama.

Obama also sent Netanyahu condolence letter.

I don't know what Obama wrote, but Israel Radio reports that Sarkozy now denies the remarks attributed to him about Netanyahu. And of course, he still has not apologized for making those remarks, despite the fact that several journalists (still waiting for them to come forward) heard them.

Labels: Binyamin Netanyahu, French anti-Semitism, Nicolas Sarkozy

posted by Carl in Jerusalem @ 9:41 PM