Israel Matzav

Sarkozy: From the frying pan into the fire?

It's only been one post since I wrote about French President Nicolas Sarkozy professing his love for Israel. But that love is as fake as everything else about Sarkozy. Just three days after the oral arguments in Zivotofsky v. Clinton, it turns out that the French government has issued a passport to a dual French-Israeli citizen who was born in Israel that says he lives in "Maaleh Adumim, Occupied Palestinian Territory."

Eddy, who was born in Israel to French immigrants, applied for a French passport intending to go study there. He completed the paperwork and was issued a temporary travel document. On his way home from the consulate in Jerusalem, he noticed something strange.

"It had all my details, my identification number, my address – Ma'ale Adumim – but the State of Israel was omitted," Eddy told Ynet.

"It's infuriating," he added. "I wanted to go back there and tell them I don't need their passport. I knew that the French were anti-Semitic, and I wouldn't have been surprised if they wrote 'Ma'ale Adumim, Palestine,' but they chose the harsh wording of 'Occupied Palestine.'"

Ynet has learned that Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman intends to send the French government a harsh letter of protest, demanding it to remove the label.

Good luck with that. There are good reasons why Jews have been fleeing France in droves. And with all the best intentions in the world, Lieberman will not succeed in changing the heirs of Vichy.

The settlement's mayor, Boris Grossman, was just as exasperated.

"The territory was not seized from Palestine because there is no such entity," he said. "This is an Israeli and Jewish city whose origins are mentioned in the bible and its land does not belong to Arabs. It's a pity to see a nation that calls itself a friend of Israel supporting the Palestinians and the rhetoric that that harms any chance of a peace process."

MK Lia Shemtov (Yisrael Beiteinu) said the label used an "unfortunate" choice of words.

"Ma'ale Adumim is an inseparable part of the State of Israel," she said.

Shemtov noted that she has received reports of the same wording printed on documents issued to residents of east Jerusalem neighborhoods beyond the Green Line, and called on the French government to strike the statement from all official paperwork.

If all the 'Palestinians' got up and left tomorrow morning, France would find another excuse to label as much of Israel as possible as not being ours. But why does YNet have to refer to a city with a population of more than 39,000 people as a 'settlement'? Yes, Israel's Leftist media hates Jews who live across the 'green line' nearly as much as France does.

Labels: France, Judea and Samaria, Maaleh Adumim, settlement blocs

posted by Carl in Jerusalem @ 8:59 AM