Friday, October 27, 2006
France endorses the "separation fence"
Since I have spent most of the week giving voice to despondency over the Islamization of Europe, here is some Friday afternoon good news: France's Foreign Minister has endorsed the existence of the separation fence that the Israelis have erected against Palestinian terror attacks, even if not its precise route:
The barrier, which separates the West Bank from the rest of Israel, has garnered much criticism for creating a ghetto-style situation for the Palestinians and for allegedly appropriating Palestinian land on the Israeli side.
But although the French government has been critical of it since the start of its construction four years ago, Douste-Blazy has now reversed the feeling.
“I have significantly evolved on the matter of the separation fence” said Douste-Blazy on French Jewish television TFJ on Thursday. “Although the wall was a moral and ethical problem for me, when I realised terror attacks were reduced by 80 percent in the areas where the wall was erected, I understood I didn’t have the right to think that way.”
Douste-Blazy is the first high ranking French official to openly state his support for the security fence.
Armed Liberal snarks "Concern about a 'Paris Intifada' does evolve one's thinking, doesn't it?" Perhaps, although the French government usually does not respond to pressure from the "youths" by vocalizing support for Israeli anti-terrorism tactics.
In fact, France seems to have irritated Hamas, just when it has put several thousand of its soldiers into the gun sights of Hamas' ally Hezbollah:
Hamas vigorously criticised the French FM after his statement:
“It is the Palestinian nation which is suffering from the separation fence, not the French nation,” said Hamas spokesman Fawzi Barhoum. “Our nation is paying a high price for the separation and he [Douste-Blazy] must understand that the wall is the symbol of racial segregation and isolation.”
The perturbations of French diplomatic positions are not inherently interesting, but they may be a means of measuring the degree to which the French polity retains the ability to resist the Muslim political agenda. France is on the brink of a presidential election campaign, so it is -- possibly -- meaningful that its foreign minister thought it a propitious time to shift in favor of Israel on a core issue for the Islamic world.
6 Comments:
By 
D.E. Cloutier, at
Fri Oct 27, 06:20:00 PM:
Napoleon's battles and WWI killed many of the toughest Frenchmen. Today the French generally are lovers, not fighters. Nevertheless, the last thing you want to contend with is an angry, irrational lover.
Meanwhile, a brother of French presidential contender Segolene Royal allegedly played a key role in the 1985 bombing of Greenpeace's ship Rainbow Warrior in New Zealand's Auckland Harbor.
There is still some fight left in the French.
By Final Historian, at
Fri Oct 27, 07:20:00 PM:
Perhaps the French want to build their own fence around the Banlieus...
By Dawnfire82, at
Fri Oct 27, 10:04:00 PM:
Well, I guess if you consider covertly bombing a ship full of hippies and then getting caught having fight left. Heh.
By D.E. Cloutier, at
Fri Oct 27, 10:41:00 PM:
Dawnfire82: "...then getting caught..."
The brother wasn't caught. (Two other French operatives were caught and spent a reasonably short period of time in jail.) One person died in the explosion. New Zealand won't prosecute the brother. (The NZ government agreed some years ago to drop all further inquiry into the incident.)
Politics is politics. The situation is not much different than when "terrorist" Menachem Begin ordered the 1946 bombing of the King David Hotel in Jerusalem, killing 91 people (including 28 British citizens, most of them soldiers). Begin went on to become Prime Minister of Israel. Nobody ever prosecuted him, either.
I guess the soldiers were expendable.
By Dawnfire82, at
Sat Oct 28, 02:34:00 PM:
I was trying to make a joke because I don't think bombing freaking Green Peace should be a demonstration of the national will to fight. Why not hit the SPCA next?
I guess I should try harder, huh?
By Assistant Village Idiot, at
Sun Oct 29, 08:22:00 PM:
Armed Liberal may rightfully posit having one's own ox gored as the reason for the change of heart, but even that hasn't been enough to change some minds. Be grateful for sanity where you find it.
