Sarkozy’s maternal grandfather was indeed a Greek Jew (hence the mother’s family name Mallah). His maternal grandmother, to the best of my knowledge, was not.
Susan: which is more important, president (head of state) or prime minister (head of government)? In the US, the President is both at once: in most countries, the head of state (president, king, queen,…) is a mostly ceremonial figurehead and the head of government actually in charge. In France, this was more or less the situation when Leon Blum, mendes-France, and Rene Mayer were PMs. When De Gaulle created the Fifth Republic, he expanded the powers of his own/the presidency to the point where they rival those of the POTUS.
Of course France is not unique in having had Jewish heads of the executive branch. The UK had Benjamin Disraeli (nominally a convert to Anglicanism), New Zealand had Julius Vogel in the 19th Century, Italy had Sidney Sonnino (half-Jewish) at one point,…
But I totally agree that I would rather have a pro-Israel gentile in charge than a Jewish “house n-word”. Much of the mess in the Britishb mandate of “Palestine” started with a Jewish High Commissioner (Herbert Samuel) bending over backwards for the Arabs to defuse accusations of partiality. (Mind you, Samuel was no “self-hating Jew”, just vulnerable.)
