Writing from Paris, Michel Gurfinkiel explains the hard reality behind the disappointment many of us are feeling with French President Nicolas Sarkozy:
In 2007, nationalism seemed to be gone for good, as Nicolas Sarkozy, a supporter of Nato, a friend of America and an open admirer of Israel, was elected president. Two years later, however, France is clearly relapsing into its former pro-Arab and pro-Islamic options. Not for grand strategy reasons any more, but out of sheer domestic concerns : France, once a Western, White country with a Christian background, is morphing into a multicultural, multiethnic and multireligious nation, with a strong Islamic element.
Like most other Western countries, and in spite of its nationalistic posturing, France has ingathered large numbers of alien immigrants for decades, mostly from the third world : either citizens of the former colonies in North Africa, Subsaharan Africa, the Levant, the Indian Ocean, the Far East, or citizens of other Middle Eastern or tropical countries, or even « cultural aliens », i. e. French citizens from overseas territories in the West Indies, the Indian Ocean and Oceania, who settled, or were induced to settle, in France proper. In the long run, it has led to a dramatic demographic and societal transformation.
Well, we knew that. But Gurfinkiel updates us on how things have only gotten worse among the”Neo-French” since Gaza:
On the Right, President Sarkozy characterized the Israeli military operations against Hamas, on their very onset, as « disproportionate ». Upon his subsequent visits to the Middle East, while insisting on Israel’s right to security, he never questioned the validity of the Hamas rule in Gaza. On March 2, he cancelled the speech he had agreed to deliver at the annual dinner of Crif, the Representative Council of the French Jewish Organizations, as he had done the previous year ; he just dropped by a few minutes before the dinner, and then left.
Read it all.
Join the conversation as a VIP Member