NIDRA POLLER:FOURTEEN YEARS AFTER THE al DURA BLOOD LIBEL FRANCE DISCOVERS BARE FACED ANTI-SEMITISM IN ITS MIDST.
http://www.newenglishreview.org/blog_direct_link.cfm/blog_id/55199
It’s on all the lips, in all the media: burning Jewish shops in Sarcelles is anti-Semitic. PM Manuel Valls declared, in an excellent speech at the commemoration of the rafle du Vel d’Hiv [mass roundup of Parisian Jews in 1942], that anti-Semitism was trying to hide behind anti-Zionism. Florian Philippot, VP of the Front National (FN) accused the PM of promoting French self-hatred. Because he acknowledged the dishonor of Vichy France’s compliance with orders from the German occupation that resulted in the deportation of 76,000 Jews from France to the death camps; 2,000 returned alive. Valls added a long tribute to the honor of the Résistance and courageous French people who risked their lives to hide Jews. Why would Philippot, speaking for the party that was supposedly going to liberate France from Islamization, prefer to lash out at the PM than to condemn the Islamic thugs? Valls defended the decision to ban further pro-Palestinian demonstrations that deteriorated into attacks on synagogues, in the Marais where Jews had been rounded up and sent to the death camps, and on rue de la Roquette, not far from the Japy Gymnasium where Jews were held before being sent to the Vel d’Hiv. Making the junction between the dishonor of 1942 and the intolerable assaults of 2014, the PM accurately measured the level of the threat hanging over the French Republic today.
Why is the FN so skittish? Who is the blatantly pro-Putin anti-American FN trying to protect? At the other end of the political spectrum, aging militants from the NPA or even more obscure fringe groups pop up in the media to defend the right to demonstrate. While videos of the authorized July 13th operation are freely available to refute all apologetics, these gentlemen place the blame on a repressive government. By denying the right to demonstrate they kept us from providing our own security service that would have prevented these unfortunate marginal acts of violence [like you did when they rushed to the synagogues last week?] No journalists were on the TVscreen to question the rationality [sic] of this discourse thrown at the public like a rock. The balding apparatchik warns us: You have to understand their anger.
The other day, Minister of Foreign Affairs Laurent Fabius flew to the Middle East with stops in Jordan, Egypt, and Israel, determined to impose an immediate ceasefire. He emerged, disappointed, from a half-hour conversation with Israeli PM Netanyahu. The French plan apparently is based on some kind of security guarantees that would reassure the Israeli government and convince it to lay down its arms and retreat, leaving Hamas victoriously intact. French forces can guarantee security at the Erez Crossing? Riot police in Paris can’t even thwart a crowd of 3,000 punk jihadis in Sarcelles! Dozens of police were wounded, a pitiful handful of assailants have been arrested, shops were looted and torched. French authorities cannot prevent an anti-communist party from defying a perfectly legal ban and leading violent attacks on French citizens, their property, and law enforcement.
Gaza – Donetsk
Lethal narratives from Gaza alternate in the world’s media with coverage of the MH17 crash scene in the eastern Ukraine. The bereaved, side by side with billions of media-invited bystanders, watch as men described as “pro-Russian separatists” mishandle the bodies and belongings of crash victims and systematically destroy the evidence and cart off the wreckage to an unknown destination. No Ukrainian forces, no world leader, no international institution, no public opinion can stop them. It’s happening before our eyes.
Unlike PM Valls who intelligently linked the roundup of Parisian Jews in 1942 to attacks on Parisian Jews in 2014, commentators are not making the junction between demands for a ceasefire in Gaza and the spectacle in the Ukraine. This is the way the world looks when legitimate forces are either helpless or hogtied. Hamas not only dreams of shooting down passenger planes landing at Israel’s Ben Gurion airport, they are gearing up to be able to do it.
When a state does not mobilize its forces to defend itself, the civilian population is immobilized. Passengers boarding a Malaysian Airlines flight from Amsterdam to Kuala Lampur belong to a fast disappearing world where ordinary people are free to do business, attend conferences, visit family, or frolic in a global playground. Lack of disclosure on the disappearance of flight MH370 coupled with under reporting of the conflict in the eastern Ukraine may well have contributed to the feeling of normality in boarding that flight.
French citizens, not only Jews, are wondering what next, where next? Turn any corner, walk into any shop, drive down any street and you might find yourself face to face with one of those enraged mobs. In Israel, 75% of the territory, attacked daily by Hamas rockets, is partially immobilized. In one failed state after another, maniacal tyrants immobilize terrified populations. If this movement is not stopped, how many countries will become no-go zones for commercial aviation?
Scenes of destruction in Gaza
Does anyone remember that these bombed buildings didn’t exist media-wise? The people of Gaza lived in hovels in miserable refugee camps. Now the buildings are discovered just in time to be reduced to rubble. The same kind of rubble we’ve seen in Libya and Syria, for example. Gaza has come of age, it finally has the death and destruction of its Muslim neighbors. Not in the same proportions of course. The “heartless Israelis” committing “war crimes” have opened a field hospital at the Erez Crossing to treat the injured from Gaza. Media-wise the field hospital doesn’t exist. No room for it in the lethal narrative.
There is indecent exposure of the dead and wounded in Gaza–innocent victims, all. Then Hamas boasts of capturing an Israeli soldier (Israel denies the claim); a jubilant crowd of the innocent citizens of Hamas-occupied Gaza explode in joy. Thirteen Israeli soldiers are killed in three separate incidents in the Sharjiya neighborhood but somehow no Hamas fighters show up in the casualty toll last night.
Reactions cut across party lines in France
Reactions to the violent outbreaks in Paris and Sarcelles cut across party lines, with some political figures in the right wing opposition criticizing the government decision to allow people to demonstrate their outrage at the situation in Gaza. Others are calling for more vigorous action, including the deportation of all dual nationals participating in the violence. Many politicians in the governing coalition object to the ban on “pro-Palestinian demonstrations” and what they see as the government’s excessive support for Israel in this conflict. Christian Estrosi, Mayor of Nice and outspoken friend of Israel, has transferred to the appropriate authorities CCTV footage that will allow them to identify and prosecute the law breakers.
Some details on the Sarcelles attack
[My translation of excerpts from the richly illustrated Figaro article.]
http://www.lefigaro.fr/actualite-france/2014/07/20/01016-20140720ARTFIG00158-barbes-sarcelles-la-contagion-de-la-violence.php
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