Another changed mind, this time in France
French Foreign Minister Philippe Douste-Blazy declared last week he has changed his opinion on Israel’s controversial separation barrier in light of its drastic effect on terror…”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.”
On the one hand, it’s good to hear that Douste-Blazy has evolved so very significantly.
On the other hand, what had he originally thought was going to happen when the Israelis built the wall? Does he understand the principle of cause and effect? Did he lack the capacity to understand the reasoning behind the wall? Did he understand it, but didn’t believe it, because his kneejerk reaction was to discount everything Israelis say? Is he speaking on his own now? Or did he get the okay from the higher-ups (almost certainly the case)? And, if so, why? Is this an actual change of mind, some sort of signal that France is softening its stance towards Israel, if only un peu?
Hamas wasn’t all that happy with Douste-Blazy’s evolution:
“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.”
In other words, Hamas wishes to remind France that it needs to return, and pronto, to the proper leftist multi-culti line. However, in a rare moment of actual grounding in actual reality rather than rhetoric, France appears to be deviating from regarding the wall as a symbol of anything, and is instead noting that it has an actual function in the real world, which is to keep out those Palestinians who are intent on coming into Israel for the express purpose of blowing to smithereens as many Israeli men, women, and children as they possibly can.
How unsymbolic of France.
[NOTE: U*2 at ¡No Pasaré¡n! explains the motive behind France’s change of mind. Makes sense to me. And so, France may be regarding the wall as a symbol after all–a symbol of what France would like to do to its own Muslim population these days.
I’ve added ¡No Pasaré¡n! to my blogroll. I’m sure you’ll see why when you read their self-description: Behind the Faé§ades in France: What expats and the mainstream media (French and American alike) fail to notice (or fail to tell you) about French attitudes, principles, values, and official positions”¦ ]
“Does he understand the principle of cause and effect? Did he lack the capacity to understand the reasoning behind the wall?”
How dare you question the resoning capacity of the French! Why in the 20th century alone they made all the right moves, just ask them!
Glad you’re home. For some stats on the small part of the wall on our southern borders see this blog:
http://www.limitstogrowth.org/index.html
Scroll down to the interview with Lou Dobbs,which is titled
“Lou Dobbs Tonight Transcript Oct. 26 [10/27/06]”
I can’t find any permalinks on the page so you’ll have to go about halfway down.
Lots of information to be had there, including a link to a 2003 piece by Stanley Crouch, of all people calling for a moratorium on all Muslim immigration for ten years…
I’m not going to say “enjoy your visit to paris, Neo”, but I will say that I wish you the best and am glad of your safe return.
I read a couple of very good articles in No Pasaran about France awhile ago, but this was when I was reading Melannie Phillips at the outset of the French riots.
Here is an interesting statistical breakdown of… paris.
Link
Ever check out The Dissident Frogman?
Wonderful. Now Israel knows it can prevent attacks by erecting a wall, it can now go about putting the wall on it’s own territory rather than encompassing illegal settlements, water sources and fertile land on Palestinian land.
No transcript of the trial?
How are we to know the full extent of corruption in the French justice system without an accurate, verifiable record of the trial?
Wrong thread… see below…
Go to France as a tourist, neo-neo, but learn to view it through the eyes of a historian and archeologist.
For France and Europe the best wall would be 20 million one-way plane tickets. Get over it, Eurripins. This lot is not going to pay for your false teeth when you’re old, so chuck them.
If France really is going to change it’s mind, this will be a spectacle not for feeble nerves. As Mark Steyn recently commented, usial French reaction to a problem is ignore it as long as it is possible; but when they eventually react to repeated provocation, it tends to be nuclear option. They did not have 30-years long war with Protestants, they simply slaughtered them all in one night. And all their revolutions, restorations and new revolutions follow the same pattern: demolish anything to the ground and declare a new era (with new calendar and a new system of measurment).
This is an interesting development.
I had thought the purpose and effectiveness of the wall, before it was built, and the results of its partial building, was so obvious that nobody could miss it.
That being the case, objections could only have been based on the presumption that inconveniencing terrorists in their attempts to kill Jews was immoral.
Now we find there were, indeed, people so stupid as to not know what a wall is for, and so stupid as to miss the results of the partial building.
As to where the wall is to be built;
I don’t think the Israelis owe the terrorists and their supporters much at all, much less a less efficient defensive position because somebody claims a cabbage patch would be cut in half.
By this time, the purpose and attitude of the Palestinian population is well-enough known that there’s no longer any point in pretending this is about anything but the long-running attempts to kill Jews and destroy Israel.
Any reasons are excuses. If they did not exist, others would be found. If they are remedied, others would be found.
If none existed, sufficient would be made up.
Troll Stevie, our Toronto friend, is posting as “anonymous.” Comment deleted.
Killing paleo suicide bombers is moral.
Troll Stevie, our Toronto friend, is posting as “anonymous.” Comment deleted.
Anonymous | 10.30.06 – 1:28 pm | #
…
Tiens! Le Cochon Frané§ais a volé!
“And all their revolutions, restorations and new revolutions follow the same pattern: demolish anything to the ground and declare a new era (with new calendar and a new system of measurment).” (sergey)
I think you might be acknowledging the limits of human ‘reason,’ whether in politics or in other human pursuits. Certainly the French seem to have been reason’s chief proponent for several centuries.
Is that reason always reasonable?
I wonder how it has served the French, particularly in the 20c?
neo is giving us some insights..
To jgr:
The most wise French thinkers (Pascal, Descartes) also understood these limitations without neglecting reason. But they were devoted Christians. Dementia began with advent of atheism, with Laplace, Rousseau, Voltaire and others reacting on excesses of Catholic obscurantism. (Revolutionaries went as far as to declare Cult of Reason as official religion.) And this obscurantism also was direct consequence of slaughtering of Huguenots. So the pattern is the same: overreaction on overreaction. But in clash of civilizations reason is a poor weapon against fanaticism, so they failed badly, surrendering to Nazi, and now are going to surrender again to Islamonazi.
But in clash of civilizations reason is a poor weapon against fanaticism (sergey writes).
One wonders what belief powered those Europeans who resisted the first Islamic assault?
The legend of Roland is certainly not consistent with today’s French culture.
Islam, I know in part, once held Sicily, and most of Spain, and, apparently, even the Eternal City for a period.
One of my English folk tales from the 10th century tells of the Saracens overwhelming a Cornish kingdom along the shores of Southern Britain.
The Saracens were devils who massacred innocent women and childen, even then.
Kofi Annan has something to learn from Douste-Blazy http://dfrankfurter.livejournal.com/92069.html