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French Left Wing Leader Shifts Stance on Israel

The left wing in France is revising its long-standing opposition to Israel, according to Israeli Foreign Ministry officials. They pointed to last week’s article by noted Palestinian advocate and former French Prime Minister Laurent Fabius urging the French left to support the Jewish state.
Fabuis, writing in the traditionally pro-Palestinian weekly Le Nouvelle Observateur, entitled his article, “I am pro-Palestinian and pro-Israeli.” He criticized the French left’s reflexive sympathy for the Palestinian cause “as if the suffering and despair were not evenly divided between the two sides.”
He also wrote that many French people view the Israeli-Palestinian conflict through the lens of their own colonial history. “Most of us came to Socialism through an anti-colonial struggle,” he wrote, adding that many socialists in France today don’t have a grasp of the pressures Israelis live under.
Israeli officials told the Jerusalem Post that shifts in Israeli policy, including the disengagement plan, are helping improve Israel’s image. They said they expect the revision in France to continue as long as Israel maintains a policy the French left supports.

20 thoughts on “French Left Wing Leader Shifts Stance on Israel

  1. American politicians completely ignore the problems of the Palestinians though, so I think the Europeans balance it out. Bush and the Congress have basically oked the annexation of the West Bank settlements. I believe if America would display evenhandedness the Euroleft would become more evenhanded. The political balance is so out of wack in favor of the Isralis here, that a Politician that even sympathizes with the Palestinians enough to be evenhaned will get run out of office. Look at what happened to Howard Dean.

  2. “American politicians completely ignore the problems of the Palestinians”
    equals
    “Bush and the Congress have basically oked the annexation of the West Bank settlements.”
    ?
    That’s stupid.

  3. Dean didn’t lose the nom because of any pro-PA talk. He lost the nom, because the Dem Party was able to convince its people that he had a snowball’s chance in hell of beating Bush. His seeming inability to control himself only slammed home the Dem’s point. I personally don’t remember any Dem party official coming out to help Dean when that sound bite was getting air 5 billion times a day.

  4. I personally don’t remember any Dem party official coming out to help Dean when that sound bite was getting air 5 billion times a day.
    that’s cuz dean represented the new left and challenged the old order. so the old order decided to do away with him in order to retain their grip.

  5. NoAlternative, what are you saying? That because of supposedly bad policies in one place, someone else should have an equal and opposite bad policy? Why would you base your foreign policy on reactionism? I think the French do this. But I think it’s dumb.

  6. “that’s cuz dean represented the new left and challenged the old order. so the old order decided to do away with him in order to retain their grip.”
    That sounds so sinister. Maybe the “old order” realized that in order to remain a national party and compete with the other national party, the Democrats had to appeal to more than a tiny handful of Leftists.

  7. Reality check y’all. Howard Dean recently assumed the Chairmanship of the DNC. Somehow I don’t think that constitutes sidelining him. I’m not saying I support the move (or Dean’s views) I’m just sayin’.

  8. But, that only happened because they lost the election numerically. If Kerry had won I don’t think there’s any way Dean would be the Chair of the DNC right now.
    Kerry’s loss has the Dem’s thinking a lot about where their party is and where it should be going. By putting Dean at the head, I see the party turning from “if we just talk long enough, the people will see they agree with us” to a party that will try to inspire passion in its supporters. That’s why I think Hillary will be at the head of the list, though ideologically I’d rather see Lieberman. She certainly inspires passion both ways.

  9. whatever. it’d be nice if this could spread to more of the french and british left, so regular leftist and “pro-palestinian” american jews who want to work with them wouldn’t have to constantly deal with their ridiculously exaggerated and ahistorical anti-zionism. we shouldn’t have to explain to these people at this hour that israel doesn’t actually want to, for example, expand its territory into other sovereign arab countries.

  10. “israel doesn’t actually want to, for example, expand its territory into other sovereign arab countries.”
    This would be a lot easier if Israel wasn’t constantly described as a fundamentally colonialist, aggressive and racist nation-state by the ‘well-meaning’.

  11. Robbie, my goal is two states, and that won’t happen if Palestinians don’t have anyone countering America’s intransigence. Nobody would hire a fair lawyer. I want a lawyer to be as aggressive as the oppositions lawyers.

  12. Noalternative, you have it backwards. The US is the ONLY country backing Israel. The Euros ALL back the Arabs relentlessly. If the US took an “evenhanded” approach, Israel would be left to the dogs. The US may be the biggest power in the world, but it still only gets one vote in the UN whereas the EU gets 25. The EU refuses to place Hezbollah on their list of terrorist organizations, and a movement is afoot to get Hamas off the list as well. http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/s… This is not being done in response to the US.
    On the other hand, the US is not afraid to talk tough to Israel.
    http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/s
    You should be pushing some of the European countries to take a more evenhanded approach, which would then give the US the room to press Israel more.

  13. This would be a lot easier if Israel wasn’t constantly described as a fundamentally colonialist, aggressive and racist nation-state by the ‘well-meaning’.
    But it is, right? One day, Israel will take over all of Eretz Yisrael, and the Arabs know it, it’s written in the Koran.

  14. The Qur’an in Chapter 5: 20-21 states quite clearly: Moses said to his people: O my people! Remember the bounty of God upon you when He bestowed prophets upon you , and made you kings and gave you that which had not been given to anyone before you amongst the nations. O my people! Enter the Holy Land which God has written for you, and do not turn tail, otherwise you will be losers.”
    I also draw your attention to the fact that the medieval exegetes of Qur’an–without any exception known to me–recognized Israel as belonging to the Jews, their birthright given to them. Indeed, two of Islam’s most famous exegetes explained “written” from Quran 5:21 thus:
    Ibn Kathir (d. 774/1373) said: “That which God has written for you” i.e. That which God has promised to you by the words of your father Israel that it is the inheritance of those among you who believe” . Muhammad al-Shawkani (d. 1250/1834) interprets Kataba to mean “that which God has allotted and predestined for you in His primordial knowledge, deeming it as a place of residence for you” (1992, 2:41).
    sourced from : http://www.strategypage.com/me

  15. Ezra — right, but that talks about the original gift. If I’m not mistaken, Muslims take our own word for it that we were kicked out of Eretz Israel due to our own sin. Josh seemed to imply that the Qur’an included something about a *return*.
    boobie — uh-huh, well states can do racist, aggressive and colonialist things towards native populations that claim equal rights to the same land as them without also having ambitions to conquer new territory.

  16. I read the interview with the prof at San Diego State. It was pretty interesting. All he had to say on the subject of Jewish return, though, was that the Qur’an “leaves it open.” Not that one day we will take over all of Eretz Israel.
    It’d be nice to think that Muslim end-times theology could be made to jibe with our own though.

  17. Laurent Fabius is a yid, and as a well entrenched member of France’s well monied power elite, hardly what I would call a leftist french leader.

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