Howard Epstein – LA GLOIRE DE FRANCE! N’EST-ELLE PAS PAYS INCROYABLE?
Are we not underwhelmed? By whom? Not, for once, by John Kerry, that lion of diplomacy, the Mane Player, or “Whitey”, as I am constrained by the fairness upon the scalp, rather than that which is within the skull, to think of him.
No, not for once, he, Kerry, who was complicit with his boss, Obama, in setting red lines for Assad on the use of chemical weapons on ordinary Syrians in the street markets of the Damascus suburbs, and then joined with Assad in affecting color-blindness, lest something courageous had to be done. No. This week, we have other fish to fry: Goujons.
To be fair to the Obama/Kerry peaceniks, on the Two State “Solution”, they knew when to stop. Realism finally kicked in. Faced with, and tired of, Abbas talking out of either side of his mouth, depending on the label on the cameras of those interviewing him, the US recently formally abandoned any hope of achieving, for the Middle East, “Peace” (read: massive Israeli concessions to those who rear their progeny on anti-Semitism). “Making Peace” here is no longer an American ambition – not this side of the next presidency, at any rate. And in this week’s blog, from here on in, Kerry gets a free ride from me, as I direct my aim at Jean-Marc Ayrault. Who he? No less than the Foreign Minister of the French government. As such, the head of French diplomacy intelligently opined last week about the Israelis and the Palestinians: “We cannot do nothing”.
La Belle France wants to pick up from where the US left off. Simpliciter! Pashut! No self-searching questions about how, if the US, the world’s sole superpower that (unlike France) is capable of sorting out its own fiscal affairs, that (unlike France) projects its power globally, with a military budget several times the aggregate of those next five that trail behind it, and that (unlike France) has real traction with Israel in many spheres, most importantly defence,
could not prevail, France (scoring nul points in all those areas) may yet succeed where the US failed. This merits some examination.
What, then, is the not nothing that the French, have decided to do? They propose that the extremely cold, and equally stiff, corpse of the 2002 Saudi/Beirut Peace Initiative be warmed up and revivified. One is reminded of the curling, curdling Croque Monsieur that you see festering in the window of a run-down French bar at around four in the afternoon (when the chef has nipped off for a nap rather than join the 21st century) being subjected to micro-waving as a substitute for real cuisine.
Manifesting even greater intellectual insight into the reasons for France picking up Kerry’s baton and loping off with it, Aylraut continued: ”We have to act before it’s too late” adding: “I am not naïve [if the cap fits, Jean-Marc….], I am perfectly sincere [as if such an assurance were needed…] … There is no alternative — the other option is fatalism and I reject that.” (See what I mean? Completely underwhelming.)
Aylraut, apparently also rejects the existentialism of Jean Paul-Sartre, for he dismisses the idea of living for oneself alone and for today only: He wants to control how the Israelis may live (or not) tomorrow, yet bizarrely, sets out to do so without our (or Palestinian) involvement in the inaugural conference. (Talk about talking about us behind our backs! The Gauls even have the gall to seek to humiliate us by flagging it in advance. But the humiliation is truly their own, as we shall see.)
Some may think me churlish. After all, here is a politician trying to help a far-away country of which he knows little. Think about it: Peace in Our Time, courtesy of the French. What could be more exciting for us, or more altruistic of them?
Last week, I objected to the US State Department reviewing the world’s human rights abuses (including those alleged to be perpetrated by Israel) but leaving a big blank where the USA should have appeared. Nothing at all was mentioned about their own abuse of police guns and bullets, and the backs of black citizens. So, it is almost indolence that leads me to this week’s gripe about the French. The shortest of mental leaps, I admit, but I could not help myself, for I resent the French telling us when to clean the floors and empty the dishwasher, whilst being quite incapable of getting their own house in order. As the ceiling is falling in on the French government, they point at us, shouting: “Ooo! (the La La, is optional). Look! The Israelis and the Palestinians are fighting again. We must do something about it. Something. Anything. For we cannot do nothing.”
Well, here is why I say that those who run France, who would dictate to us how to run our own affairs, plainly know nothing about running their own country: It is running away from them.
For several weeks now the streets and squares of Paris have been where it’s at for thousands of protesters, in what is beginning to look like 1968 all over again. It is almost May, too. (May 1968 marked the second occasion that General de Gaulle left France: The first was to escape the Gestapo and the second the French students. Plus ça change. Plus ça la même chose.)
The current demonstrations are called “Nuit Debout [Up All Night]” and come complete with such 21st century accoutrements as le cannabis and le House music, ie not your average soirée with a little Debussy or Delibes.
And it is not only Paris which is treated to this, the New Night Life. Similar protests are evident in dozens of other French towns and cities, displaying some of the characteristics of Occupy Wall Street – a celebratory counter-culture that draws in les malcontents and les anarchistes. There are apparently no leaders and no defined aims. They merely wish to “make the world a better place”. (Perhaps Aylraut seeks to suggest he is in sympathy with them.) The quasi-revolution of May 1968 (that had de Gaulle on the hop) had modest, student-led beginnings, too.
It should not be long now before the protesters start tearing up cobble-stones to throw at the police and the many other security agencies that the French authorities like to deploy on occasions like this. In short, it is shaping up to be another mini-French revolution. As Aylraut knows, La Belle France has a history in these matters and how they end: not so much “gloire” as bloody put-down. Then CS gas will perfume the boulevards again.
France, forced to endure a further twelve months under Hollande, its most unpopular President ever, certainly has its own problems. What better time, therefore, for its politicians to distract attention by seeking to deal with ours!
And what was it that was so magnificent about the 2002 Saudi/Beirut Initiative that it merits a second airing? It called for “normalizing relations” between the Arabs and Israel, in exchange for a complete withdrawal by Israel from the occupied territories (including East Jerusalem and the Golan Heights) and a “just settlement” of the Palestinian refugee problem by which those “wishing to return to their homes and live at peace with their neighbors” should be able to do so or, if they otherwise wish, should be provided with compensation. (Note, if they otherwise wish.)
It was unacceptable to then Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon; and today’s premier, Netanyahu, has just publicly pledged that the Golan Heights will always be part of Israel. The French Initiative looks like starting out as a non-starter.
Further, let us not forget that the munificence emanating from Beirut in 2002 received rather less publicity that it might by reason of the foul atrocity the day before the Initiative was announced, when a Hamas terrorist killed 28 Jews celebrating their Seder at the Park Hotel, Netanya.
As to why France should think that the intervening thirteen years, which have been punctuated with terror attack upon terror attack, should have caused the stale, lop-sided plan to have matured like a fine Claret defies understanding. A more accurate analogy might be the disgraceful current scandal in France over the insidious poisoning of Bordeaux vineyard labourers, and possibly of schoolchildren in schools neighbouring the vineyards, by the liberal use of pesticides, without any thought for those who have to work in close proximity to them. followed, of course, by years of attempted cover-up.
With or without pesticides, and other foul matter (such as the unremitting Saudi financing of terrorism, and the enthusiasm of young Saudis to perpetrate terror in the West – most notably on 9/11 (2001) in the USA, with most of the murderous hijackers hailing from Saudi Arabia – and not forgetting the Saudi annual decapitation toll (sometimes with attendant crucifixion – see my earlier blog), there is little that is so decorous about the Saudis, or anything that they have touched, that we would want to be seen endorsing it.
In the meantime, the French have much work to do at home. We are quite capable of taking care of ourselves without the desperation of the French government for a diversion to confuse the picture.
Note: to the next French President (and the next American one too): if you want to see “Peace” out here, Two-State Solution or otherwise, persuade the Palestinians to stop the Jew-hatred. It is poisoning their children’s minds as well as the atmosphere. The two are fatally intertwined.
Finally, I wonder: Is it possible that Aylraut’s reason for foreswearing “fatalism” is a desire to curry favor with those who might still have ambitions on French streets involving Kalashnikovs? Fear stalks the Quai D’Orsay for there are, it is true, deep divisions in France between the Moslems and non-Moslems, and little confidence on the part of the authorities that post-Brussels, all would-be assailants have been rounded up. The French Foreign Minister may think that toadying up to the Moslems will draw down a carapace of protection. (When will they ever learn?)
There is, however, another solution. I do not claim originality or credit for this but, rejecting fatalism about the future of France, I strongly recommend to Jean-Marc the following solution which circulated last year in the wake of another form of street protest in the French capital:-
© Howard Epstein – April 2016
