Sunday, February 15, 2009

via Counterpunch

Jean Bricmont: French Echoes of the Israeli-Palestine Conflict
...The dominant discourse employs double standards at every level, for instance when all the French political leaders repeat that we must not “import the Middle East conflict” into France. And yet, what is it when virtually the entire French political class is willing to listen humbly to lectures as to what to think about Israel at the annual dinner of the Conseil Représentatif des Institutions Juives de France (CRIF)? Isn’t the president of CRIF, who claims that “95 percent of French Jews” support the Israeli assault on Gaza, unilaterally importing the Middle East conflict to France?...

The left is ever ready to mount on its high horse against a French far right which is, no doubt, unlikeable, but weak and marginal (which makes attacking it easy).   But it remains, at best, passive in the face of another far right (Zionism) which enjoys the military and diplomatic support of the world’s most powerful democracy...

Text translated from the French by Diana Johnstone. A French version of this text is available on http://www.legrandsoir.info/spip.php?article8017. Jean Bricmont teaches physics in Belgium and is a member of the Brussels Tribunal. His new book, Humanitarian Imperialism, is published by Monthly Review Press. He can be reached at bricmont@fyma.ucl.ac.be.


No comments: