France: From Gloire to Desespoir

President Francois Hollande’s government is reeling from the latest scandal to jolt this country-the admission by Budget Minister, Jerome Cahuzac, after months of denying the charge, that he had secret offshore accounts. This newest affaire only adds to the strange brew of outrage and despair that has enveloped the citizens of what was once Europe’s greatest power.   

Nothing brings home more starkly France’s awful decline than a visit to the Basilica of Saint Denis in the northern suburbs of Paris. It is still considered one of the architectural marvels of Europe. Its vaulted domes, 13^th century nave, slender towering walls and luminous stained glass windows were models for the high Gothic style that that inspired the architects of Notre Dame in Paris and other great abbeys and temples to the Christian God throughout Europe. Inside are the tombs—though not always the remains--of most of the kings and queens of France over the past 1500 years. 

It’s a memorable sight. But there were precious few tourists there when I visited yesterday; and non apparent on the streets outside. 

Once you exit the cavernous, hushed Basilica you’re suddenly walking the main shopping streets of one of Paris’s most notorious urban slums, filled mainly with immigrants and the descendants of immigrants from the sprawling lands that France once ruled in Africa, not that many years ago.

Today, however, Saint Denis is more notorious for its crime and drug rate than its basilica. Probably 25% or more of the young people on these streets are unemployed. Saint Denis is also associated with gang violence, car burnings, housing complexes that even the police fear to enter, and a predominately Islamic population that feels increasingly estranged from the rest of France.

And Saint Denis is far from being an exception in France.

Despite President Hollande’s vow when he entered office to reduce unemployment, the number of jobless is still high—more than 10% and growing higher--throughout the country.

As is the crime rate, from petty street and auto thefts to apartment break-ins, assaults, and all-out gang warfare on the streets of Marseilles. The Interior Minister talks darkly of new violent mafia-like organizations in France, run by legal and illegal immigrants who have swarmed into the country from Eastern Europe in the past few years.

Despite President Hollande’s promise to revitalize French industry and block factory closures, factories continue to shut down. Others continue to lay off thousands of workers. The 35-hour workweek still reigns supreme.

Meanwhile, Hollande’s politically-driven drive to raise taxes on the wealthy, particularly a charge of 75% on those making more than one million Euros a year, has probably cost France far more than any such tax could ever bring in. The latest demented development is that the companies that pay those salaries will also have to pay the taxes. That includes France’s major football teams and millionaire stars.   

Hundreds of thousands of French—many of the best and the brightest--have fled abroad over the past few years, more than 400,000 to London alone. But a survey taken found most of them left not to so much to avoid French taxes, but to escape stifling French bureaucracy and regulations, and do something about the huge waste.

Every French government in recent history has promised to do something about that bureaucracy. None have succeeded in tackling the entrenched labor unions and special interests.

In fact, most French long ago gave up their claim to be a major power. They would happily settle for a good, secure government job, with decent schools, housing, a comfortable retirement and continued access to one of the world’s best medical systems.  They would settle in short for security, in their own land..

But that’s exactly what’s being threatened in an atmosphere of moral decay and crisis—of underlying rot.

Francois Hollande was elected eleven months ago to deal with all this-to bring an end to the frenetic bling-bling reign of Nicolas Sarkozy, to restore order, to return to a feeling of probity; to be, as he promised, “a normal president.” Instead, he's turned out to be weak, indecisive, uninspiring.

And now comes the affaire Cahuzac

Jerome Cahuzac, Francois Hollande’s Minister of the Budget, who had vowed to clean up France’s huge deficit, its finances, and go after tax dodgers. This past December a new investigative on-line journal Mediapart, reported that Cahuzac had an illegal bank account in Switzerland. Cahuzac solemnly swore to his colleagues in the National Assembly, swore to all who would listen, that the charge was false.

This week, however, he finally admitted that, yes, he had secret account in Switzerland, which he then moved to Singapore. The account totaled about 600,000 Euros. 

The French media immediately compared Cahuzac with Bill Clinton and the Lewinsky affair, Richard Nixon and Watergate.

Cahuzac’s humiliating admission is like blood in the water to the France’s political and media sharks. Before this scandal broke, the level of public approval for Hollande had plummeted to less than 30%. 

Today, it could only be lower. Now all sides are demanding to know how, if a small muck-raking journal could discover Cahuzac’s misdeeds, how is it that President Hollande—with all the investigative tools at his disposal--couldn’t have found out earlier.

Then today came further embarrassing news for Hollande. The revelation that the treasury of his last election campaign—the one that was waged to bring honesty etc. into government—the treasurer also had a couple of off-shore companies in the Cayman Islands.

There are increasing calls—even from within his own party--for him to completely reform his government, to strike out in some heroic new direction, to revive France’s faith in its future.

There’s no indication that Francois Hollande has either the stomach or the backbone for such a challenge. Nor that the French would willingly make the sacrifices necessary to retool and rebuild their nation.

They’re reluctant to even seriously discuss what’s needed.

Perhaps that’s because the problems they confront—like unemployment, economic growth, crime, racial strife, the survival of the Euro ----perhaps because those problems are so complex, the French—like other nations—find it much easier to obsess about other simpler issues—issues someone can have a real opinion about. Like..well, should a Muslim woman working in a government office be able to wear a veil?  Or, should France’s social security system pay for a homosexual couple to have a child using artificial insemination and a surrogate mother?

Yet all the while, France’s real problems keep growing.

This week for instance, the Canard Enchaine, reports that, according to a recent government study, the time-off taken for such things as “sickness” and “accidents at work” by the 57,000 people employed by the City of Paris, came to an average of 20 days—that is about one month—per employee. That’s in addition to the five weeks of holiday they get each year.

That represents a total of more than 1.15 million days of work—a cost of 160 million Euros per year.

Meanwhile, as part of a project to refurbish the Basilica of Saint Denis, its marvelous stained glass windows, which looked over the tombs of France’s greatest monarchs, were removed from the church, replaced by artificially colored panes, and sent off to be repaired by skilled French artisans. Ten years later, those windows, according to a guide I spoke with, are still locked away in their protective cases.

The authorities can’t find the money to restore them.

   

France in Mali:Chasing Roadrunner over a cliff?

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Within the next few days, France will have deployed some 2,500 troops to Mali. That’s as large a commitment as France made to what became a profoundly unpopular war in Afghanistan. No one knows how long the troops will be there, but the price tag will surely be tens if not hundreds of millions of Euros, this to born by a French economy already in woeful shape. 

The danger is that President Francois Hollande and the French state, may shortly find themselves in the disastrous situation of the hapless coyote in the cartoon, Roadrunner, so intent on chasing his prey that he scurries right over a cliff and suddenly finds himself flailing in mid air, about to plunge to the desert below.  

President Hollande said the menace of a radical Islamic takeover was so imminent that he had no choice but to intervene—to save not just Mali, but all of Western Africa, and, the French now imply, Europe as well.  

Strange thing though, despite the supposed urgency of the situation, France has had precious little luck so far in convincing its European partners to contribute their own troops to the intervention. Indeed, the last thing those countries want, after the traumatic experience of Iraq, Libya and the Afghan crusade, is to become enmeshed in what risks to be an open-ended conflict, on behalf of an unelected Malian government, against a vague assortment of ethnic rebels and jihadis in the desert wilds of North Africa. Thus, so far there have been a lot of pats on the back from France’s allies, offers of logistic support, intelligence, a few troop transports, drones, but that’s it.  

 "You say, 'We'll give you nurses and you go get yourselves killed,'" said French deputy Daniel Cohn-Bendit, railed at his fellow deputies in the European Parliament. "We [Europe] will only be credible if French soldiers are not the only ones getting killed."

Actually, it was surprising to learn that France, still considered a major military power, doesn’t have the capability to transport a couple of thousand troops and their equipment to North Africa. France even had to rely on an offer from the Italians (!) for tankers to handle in-flight refueling of French fighter jets.

Despite the tepid response from France’s allies, French government spokesman are still reassuring the public that French troops are not going to play the major combat role in the coming ground battles.

The fact is, that even if they wanted to play a major role, there are nowhere near enough French boots on the ground. It’s instructive to speculate on France’s combat strength, using what is known as the “tooth to tail” ratio, that is, the number of support troops in the rear needed to support each combat soldier at the front. For the U.S. military that ratio is about three to one. If we use the same figure for France, that means that out of 2500 French troops deployed to Mali, probably about 600-700—a thousand at best--would actually see front-line combat.

And Mali, don’t forget, is twice the size of France, or Afghanistan or Texas.

The actual down-and-dirty fighting, we are told, is to be done by troops from West Africa, some of whom have finally begun arriving in Mali. But all the reports about those contingents indicate a woeful lack of equipment, morale, and training, particularly in being able to fight a guerrilla war in the desert reaches of the Sahel. 

After months of discussion, this week—in the wake of the hostage crisis in Algeria-- France’s European allies finally agreed to dispatch 250 troops to help train the Malian army and perhaps other African units. But—unless the fallout from the Algerian disaster changes things--it’s already determined that those European trainers are to be non- combatants. They will not even be advising the Malian soldiers in battle. As one senior EU official made very clear. “We will not go north. We will stay in the training areas,”

By the way, one thing I can never figure out—whether it be Mali or Afghanistan--we‘re always hearing about how the forces being backed by the U.S. and its allies, like France in this case, invariably seem to be poorly trained and equipped and demoralized, despite hundreds of millions of dollars and years of training. [Think Afghanistan where only one out of 23 battalions is able to function independently of U.S. support.]

Meanwhile, the ragtag rebels they’re combating, usually from those same third world countries, like the Taliban in Afghanistan or the Touaregs in Mali are portrayed as dedicated, fierce, battle-hardened warriors, who wreak havoc on their opponents with often the most primitive improvised weapons or suicide bombs. Reports are that it will take many weeks, probably months, before the various African troops will be ready to do any serious fighting. And there are other problems to deal with apart from training and equipment: the danger, for instance, of unleashing Christian soldiers from Nigeria to suppress Islamic rebels in Northern Mali.

Ironically, as I’ve pointed out in a previous blog, while France’s allies are hanging back, the Chinese, who have huge economic interests and construction projects underway in every one of Mali’s neighbors, continue to go about their business, apparently still content to leave the police work to France and Europe and the West African states. 

The French, for the record, insist that the groups they are battling in Mali –and now in Algeria--are all lumped together as “terrorists”, linked to al-Qaeda. There is no recognition of the fact that most of the different rebel groups, most of them driven by strong ethnic and nationalist aspirations, as much as by religion--not that different perhaps, from the Taliban in Afghanistan.

In that case, it’s obvious that the only way this conflict will ultimately be settled is not by somehow eradicating the “terrorists” ,but by sitting down to negotiate a deal, as will probably be the case in Afghanistan.  

In Mali, such a deal may be not be that different from the kind of settlement that was offered the Touaregs years ago after a series of rebellions, but which the Malian government ultimately reneged on.

So, how do the French feel about this?

Estimates are that anywhere from 400,000 to one million French took to the streets of Paris last weekend. A counter-protest, expected to draw hundreds of thousands of other militant French, is now being organized. Tempers are flaring. 

What’s the issue?

Mali?

Well, actually, no. It’s whether the French government should legalize gay marriage.

As for the intervention in Mali, at first the French, from all ends of the political spectrum, seemed to be solidly behind their government and their fighting men.

That consensus is already unraveling, and it’s certain that as the intervention drags on, the casualties and costs mount, and France’s European allies still drag their heels, the patriotic surge will flag 

Which bring us back to the Roadrunner. At  some point the French may suddenly look down to find to their president has taken them over a precipice, and they’re suspended there, gazing in horror at the chasm below.

Mali: A double tale of unintended consequences

With hundreds of French troops in Mali, and hundreds more headed that way, the U.S. among other countries, has also pledged some limited support: intelligence, communication, logistics, unarmed drones. But Washington obviously would like to keep a low profile. Washington, in fact, had been militating against just such a move, fearing that another Western intervention in an Arab land would provide another ideal recruiting target for erstwhile jihadis across the Muslim world, not to mention to provoking a spate of terrorist attacks in Europe.

In fact, though, it turns out that the U.S. has already played a major role in the crisis. It’s a devastating lesson of plans gone awry, another dreary footnote to the law of unintended consequences.

According to an excellent New York Times account, for the past several years, the United States has spent more than half a billion dollars in West Africa to counter the threat of radical Islam, America’s “most ambitious counterterrorism program ever across these vast, turbulent stretches of the Sahara.”

The aim of the program was that, rather than rely on the U.S. and its allies to combat Islamic terrorism in the region, the United States would train African troops to deal with the threat themselves.

To that end, for five years U.S. Special Forces trained Malian troops in a host of vital combat and counterterrorism skills. The outcome was considered by the Pentagon to be exemplary

But all that collapsed as the result of another unintended consequence-- of the French-led intervention in Libya. After the fall of Khadhaffi, droves of battle-hardened, well-armed Islamic fighters and Tuareg tribesmen, who had been fighting in Libya, swarmed into Northern Mali.

Joined by other more radical Islamist forces, some linked to Al Qaeda, they had no trouble defeating the Malian army.

Why? Because of the defection to the rebels of several key Malian officers, who had been trained by the Americans.  Turns out that those officers, who were supposed to battle the rebels, were ethnic Tuaregs, the same nomads who were part of the rebellion.

According to the Times, The Tuareg commanders of three of the four Malian units in the north, at the height of the battle, decided to join the insurrection, taking weapons, valuable equipment and their American training with them. They were followed by about 1600 additional army defectors, demolishing the government’s hope of resisting the rebel attack.   

In other words, it’s very likely that the French and their allies-to-come in Mali will be battling rebel troops trained by the U.S. Special Forces.

Caught totally by surprise by the whole ghastly mess, the American officials involved with the training program were reportedly flabbergasted.

There are obvious questions: How was it possible for the Special Forces and their Pentagon bosses and the CIA to have had such a total lack of understanding of the Malian officers they’d trained and the country they’d been operating in for over five years?

 But you could ask that same question about U.S. military actions in any number of countries over the past few decades, from Lebanon to Iraq to Afghanistan, where the most apt  comparison might be to releasing elephants into a porcelain shop.

Which leads to a more fundamental question: how is the U.S. to avoid similar catastrophic mistakes down the road? The Pentagon has recently announced that some 3,000 troops, no longer needed in Afghanistan, have been reassigned to work with the local military in 35 countries across Africa--to deal with the threat of Al Qaeda-linked terrorism.

Sounds just like what was going on in Mali.

But does anyone really think the U.S. and its military will have a better understanding of the myriad forces, tribes, religions, governments, legal and illicit financial interests struggling for power and influence in those countries than it did in Mali?  

Or in Iraq, Or Afghanistan or Iran or Somalia or Lebanon, or Vietnam or Cambodia.

And has France now embarked down the same tragic path?

Un Pain au Chocolat-France, increasingly divided.

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France is in deep trouble. As I blogged yesterday, this country has spent several billions of Euros over the past 11 years sending its troops, planes and ships, to join the War against Terrorism in Central Asia. Now, however, the French are finally discovering the threat of radical Islam is at home, under their own noses. 

According to a poll in today’s centre-right Figaro, 82% of the 44,000 French questioned fear an increase in Islamic terrorism in France. Provoking this fear, sensational headlines about a network of 12 jihadis—converted in overcrowded French prisons—and rounded up by police over the past few days.  

But, more serious, than the threat of radical Islam is the fact that France is menaced by mounting racial tensions stoked by extremists on both sides.

I discussed the rise of radical Islam among France’s five million Muslims in previous blogs. An equally alarming development is that, on the other side, Islamophobes are  also on the rise.

This past weekend, one of the most prominent of Nicolas Sarkozy’s former ministers, Jean-Francois Cope, who is campaigning to become leader of his party, the UMP, , made headlines with the story of a good “French” working class family, whose son, as he was leaving school, had his pain au chocolat ripped from his hands by “a young punk”  (obviously Muslim) who told the distraught little boy he had no right to be eating during the Muslim fast of Ramadan.

Overnight, the little French boy losing his pain au chocolat to a brutish Muslim kid has, in the eyes of many French, become a symbol of what’s really wrong with this country.

 It’s also become endlessly discussed on French television.

On the Grand Journal last night, one of the commentators, Jean Michel Aphatie, pointed out that, if you check the dates of Ramadan –which was in the summer for the past couple of years--there’s no way this incident could have recently happened, if it did happen at all.

In any case, as Aphatie pointed out, Cope’s views are far from original. He presented a video of former French President Jacques Chirac, delivering a stunningly crude anti Arab/Mulsim diabtribe at a banquet in Orleans in 1991: 

Imagine, said Chirac, a working man, who together with his wife makes 15,000 francs a year, and is sitting on the landing of his little flat and sees across from him, on the same landing another “head of a family with three or four wives and twenty kids, who, naturally without working, is making 50,000 francs a year--from welfare.

“You add to that,” said the President of France, “the noise--and the smell--and the French worker goes crazy.”

The only difference between Cope and Chirac, suggested, Jean-Michel Apathie, was that Chirac was probably a little drunk at the time.

Indeed, here in Paris, my wife is constantly being forwarded some astonishingly blunt  racist videos--from well meaning friends. Like one received today, that apparently originated with a Catholic professional, we know, an educated, upper class man; who sent it to another Jewish friend of ours, also charming and highly educated; who forwarded it to us:

It’s called “Les Envahisseurs” and is a dubbed takeoff of the science fiction series, The Invaders, from the Sixties. While the original series dealt with evil creatures from another star system trying to take over the earth, this modified version substitutes the intergalactic villains with, of course, the Muslims in France.

They’re fomenting jihad, taking over the streets with their prayers, demanding that schools serve only hallal meat. When the hero turns for help to the authorities, he finds that it’s too late—they too are Muslims!

The furor over Cope’s pain au chocolat tale was still on the mid-day TV news today in Paris.

-We watched as France’s Prime Minister proclaimed his determination to go after all forms of “extremism.”

On the same show there was also video of hundreds of outraged French workers, whose jobs are at risk because of factory shutdowns, being blocked by riot police from entering the lustrous automobile show currently going on in Paris. One of the factories being shut down is Peugeot.

-The TV news also had live coverage of French President Holland presenting his plan to totally overhaul France’s creaking education system. Unemployment among French under 25 is 23%.

After the President had finished, one expert interviewed on the news show asked, with the government having to drastically cut back its budget, where the money for reform would come.

As he was talking, a crawl ran across the bottom of the screen, a bulletin about the round up members of the internal investigation unit of the Marseilles police. Turns out 19 of them have been hauled in, targets themselves of corruption charges.

-One bright spot:  A sponsor of the TV News today was the French Justice Ministry, with a major job offer: they’re looking for more prison guards.

 Meanwhile, some 1200 French troops remain in Central Asia, continuing to support the “War on Terrorism.”

Toulouse-who will profit? Sarkozy's gambits

Even before Mohammed Merah-a 23 year old French punk and part time garage mechanic turned jihadi—died in a hail of bullets in Toulouse, the horrific affair had already become the focus of France’s current heated presidential campaign.

No one benefited more from the crisis than President Nicholas Sarkozy, for whom law and order has always been a calling card. But after acting admirably presidential during the most ghastly moments of the crisis, calling for national unity and a temporary halt to electioneering, once Merah had been disposed of, Sarkozy abruptly reverted to the erratic manner that has also been his hallmark over the years.  

He announced his intention to present legislation to the French parliament making it a crime for people to travel abroad for terrorist indoctrination or consult jihadist Web sites.

Predictably Sarkozy’s tough proposal immediately drew fire from a wide range of critics.

As I argue in another blog, the president’s proposals are precipitous, and, above all, a dangerous threat to French civil liberties. Punishing people who –for whatever reason—choose to read the contents of certain proscribed Internet sites, would, in effect, oblige France to create a new category of law enforcers—very much akin to the  “Thought Police” so terrifyingly portrayed by George Orwell in 1984.  

France already has enough laws on the books to deal with the terrorist threat without crippling its democratic traditions.

Another tack taken by Sarkozy, this time to hobble his opponents on the left, is to wrap himself in the national flag and maintain -as Sarkozy immediately did--that it is despicable for anyone to blame French society for the outrageous actions of Mohammed Merah and the obscene rampage in Toulouse.

Sarkozy’s challenge is a blatant attempt to sweep France’s enormous social problems—particularly the integration of the country’s 5-6 million immigrants of Islamic origin--under the carpet, at least during the election campaign.  It was also a bet that, with the French,  outraged by the events of the past few days,  would turn against any attempts by Sarkozy’s opponents to take up the issue of integration at this time.

Indeed Sarkozy’s theme was immediately amplified by four deputies from his UMP  who called for revision of the French Code of Nationality. They’re after regulations that would make it easier to dispatch the hordes of delinquents and trouble-makers in the banlieues, like Mohammed Merah, (“scum” Sarkozy once famously called them) back to the lands of their forefathers.

After all, the UMP deputies argue, the only thing about Merah “ that was French were his identity papers”.

The statement is absurd. As the leftist  “Liberation” editorialized this morning,

“Merah is certainly a monster, but a French monster and monsters also reveal the fabric of a country. For how many generations can a child born French be sent back to his Algerian origins, and for how many generations will the origin of his ancestors make him a foreigner in the country that is his?”

For further background, readers might be interested in other recent blogs I’ve written over the past few days on Mohammed Merah and the slaughter in Toulouse.

  

Toulouse Aftermath: Is It really?

Mohammed Merah, a teenage loser, a petty thief and unemployed garage mechanic, who achieved instant worldwide notoriety as the latest symbol of Islamic jihad went down in a hail of bullets early this morning.

He leaves a string of unanswered questions and paradoxes in his wake.

Such as, to what degree was this beardless, hash-smoking, lacoste-wearing  young tough actually linked to al-Qaeda, as he claimed to police and reporters?  To what degree was he really a self-declared jihadist, acting almost entirely on his own?  An individual target, rather than part of an organized cell, a target much more difficult for police in France and throughout Europe to deal with.

--Another paradox, mentioned in my previous blog, but well worth repeating, because it leads to a further question:

France has chosen to spend hundreds of millions of dollars sending troops to Afghanistan to support Nato and the U.S.  The presumed theory being to prevent that country from remaining a breeding-ground for terrorists to attack France and Europe and the U.S.

But it’s almost certain that Merah, like hundreds of young would-be jihadists throughout Europe of Muslim descent, was drawn to Afghanistan, exactly because French troops had joined in the invasion of that Islamic country.

Which brings up another irony (and question for Mohammed Merah.)   

Why, if he was such a rabid jihadist, did Mohammed Merah attempt in 2010 to enlist in the French military, specifically the Foreign Legion? For some reason—either because he was rejected straight off, or got cold feet—he never wound up in uniform.

If he had, the young man who became an overnight symbol for the Clash of Civilizations, might with—just a slight twist of fate--have joined French troops in Afghanistan battling Islamic militants.

Another question: what impact will this bloody national trauma have on the presidential elections, the first round due next month. Difficult to say at this point, but many commentators think that—despite attacks from the far right that he has not been tough enough on radical Islamists—the speedy resolution of the affair will only bolster an embattled President Nicholas Sarkozy.

[The French and American authorities will presumably also have to explain the fact that Mohammed Merah was reportedly also on the U.S.  "no-fly" list.] 

Ironically, it was a similar tense standoff  in 1993 that first brought Sarkozy to the national spot light:

He was then the mayor of Neuilly, a tranquil community just outside Paris. when a gunman wearing a dynamite belt burst into a local school and demanded ransome to reslease eight hostages. 

With incredible aplomb, Sarkoy talked the gunman into releasing one child and—with the TV camers rolling—walked out of the classroom with the youngster in his arms. 

After 46 hours of talks, the gunman was finally killed by police sharpshoorters. The seven remaining hostages were freed unharmed. Sarkozy was launched.

The similar bloody denouement of Toulouse notwithstanding, whoever becomes France’s next President will continue to face enormous problems—and threats.

How many other Mohammed Merah’s are out there? 

Toulouse: The Nightmare is not over

The horrific chain of 7 murders in Toulouse, France that have stunned this country, could have been lifted directly from a television thriller. In fact, this whole terrible affair has been a nightmare scenario that, for decades, has haunted authorities in France, Europe—and the United States. 

And the nightmare is far from over.

Mohammed Merah, a 24 year-old French man of Algerian origin, a few years ago gets involved with a Salafist network in France. According to the little that is known so far, Merah then heads off to Afghanistan where he links up with al Qaeda. In 2007, he is arrested for planting bombs and jailed for three years by the Afghans, but he  escapes in a Taliban-led breakout. He is later picked up by Pakistan authorities in 2010 and released.

Mohammed returns to Toulouse where his family lives and bides his time. Then last week with the most deadly aplomb, he kills three French soldiers and four days later rides his stolen motorcycle to the entrance of a Jewish school near his home and methodically shoots down a rabbi and three Jewish students.

And, in the age of You Tube and the Internet, to ensure that his gruesome act will some day be witnessed by all, around his neck he wears a video camera.

Islamic leaders in France have made clear how horrified they are that anyone—including Merah himself –would attempt to link his vicious acts with Islam. French President Sarkozy is calling for national solidarity. The leader of the Jewish community in Toulouse has declared himself “immensely relieved” by the news that the killer has been caught.

But the crisis highlighted by Merah is far from over.

The problem, of course is that Mohammed Merah is just one of between five to six million French, most of Muslim descent living in France. A large number reside in shabby, banlieues of the country’s major cities, where housing is dilapidated, unemployment high, and bitterness rampant.  

Meanwhile, the current political storm--about public street prayer, permitting new mosques, banning burkas, and controlling hallal butchers--that has roiled this country has ensured that many Muslims feel even more marginalized.

There is also a considerable burden of history. Incredibly, last night—around the same time as police were planning how to apprehend Mohammed Merah in Toulouse—my wife and I were watching a gripping movie on French TV depicting the courageous attempts of a young Algerian girl brutally tortured by French troops in Algeria as her country fought a bloody struggle for independence. (Was Merah watching the same flick? )

But what counts far more than colonial history to young French Muslims, is the fact that France chose to join Nato and the United States in invading Afghanistan. Thus, Mohammed Merah’s calculated targeting last week of four French soldiers. Ironically, three of them were also of North African origin, but, in his Salafist eyes, that probably made their “treachery” even more condemnable.

The ghastly, methodical slaughter of the rabbi and three Jewish school children four days later were—Mohammed Merah has already told the French police —revenge for the young Palestinian children killed by the Israeli army in Gaza.

(Did he realize that, in fact, the four people he murdered at the Jewish school were all Israelis?)

The bottom line is that there is no way that, knowing these facts, anyone can credibly write off these events as another despicable case of anti-Semitism: the same kind of deeply embedded racial hatred that has come down through the ages; the virulence that fueled the Holocaust and the dispatch with which French police rounded up Jews for the Nazis during World War II.

Mohammed Merah’s anti-Semitism was probably not driven as much by ancient loathing —but more by the actions of Israel over the past few decades--the expulsion of the Palestinians, the rampant expansion of West Bank settlements, the invasions of Lebanon, the massive attacks on Gaza, take your pick.

To prove the point, the various upsurges of anti-Semitic attacks in France have corresponded precisely with each upsurge in the bloody conflicts between Israel and the Palestinians.

Whether Israel’s defenders feel the country’s actions are justified or not is almost bedside the point: those actions are regarded as outrageous in the eyes of millions of European Muslims, who watch the graphic coverage on TV and the Internet of all these grisly events—including the regular statements of Jewish leaders in France and elsewhere that they fully support Israel’s actions.

As outspoken Israeli commentator, Uri Avnery, one of the most acerbic critics of his country’s policies, has pointed the irony that Israel, created as a haven from anti-Semitism for Jews around the world, has instead, by its actions, become the greatest promoter of anti-Semitism around the world.

So, what to do?

Beef up anti-terrorism efforts even further? It turns out that Mohammed Merah was already on a “watch list” in the Toulouse region of some 600 people, from Islamic radicals to right-wing bigots. Which is how the police, through some keen detective work, finally managed to run him down. He was on that list because Pakistani police had notified French authorities after spotting the young man in 2010.   

We can be assured that anti-Terrorist units in France and across Europe have infiltrated Salafist groups and have their own watch-lists.  So why not take action?

Because if there were indeed 600 names in Toulouse, then across France and Europe, we’re talking thousands—perhaps tens of thousands --of such people. There is no way to keep them all under round-the-clock surveillance.

Then expel them all.  French citizens?  

Arrest them.

On what grounds? On whose evidence? 

Of course, anything is possible as we’ve seen in the U.S. since 9/11, and we can be sure in the current super-heated political climate in France, we’ll hear the most extreme demands.

You can also be sure that that any massive crackdown will only further increase the alienation of young Muslims. 

And, in the end, there will almost certainly be plenty of bloody-minded young men and women who will slip through the net.

How about dealing with the root problem? Launch massive programs to really integrate deprived Muslim communities in France and throughout Europe: housing, schools, jobs, etc. In fact, President Sarkozy has been making an important effort to provide better housing, but a few years of effort can not overcome decades of  prejudice and neglect.

In my view, a much more immediate way of at least alleviating the issue would be for France to pull out of Afghanistan. The adventure has cost the country hundreds of millions of dollars, and some eighty-four dead soldiers, including four recently murdered by an Afghan soldier they were supposedly training. The Afghan campaign has been a disaster for all concerned.  The U.S. is headed for the doors, seeking only a seemly way to exit.  The French could show the way.

You can be sure, however, that there will be many who will cite the Toulouse killings to argue just the opposite: that the fact that Mohammed Merah may have received some terrorist training in Afghanistan is proof of the threat that jihadis operating there still pose to Europe. Thus, the imperative need to persevere until the Taliban and their allies and defeated, the threat totally liquidated.

But the problem is that, as the past decade has brutally demonstrated,  despite a huge investment in treasure and blood by the U.S. and its allies, such a military victory is not in the cards. The only way out is some kind of deal with the Taliban and their allies—a deal whereby they take a share of power, with the understanding that any attempt to turn their country again into a training ground for terrorists targeting Europe or the U.S. will be dealt with by drones and special forces, not massive troops interventions. 

Indeed, there is a strong argument that the American and Nato presence in the Muslim world have done more to ignite the outrage of young Muslims elsewhere than any ragtag training camps. Why would Mohammed Merah have gone to Afghanistan if it were not for the presence of French troops in that Muslim country?

Which brings us to Israel and Iran.

Some militant Israelis—and their backers in the U.S.—will use the Toulouse attacks to bolster the case for bombing Iran. The argument: just imagine if that Al Qaeda killer in Toulouse and others like him throughout Europe and the U.S., just imagine if they had access not just to a 45 pistol and a Kalashnikov, but to a nuclear weapon, furnished by Iran.

One would hope however, that the Toulouse attack would give Israeli hawks pause. In assessing the risks of bombing Iran, Israeli intelligence analysts have been speculating about the kind of retaliation their country might face.

It’s clear now that not just Israeli citizens would be at risk.  

In fact, compared with the 191 people killed and 1,800 wounded when al-Qaeda inspired terrorists bombed the railway in Madrid in 2004, and the 52 people killed and 700 injured in coordinated suicide attacks on the London Underground in July 2005, France so far has had it easy.

Imagine the incredible mayhem if, one day, terrorists like Mohammed Merah decided to target The Chunnel linking Paris and London?

Toulouse Killings-When do we download the video?

The cold-blooded killing of a rabbi and three students at a Jewish school in Toulouse, France yesterday have left the French shocked—and dismayed. What was driving the killer? No one knows. What is clear is that he went about his grisly work with the cold-blooded aplomb of an executioner, or someone who had once been professional military.

Apparently, he also carried a video camera around his neck. Will we shortly see his victims terrified faces posted on You Tube, in the pages of Paris Match--or on one of the hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of sites that regularly spew racial venom across the Internet. More on that to come.

But first, what brand of venom?

Many commentators have already decided the killer was driven by the same brand of rabid anti-Semitism that fueled the Holocaust. One Italian journalist, a regular columnist for an Israeli newspaper, citing the rising number of anti-Semitic incidents in France and much of Europe, spoke apocalyptically of a new Shoah, warning all Jews to flee not just France but all of Europe for safety in Israel before it is too late. 

The problem with the theory that the killer was solely driven by anti-Semitism is that, in two other previous attacks last week, apparently the same assassin shot to death three French paratroopers and seriously wounded another. The soldiers were all Arab or black, and appeared to have been targeted specifically, witnesses said.

In other words, judging by his victims--Jews, Arabs, blacks--peoples of other racial origin, who the French right have traditionally regarded as not being truly French, no matter how many generations their families may have lived in this country. It is this sentiment that drove the French police to do much of the dirty work for the Nazi’s deportation of Jews in France during World War II.

It is this spirit, unfortunately, that also underlies the mounting resentment in France and across Europe of the continent’s growing Islamic population. That resentment is further fueled of course by the fear that, as their inroads on traditional culture increase, they will actually take over Europe.

Indeed, over the past years, violent attacks on Muslim targets in France—assaults,  insults, destruction of mosques and cemeteries,  have also seen an alarming increase-up 31% just last year. “France for the French” and “Arabs Out” were slogans recently sprayed across gravestones of Muslim soldiers who had fought for France in World War I.

Such racist sentiments are widespread among all classes in France, as messages approvingly forwarded to myself and my wife by educated, middle-class friends and acquaintances make clear.

Unfortunately, Nicholas Sarkozy himself has played a shameful role in fueling French xenophobia: the view of us and them.

This despite the fact that, he immediately rushed to the site of the slaughter in Toulouse, and spoke movingly of how the slain children were “our children, they are not just your children.”

There is no reason to think Sarkozy ( son of a Hungarian father and Greek half- Jewish mother ) is not sincere.  But since taking office, and increasingly over the past few months, as elections approach, the President has been pandering to the right and virulent anti-immigrant feelings.

He has threatened to suspend France’s participation in Europe’s 25-country open border agreement, unless other states do more to block illegal immigrants and refugees from entering Europe. He has also, however, attacked legal immigration.

That’s for starters. Rather than concentrating on basic issues like providing more jobs for the French, Sarkozy has lately taken on the thorny question of the way French meat is slaughtered.

As the New York Times editorialized just a couple of days before the Toulouse massacre, “In a particularly vile gambit from a man who already brags about banning the burqa in public, Mr. Sarkozy now pledges to protect consumers from unknowingly eating halal meat. He called for legislation requiring meat labels to note the slaughtering methods used. This proposal originally came from Marine Le Pen, presidential candidate of the xenophobic National Front. Mr. Sarkozy first called it frivolous. Then adopted it.

“Five million to six million Muslims now live in France, almost a tenth of the total population. It is cruel to keep family members from joining them and cruel and destructive to subject their religion to mockery. Ms. Le Pen is currently running third in the polls. Regrettably, Mr. Sarkozy has no problem being frivolous or cruel if it means he can peel away some of her voters.

Meanwhile, in Israel while the country’s leaders clarion the evils of anti-Semitism, many of their own right-wing supporters are the most rabid of Islamophobes.

For example, as the New Yorker pointed out a couple of weeks ago,

Dov Lior, one of the most important rabbis in the West Bank, extolled Baruch Goldstein—who, in 1994, machine-gunned twenty-nine Palestinians at the Cave of Patriarchis in Hebron—as “holier than all the martyrs of the Holocaust.”

Lior also endorsed a book that discussed when it is right and proper to murder an Arab, and he and a group of kindred rabbis issued a proclamation proscribing Jews from selling or renting lands to non-Jews. 

Figures such as Lior are not speaking from the wilderness. They are central to  Benjamin Netanyahu’s continued hold on government.

I’ll bet that, if it hasn’t already happened, that a right-wing Israeli official or editorialist will cite the vicious Toulouse attack as further justification for Israel to bomb Iran. The argument: imagine what would happened if, instead of being armed with a 45 pistol, the anti-Semite had access to a nuclear weapon. We will not wait again for the world to act!

But before Americans start feeling too smug about all this, just this past January, a  prominent New York Shi’ite mosque with a branch in Pakistan and three homes were firebombed.  No one was injured.

Another firebomb exploded inside the Al-lman School in the Imam Al-Khoei Islamic Center in Jamaica, Queens. Approximately 80 people were inside the mosque center when two or three Molotov cocktails, at least one made from a Starbucks bottle, were thrown at the building.

Those attacks came less than a week after the Council for American Islamic Relations (CAIR) said, “We are witnessing an unprecedented increase in rhetorical and physical attacks on the American Muslim community and Islam.”

It said that mosques have been targeted in arson and attacks and by vandals in more than a dozen states, stretching from California to New York, including the Midwest and southern states.

If you have the stomach for it, plunge into the virulent currents of racial hatred that thrive in the Internet. For anti-Semitism, start with the Holocaust Deniers at http://www.ihr.org. For rabid Islamophobes, some of whom, like Pam Geller, are still regular features on U.S. talk shows, check out http://www.jihadwatch.org/.

Or, you might just examine more closely the kinds of “jokes” and emails you half-jokingly exchange with your own more articulate friends.