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.”

Anders Breivik's Victims-Also Guilty?

At his trial in Oslo, Norway, Anders Behring Breivik shocked onlookers yesterday when he announced he would “like to offer a large apology” to those innocent bystanders injured or killed in his bombing of an Oslo government building last July.

As for the other 69 people—mainly teenagers—who he gunned down in cold on the nearby island of Utoya—well, that was something else: They bore some of the fault themselves.    Shockingly, similar views are echoed by Islamophobes in Europe and the U.S., some of whom, these days, are even  considered a respectable part of the political right.

Those kids on the island, according to Breivik were “legitimate targets.” Their crime, as it were: attending a summer camp hosted by the youth wing of the ruling Labour party. Indeed, they were political activists, working for the “deconstruction of Norwegian society: Their insidious weapon: “multiculturalism, which is leading to a “Muslim invasion” of Norway.”

Sound like the unhinged ravings of a madman. Where could Breivik have got the idea that he was part of a much larger worldwide organization?

In fact, he was--and is. And I thought I thought I’d written enough on this issue, but this is no time to forget that despicable as his views are, they are grounded in the spewings of a network of Islamophobes in Europe and the United States.

One of the most prominent and respectable, being Pamela Geller, who runs a blog called Atlas Shrugs, is rabidly pro Israel, plays a prominent role in right wing Republican circles, and is a regular on Fox News.

Last August, a few weeks after Breivik’s shooting spree, Geller lashed out at critics who highlighted the role of her site as a cheering circle for the kind of racist garbage that Breivik spewed.  (Think Progress wrote an excellent piece on this last August)

First, Geller made perfectly clear that she was ”not condoning the slaughter in Norway or anywhere” and violently disapproved of the killings.

That said, Geller than performed a neat 180 degree turn, and delivered a political dissection of Breivik’s young victims—remarkably similar to Breivik’s mind-boggling justification yesterday in the Oslo Courthouse.

Geller—who has labeled Obama “President Jihad--was aghast, she explained, because  “the jihad loving media never told us what anti-Semitic war games they were playing on that island.”

Yes, the slaughter was horrific, she said “On the other hand..what those kids were being taught to do was a different kind of grotesque.”

Indeed, the youngsters Breivik was targeting were far from innocent: they were the future leaders of the party responsible for flooding Norway with Muslims who refuse to assimilate , who commit major violence against Norwegian natives including violent gang rapes, with impunity, and who live on the dole”

Turns out however, as Geller views the world, that even worse than the crime of promoting multi-culturalism, those kids were also listening to speakers who actually criticized Israel. Norway’s Foreign Minister, for example, had told them “That the Palestinians must have their own state.the occupation must end and the wall must be demolished and it must happen now.”  

Further, wrote the outraged Geller, some of the games played at the camp dealt with breaking the Israel blockade of Gaza.

Knowing all that, said Geller, “Glen Beck was not far off when he compared it to the Hitlerjugend of Young Pioneers.”

She also posted a picture taken of the young campers on a sunny hillside just a few days before the massacre.

Under the picture was the caption: “Note the faces which are more Middle Eastern or mixed than pure Norwegian.”

Later, that caption was deleted. As Think Progress pointed out, it can still be found on an earlier screen shot.

Norway's Andres Breivik: Our standard bearer?

As the trial of Norwegian mass murdered Andres Breivik opens in Oslo, we look on in horror at his arrogant posturing, his clenched fist salute, his regret that he didn’t kill more that seventy-seven. But the fact is that this outrageous young Norwegian, is in no way the crazed psychotic we would like him to be—an unrecognizable monster who by his ghastly acts has exiled himself from civilized society.

Deranged he may be, but his beliefs and bloody actions are very much a natural product of the mounting fear and hatred of Muslims throughout much of Europe these past few years, as well as the United States.

Indeed, going about their daily lives there are probably tens of millions of Europeans (and Americans), shocked at Breivik’s actions, who would, just the same, probably agree with the premise that drove him to action: Muslims are a threat to the Western world.

In France where I live, for instance, five to six million Muslims represent about ten percent of the population, the highest concentration in Europe. We are constantly receiving emails forwarded by friends--middle-class, well-educated, professionals mind you--who are convinced that, with their growing numbers, and higher birthrate, the Muslims will soon predominate in France.

The next step, the argument goes, is that they will insist that their own fundamentalist teachings, the Sharia, become the rule of law in France—for all the French.

For instance, an email that arrived just yesterday was from a blogger outraged by a Socialist Party proposal to give the vote to all residents of France--including immigrants who are not yet citizens.  “France is for sale!” reads the message. ‘When they will have the right to vote, they will make pro Sharia candidates, as is already being done, and they will then hold in their hands the future of YOUR children!”

Which brings us to an interesting question the court in Norway will probably never address: would Breivik ever have launched his murderous attacks if he had not viewed himself as part of a global crusade, cheered on by his fellow besieged Europeans, and even more by rabid Islamophobes on Internet sites around the world.

In fact, as I wrote at the time, most of the rambling manifesto posted by Breivik before he launched his attacks last July was not spun out of his own unhinged mind, but was drawn from the writings of notorious Islamophobes, such as Robert Spencer and Pamela Geller, the latter a regular on Fox News. 

Tellingly, Pamela Geller attempted to wash her hands of any pre knowledge of Breivik’s plans by excising a paragraph from one of his long rants which she posted in 2007. The portion cut out:  “We are stockpiling and caching weapons, ammunition and equipment. This is going to happen fast.”   

In fact, so many Internet sites now speak of Islam as a deadly menace, so many of them issue a call to arms before it’s too late, is it any wonder that a few deranged individuals take that threat seriously, decide to give their lives, as valiant champions if you will, of “our Christian way of life”.

Bottom line:  Either there is a mortal threat to our civilization, or there isn’t. If there is, then how can you possibly condemn a heroic young fellow like Andres Breivik who decided to heed a clarion call to selfless action?

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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.