France's Relentless Hostility to the Jewish State

by Guy Millière • February 18, 2016 at 6:00 am

France today is one of the main enemies of Israel -- maybe its main enemy -- in the Western world. France's disregard of the threats faced by Israel is more than simple willful blindness. It is complicity.
At a time when Mahmoud Abbas constantly encourages terror and hatred against Israel, and when murders of Israeli Jews by Palestinian Arabs occur on a daily basis, France's anti-Israel relentlessness can only be seen as the latest extension of France's centuries-old anti-Semitism.
France's "Arab policy" has gone hand-in-hand with a massive wave of Muslim immigration. France has quickly become the main Muslim country in Europe. More than six million Muslims live in France, and make up approximately 10% of the population. The Muslim vote is now an important factor in French politicians' decisions; the risk of Muslim riots is taken into account.

In 1967, then French President Charles de Gaulle (left), a few months after imposing an arms embargo on Israel, publicly described Jews as an "elite people, sure of themselves and domineering." At right, Iranian Foreign Minister Javad Zarif hugs then Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius at the close of nuclear talks in Geneva, Nov. 23, 2014.

On International Holocaust Remembrance Day, January 27, Hassan Rouhani, President of the Islamic Republic of Iran -- a regime that denies the fact that the Holocaust occurred and does not hide its intention to commit another holocaust -- arrived in Paris for an official visit.

Two days earlier, Rouhani had been in Rome, where the Italian authorities, in a gesture of submission, covered up the nude statues of Rome's Capitoline Museum.

Rouhani thanked Italy's Prime Minister Matteo Renzi for his "hospitality". He did not thank President François Hollande for having hosted him on January 27.

No French journalist or politician mentioned International Holocaust Remembrance Day. French journalists spoke only of Hassan Rouhani's "moderation" and "openness," despite Iran's dire human rights violations. Hollande evoked the rebirth of a "fruitful relationship" between Iran and France.