(One of the more intellectual right-wing blogs out there)
http://www.theaugeanstables.com/essays-on-france/paris-notes-spring-2006/When the Ostrich Lifts up Its Head“Nous sommes tétanisés,” said my French friend. [We are paralyzed.]
The French are beginning to wake up, beginning to lift up their Ostrich head from the sand. As opposed to the frequent dismissals I ran across in the past – when it wasn’t accusations of racism – I now met an increasing number of people willing to say, “we don’t disagree” (the French really don’t like to say “you’re right”). But, as my friend put it, we don’t know what to do. “We’re paralyzed.”
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First, the Danish cartoons. Most every Frenchman I spoke with (especially the non-Jews, who are in most denial about the religious dimension) mentioned them. Even the French, who do not have much of a sense of humor about other people making fun of them, understood that the Muslim reaction revealed a level of immaturity beyond anything they had, in their cognitively egocentric slumber, ever imagined. It was for them a sobering look at a religious mafia, intimidating anyone who dare criticize it. The cultural gap between the French and an Islam which, they had begun to acknowledge, played an increasingly powerful role among its immigrant population, lay bare before their eyes.
Second, the slow torture of Ilan Halimi, a Jewish youth, kidnapped and tortured to death over a three-week period in one of the “territoires perdus” of the Republic, awoke the French to the depth of barbarity that had grown up under their noses. That Islamic hatred played a role came across unmistakably with the calls to the Jewish parents and the reading of Quranic verses over the sound of their son tortured in the background. But the gang was really more a mostly Muslim collection of immigrant sons from the hood, from the “territoires perdus.”
Indeed the most terrifying part of the tale came when the leader of the gang got arrested in the Ivory Coast (whence his parents had emigrated before his birth). His picture smiling and making the V sign with his fingers shocked people with its utter lack of any sign of conscience, and his subsequent interview confirmed the impression. Indeed the photo was so shocking, that after consulting with three lawyers, AFP took the photo down because it was “a blow at the private life” of the suspect, but “above all, there was no imperious necessity to diffuse this highly provocative photo.”
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One might even say, some of the Gaulois were finding some clarity on who were the good guys. At the first café we went to, late Saturday night, the waiters, who began the evening making snide remarks about us behind our backs (including the way I wore by beret), upon realizing that were Americans who spoke French, grew quite warm. It turned out that at least two of them wanted to move to America.
“What about anti-Americanism?” I ask the waiter who was marrying an American girl and hoping to go to the States to start a restaurant.
“Oh, that was bad back at the time of the Iraq war, but no longer,” he said, with a reassuring confidence.
We go to Normandy. At the hotel, the woman confides to us: “My two sons are planning on leaving. While I pay for their education they’ll stay, but as soon as they’re done, they’re planning to leave and they want to go to America.”
“Why?”
Because the country’s going to hell. Because the bureaucracy favors the Arabs.
She tells the tale of her son-in-law getting refused family aid, but, since he’s dark-skinned, when he wears a keffiya, he gets it right away. Urban legend? Symbolic? Of what?
Because even though the riots didn’t strike their neighborhood [Bayeux centre ville], they weren’t far away. And because they believe that the riots were only a dress rehearsal.
Jews Leaving; Muslims Rising...
The Halimi Affair, whose Jewish and Muslim dimension the French Jews know about in much greater detail than their Christian and post-Christian fellow-citizens, has that community in a panic.
People are affolés, like the thirties. People are leaving. Especially the Jews. But if you try and make the parallel to the thirties, you get cut off. Your colleagues won’t talk to you, stop having you speak at colloquia.
In 2002, the cry was “Synagogue brulé, République en danger.” In 2006, it was “Ilan Halimi brulé, République en danger.”
It’s gotten worse. Before we had hope. We told ourselves, they’re unaware. If we can get them to look at this clearly, we can persuade them. Now we’ve persuaded them, and they do nothing.
The level of appeasement is depressing: every time the Muslims get angry, the French trip over themselves to calm their passions. It’s far worse now. I am losing hope for France.
Even the French communities in good neighborhoods, with fancy Kosher restaurants nearby, are feeling the cold wind blow.
Now, in market places, in schools, even when it doesn’t involve immigrants, Jew is used as an epithet. You can even call a Chinese “dirty Jew” if you want to insult him.
In other words, in the world of honor-shame in French culture today, the Jews are the dhimmis, the ones publicly singled out for humiliation.
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“Since 9-11, there’s been a notable change in the Muslim community. Before you rarely heard Arabic spoken. Now they speak it loudly, the mothers aggressively take over areas in parks and gardens. They started to pick up their heads and feel pride.”
“Over 9-11?”
“Yes, it gave them a sense of power.”
At the fac, the political tensions are high, the attitude towards Jews violent. Zionists are the enemy. A few Jewish students went to a meeting on Palestine at one of the more radical campuses in Paris, Jussieu. The feral hatred, the wild enthusiasm for Hamas, the overwhelming consensus that Israel should not exist… one has a sense that the revolting behavior that Oriana Fallaci denounced in September 2001 is alive and well. Indeed, some of the students attending were spotted and denounced as Jews, and beaten on the spot by the supporters of Palestinian freedom.
At the end of the conference, although they had remained discreet and quiet, my friends were spotted by the service d’ordre, “as a Jew” and are literally physically attacked and knocked down. My friends, girls as well as boys, getting punched, insulted, will leave injured and bloody from the building. Busted lips, punches, kicks. Lynching of Jews in the heart of my own university. And no intervened.
I ask a Jewish colleague, brilliant man with profound articles on questions like ressentiment, the emotional dimensions of thinking, and conspiracism, whether he plans to stay. “I have a one year old daughter named Yaël; I don’t know if I want her going through the French public school system with a name like that. And his calculation, now just based on the prevailing attitude, is prophetic. Within a decade over a third of the school cohort will be Muslim in France.
As another Jewish family confirmed to me, the youth are planning to leave. French Jews are in Israel, Montreal, the US, raising the housing market by buying not pied-à-terre, but escape hatches, places to go to… in case. The FBIs [French-born Israelis], noting the one-foot-in-Israel-one-in-France style of the new arrivals, call it the “Aliyah du Boeing.”
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http://www.brusselsjournal.com/node/1616Muslims in the French ArmyFrom the desk of Paul Belien on Fri, 2006-10-27 13:22
Last year I read somewhere that 15% of the French army consists of Muslim soldiers and that this is the reason why the French authorities do not have the army restore law and order in the Muslim suburbs. So far, I have not been able to find confirmation of this figure in official statistics. In September 2005, the Institut français des relations internationales (French Institute for International Relations, IFRI) published a report stating that 10 to 20% of the army is of immigrant origin, most of them North African. “Their loyalty is continuously questioned,” Christophe Bertossi of IFRI said.
Other countries (the Netherlands, Austria,...) also worry about radical Muslims in the military.
Related article:
Dutch Worry About Radical Muslims in the MilitaryFrom the desk of Paul Belien on Tue, 2006-05-02 12:05
The Dutch secret services AIVD (state intelligence) and MIVD (military intelligence) are investigating an unknown number of Muslims within the Dutch army. Last Saturday, the Dutch newspaper Het Parool reported that a growing number of Dutch soldiers sympathizes with radical Islamists. The paper refers to the annual report of the MIVD, which states that it conducted a number of investigations into “alleged radicalisation of military personnel” as “there are signs that indicate a possible radicalisation of Muslim individuals or groups within the armed forces.”
During the past years the Dutch army, in order to contradict allegations of discrimination, has applied a policy of preferential recruitment among immigrant youths. The MIVD warns, however, that youths between 17 and 25 are more easily influenced by radical Islam, while the experience of Dutch troops in Afghanistan and Iraq can also lead to an enhanced radicalisation.
At least ten to twenty groups of Muslim terrorists are said to be active in the Netherlands, planning assassinations of politicians and the bombing of the AIVD headquarters.
General Bert Dedden, the retiring MIVD chief, said today in the newspaper De Stem that the Ministry of Defense has started procedures to oust a radical Islamist from the army. According to Dedden about ten Dutch soldiers are known to adhere to Salafism, Wahabism or other forms of extremist Islam. These people can be a danger to Dutch national security, the general explained, because they can persuade others to become disloyal to the army or because they have access to protected buildings or grounds. “We try to prevent the disappearance of sensitive information, weapons or other material,” General Dedden said.
Other European countries also have growing numbers of Muslims soldiers. Last March three conscripts of the Austrian army refused to salute the Austrian flag because they said this was incompatible with their Islamic religion. It is said that one of the reasons why the French authorities did not employ the army during the November 2005 riots, despite calls to do so, was because 15% of the French armed forces are made up of Muslims. Last month a Swiss website reported that some are concerned about the rising number of Muslim soldiers in the Swiss army. The number of Muslim citizens in Switzerland has grown from 16,000 to 310,000 during the past four decades.
Topic: Why France is screwed: 10-20% of army is Muslim (Read 5159 times)