Friday, November 11, 2011

Sarkozy Meets with World Jewish Congress in Paris

Nadene Goldfoot
Though French President Sarkozy was accidently caught calling Netanyahu a liar and that he couldn't stand him when chatting with Obama, he has met with the World Jewish Congress on Wednesday for 90 minutes at the Elysee Palace in Paris and has told the members that he has defended Netanyahu throughout his political life. 
Sarcozy told the Jewish group that he also feels that the Palestinians must recognize Israel as the nation-state of the Jewish people first in order to have a peace settlement. 

He is critical of Israel's "settlement construction in "the West Bank", two words that rankle me.  Cities in Judea and Samaria are not "settlements".  They aren't settling in.  They've already been there for some time.  They are permanent.  "Settlements" is such a political word.  So is "West Bank" a term created by the Jordanians when they occupied Judea and Samaria illegally.  He still thinks there should be a freeze.

Sarkozy did admit that it should be perfectly all right for Jews to build in other areas.  Luckily, there were members who quickly explained why this expecting a freeze in Judea and Samaria was not applicable now, and how Israel waited more than a fair time for peace talks to happen and that they hadn't because Abbas refused to come.  He was planning on taking a different route through the U.N., evidently. 

At least he was opposed to full UN membership for the Palestinians and that's why France abstained, he explained. "Sarkozy told the Jewish leadership he felt that Israel had lost the media war and had failed to make its case to the international community that it wanted peace, according to the sources".

This befuddles me that the international community doesn't realize that Israel wants peace.  Do they not realize how long they have been enduring missile attacks from the Palestinians and held back for so long to not react and it did no good?  Do they expect Israel to just do nothing and be overrun and driven into the sea?  I think that the international community must be idiots not to know what is happening.  What more can Israel do to show that they want peace?  Here, even smoking a peace pipe would be useless.  I think this is just an excuse on Sarkozy's part for not being able to see truth for what it is.  They have many Moslems living in France with 5 to 10% of the population being Muslims and just don't want to cause an episode that they would have to deal with.  That and the need for oil keeps them from seeing reality as it is. 

Sarkozy plans on visiting with Netanyahu soon so as to mend the gaffe he has caused.  He says he needs to "clear up" a "misunderstanding."  That's going to be quite a trick since his words were caught on the mike and it didn't sound like any misunderstanding at all but an expression of how he really thinks about Netanyahu.  I'd call this his Freudian slip.  Actually, what Sarkozy has wanted to do is play an important part in bringing about peace between the Palestinians and Israelis. This would look great on his resume.   I'd say that he still has much to learn and to understand about the problem before being ready to be a moderator. 

Resource: http://www.jpost.com/DiplomacyAndPolitics/Article.aspx?id=245006
http://www.jpost.com/DiplomacyAndPolitics/Article.aspx?id=245254
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Religion_in_France

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