heinrich

The arrival Wednesday morning of a special El Al flight at Ben Gurion
airport with 200 French Jews immigrating to Israel was a beautiful thing. As
they disembarked, to the buzz of news crews from around the world, the new
arrivals broke out in song and dance as Prime Minister Ariel Sharon welcomed
our brothers and sisters home. It was enough to turn the greatest cynic into
a sobbing idealist.

The scene was significant not simply because every time a Jew moves to
Israel we see the Zionist dream come true. It was significant also because
it came just a week and a half after Sharon, in a moment of moral leadership
and clarity, told the Jews of France, "If I have to advocate to our brothers
in France, I will tell them one thing: Move to Israel, as early as
possible."

In the first six months of 2004, the French Interior Ministry recorded 510
anti-Jewish attacks or threats. During the whole of 2003, only 563 such
incidents were reported. Yet, in the wake of Sharon's call for French Jews
to come to Israel, where they will be able to live proudly, if not safely,
as Jews, French President Jacques Chirac went ballistic. If there is
anything the French hate, it is moral clarity.

Sharon's remarks coincided nicely with France's success in bringing the
entire European Union on board in voting for the UN General Assembly
resolution condemning the security fence. That resolution was itself founded
on the International Court of Justice's ruling that Israel has no right to
build the fence to protect ourselves from Palestinian suicide bombers.

It is no coincidence that France was acting in an overtly hostile manner
toward the Jewish state when Sharon made his declaration. In recent years,
rarely a day has gone by without some French leader doing something to make
common cause with those devoted to the annihilation of the Jewish state.

From the French ambassador to Britain's statement calling Israel a "sh-tty
little country," to former French Prime Minister Michel Rocard's declaration
that the creation of Israel was "a mistake", to its persistent support of
Arafat despite mountains of evidence implicating him as a current and active
mastermind of terror, France has made it plain that it is an opponent, not
an ally, in the Arab-Muslim war to destroy us. So yes, it was sweet to see
200 Jews telling us that they see their future here and not in France.

The problem with France is not simply that one in five French citizens voted
for an avowed Holocaust-denier in the last election. Nor is it just that
almost every week we hear another story about a synagogue torched, a rabbi
beaten, a Jewish cemetery or Holocaust memorial defaced with swastikas or
Jewish children terrorized on the subway or on their way to Hebrew school.
Nor is it that France hates Israel. The French hating Israel is nothing that
keeps anyone here awake at night.

The problem with France, rather, is that it has appointed itself arbiter of
global justice, and in so doing inserted itself as a key factor in the US
presidential race.

Senator John F. Kerry, the Democratic presidential nominee, has made his
objections to Bush administration's foreign policy a defining issue of his
candidacy. During this week's Democratic national convention in Boston,
speaker after speaker took to the podium and declared that under a Kerry
presidency, the US would not act "unilaterally." A Washington Post analysis
of Kerry's basic message to American voters noted that Kerry's major theme
is a "restoration" of US positions during the 1990's under the Clinton
administration.

As former Clinton administration official and current Kerry foreign policy
adviser Richard Holbrooke put it to the Post, the Bush administration
advocated "extremist ideas" that had "never had a voice in the policymaking
bodies of the executive branch." One such idea, the Post paraphrased, was
"acting unilaterally." But what does "acting unilaterally" mean? It does not
mean "going it alone." After all, there are several dozen other countries
actively involved in US operations in Iraq as well as in Afghanistan.

Neither does "acting unilaterally" mean that in Iraq the US is acting
outside of a clear UN Security Council mandate. Ahead of the US-led
operations in Kosovo in 1999, in which Holbrooke played a key role, Russia
used the threat of its Security Council veto to prevent the US from taking
action under a UN umbrella. Yet no one has ever accused the US of acting
unilaterally in Kosovo.

What "acting unilaterally" actually means to Holbrooke and Kerry is that the
multilateral coalition Bush assembled in Iraq does not include France. It
was France that prevented a UN Security Council resolution backing the
US-led invasion, and it was France that led the EU and NATO to reject US
requests to forge coalitions under whose aegis the US would lead the war
against Saddam's regime.

With its UN Security Council veto, its membership in NATO and its leading
position in the EU, France has fashioned itself the indispensable ally for
Eurocentric Americans. This it has done in spite of the fact that France has
opposed almost every single US foreign policy initiative since September 11.
Yet, in spite of France's overt hostility, administration critics still
believe that the US cannot garner a politically palatable coalition for
action on the international stage without French involvement.

One of the truly disturbing aspects of France's success in so positioning
itself is that the veneer of respectability of a French-approved coalition
is so thick that even when such coalitions fail abysmally, no one seems to
notice. Thus, according to a recently released report by Human Rights Watch,
it was the French forces who were most responsible for NATO-led Kosovo
force's decision to remain garrisoned as thousands of Kosovar Christians
were evicted from their homes and villages by Albanian Muslims even as they
were begged to come forward and protect these minorities. But who's
noticing?

It is hard to know precisely what a Kerry presidency would hold in store for
Israel specifically.

Yes, it is true that he seems to pay inordinate respect to outspoken
Israel-bashers such as former President Jimmy Carter and Carter's National
Security Advisor Zbigniew Brzezinski. Then again, Bush appointed the harshly
anti-Israel Marine General Anthony Zinni to be his Middle East mediator
shortly after assuming office.

Yes, it is true that Kerry seems determined on forcing Israel back to the
negotiating table with Arafat and using Dennis Ross and Martin Indyk as his
emissaries in spite of the colossal failure of every policy the two men
advocated during the Clinton presidency. But Bush has adopted the Road Map,
which formally, if not practically, gives the EU, Russia and the UN the
status of arbiters in the Palestinian conflict with Israel.

One thing though, is clear enough. In the unrelenting emphasis Kerry places
on a certain brand of "multilateralism," he is providing undue, unreasonable
and unacceptable legitimacy to a country that does not wish Israel well.
Kerry can choose to be a friend of France, or he can choose to be a friend
of Israel. But this is one area where he can't have it both ways.

jerusalem post


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