Israel. The Dreyfus of our time.
S E E D E D C O N T E N T
Israel. The Dreyfus of our time
Despite lip service offered by senior French officials, Jew hatred still runs rampant in France as it did during the Dreyfus Affair. The similarity is striking.
By Barry Shaw, Israel National News, September 10 2019
The Venice Film Festival awarded their Grand Jury Prize for best movie to Roman Polanski’s ‘An Officer and a Spy.’
The film is about the trial and wrongful conviction of a Jewish officer in the French military in 1894.
The Dreyfus case symbolized the rise of French anti-Semitism. The Jewish officer, Alfred Dreyfus, was wrongly accused and sentenced to life imprisonment on distant Devil's Island on charges of being a traitor spying for Germany.
He was innocent. The real traitor was Major Walson-Esterhazy.
But, when Emile Zola wrote the famous "J'Accuse!" denouncing the anti-Semitism of the French military court that made a Jew the scapegoat, the French officer class rallied round each other, put Esterhazy on trial, acquitting him of all charges having deported their Jew.
To add sin upon sin, they brought Dreyfus back for a second trial and again found him guilty.
Convinced of his innocence, Alfred's older brother, Mattieu, spent his time and money organizing a campaign to prove his brother's innocence.
Polanski’s movie centers on the figure of Colonel Picquart who found a discrepancy on the handwriting on key documents between that of Dreyfus and the hand of Esterhazy.
Despite obstructions put in their path by the French military they discovered evidence that implicated other people, including Esterhazy.
It took until 1906 before Dreyfus received a presidential pardon.
By that time Theodor Herzl, inspired by the trial that he had attended as a journalist, had embarked on the Zionist cause, convinced that Jews would never be entirely safe until they had their own homeland.
But still, until today, the Dreyfus stigma hovers over France as we have seen with regular outbreaks of violent and deadly anti-Semitism against French Jews. Many have found refuge in the Jewish State of Israel.
However, the French Defense Secretary, Lawrence Farley, recently announced his intention to posthumously promote Alfred Dreyfus to the rank of general.Farley said that this belated honor was also made in memory of the French Jews who were deported to Nazi concentration camps by the French police during World War Two.
There are still echoes of the past in France with the French military objecting to the proposal of having a statue of Dreyfus placed in the forecourt of the French General Court. It was placed instead inside the Jewish Museum.
Despite lip service offered by senior French officials, Jew hatred still runs rampant in France and the main threat is solidly contained in the Muslim migrant community.
This the French have not addressed with any conviction. Until they do, French Jews will continue to enjoy the protection of Israel.
It should be beholden on the French to have Polanski’s movie screened on their own soil at the Cannes Film Festival.
In a sense, Israel is the Dreyfus of today. The Jewish state is constantly accused of criminal charges that Israel did not commit.
The accusers cover up for the crimes of others, those they support and welcome into their societies. They shower these criminals with money, honors, invitations to join their austere organizations. They do not question their evil intent. Their Esterhazy must be protected lest their finger pointing at the collective Jew be considered as something that dare not speak its name.
And so it is the Middle East Jew, that imposter, that must continue to be condemned while the Palestinian Esterhazy is allowed to literally get away with murder and treachery against the whole notion of justice and peace.
Barry Shaw is the International Public Diplomacy Director at the Israel Institute for Strategic Studies. He is a writer, author and speaker on important issues relating to Israel and the Jewish people.
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The numbers of French Jews emigrating to Israel is not because they prefer the Israeli weather. The reason is because the Jews of France are constantly being attacked - not that you would have read about that in the mainstream media, that if they report it might have to indicate who the perpetrators were.
When I was in Netanya, Israel, about 15 or 16 years ago I took note of the number of French signs on stores and restaurants, and heard French being spoken.
Dear Brother Buzz: Regrettably true.
Not just in France either.
Ha Tikvah is both for the present and future tense.
P&AB.
Enoch.
I think this article explains why even though Israel has an air-tight unbeatable legal case as to its rights to Judea and Samaria, there isn't an unbiased court in the world who would agree with it - except perhaps in Israel, and I bet the US Supreme Court would agree if the actual argument were presented to it. Otherwise, Israel is Dreyfus.
In 1971 I was in Yehudah Veh Shomron (Judea and Sumaria) doing consulting work for then General Eliazar Ben-Elizar and the IDF.
I was shot at going in and coming out of that area to IDF bases by residents.
Not for what I was doing.
I was strategizing to create ways to keep all sides as alive and injury free as possible.
I was fired upon because I am Jewish.
Where were the courts with unilateral agendas then?
The answer is where they are now.
To them, Jewish blood is cheap.
At long last, have they no sense of shame?
E.
Yes
and no.
That is kind of mid-way between Tel Aviv and Haifa, right?
Anyhow, have to agree with you and Enoch here.
I remember about the time of your visit to Netanya, reading about Jews leaving France and moving to Israel for the exact reasons mentioned here.
Pretty good parallel between Alfred Dreyfus affair and the international biased judgement on Israel.
We have one entity all in favor of a 2 state solution and surrounding entities all about a 1 state solution and Israel is the bad guy...
Israel is the target of overt and covert antisemitism. The continued bad treatment of Jews in some countries in Europe is truly sad.
This is true. Even I would not be surprised that a more than insignificant number of North American Jews, in some twisted reasoning, fall in to this category.
It's closer to Haifa.
I was there immediately after the Passover Massacre, and viewed the devastation in the Park Hotel banquet room, and interviewed the doctors at Netanya's Laniado Hospital about the victims. Even the MUSLIM doctors cried when they described what they had to deal with. It was one of the occasions that have solidified my feelings about radical Islamist terrorism.
Right, it was a little bit further north than mid way.
The ex had a lot of family in Haifa, but stayed in Tel Aviv for University. Kind of a nice location too, between the University and the beach. Walking distance each direction.
As it turned out I worked lot with one of her cousins over on the "east coast". My term.
...the terrorist bombings...and Israel is the bad guy...smh.
Edit, wait a second, are you sure it was closer to Haifa?
LOL, of course maps and names change. I was mainly based out of El Al, which has seen a couple name changes itself.
Sorry, you're right. Netanya is closer to Tel Aviv than to Haifa. My memory is not so good these days. It's about 1/3 of the way from Tel Aviv to Haifa.
No problem Buzz. Not too far behind you there as I believed your first recollection in the first place.
Hell, I can't remember if the ex's cousin was named Ari or Avi and I worked with him on a pretty regular basis.
When I was there, for some reason I thought it was closer to Haifa, but your comment made me check a map.
I wasn't all that sure myself as usually when I went to Haifa it was a bus trip and just wanted to get to destination.
Usually from El Al to Tel Aviv was a Jeep ride with Avi. He would drop me off then head on up to Haifa. Then reverse the order when we had to go back.
I remember seeing lots of signs in Hebrew and French as well-- not only in Netanya.. At times lot of French jews fled France to avoid anti-Semitism-- many went to israel.
BTW, while the Dreyfus Affair was a dramatic story, in modern times for a long time there was less anti-Semitism in france than in many other European countries. The indigenous French were always a mixed lot in that regard.
However, afterJvast waves of immigration from North Africa occurred, anti-Semitism took off-- including a big increase in violent attacks on Jews. (This was not the same phenomenon as the Dreyfus Affair-- and the perps were not indigenous Frenchmen).
In recent times it had gotten so bad that many French Jews wanted to immigrate..to, among other places, Britain! ( A sick joke if ever there was one-- but true).
The fact that the French government has do so little, if anything, about the migrants' antisemitic attacks is no surprise considering that almost 10% of the French voters are Muslim, while less that 1% are Jewish.
A great rendition of the Dreyfus affair was depicted in the 1937 classic movie The Life of Emile Zola, which won a bunch of Oscars. Paul Muni's acting as Zola was brilliant.
That might be the kind of movie I could get interested in.
I am even wondering if I may have seen it once when I was very young?
Well, taking into consideration the heavy traffic on this seed, I would assume then that among the members of NT there are very few who have a clue who Alfred Dreyfus was, and in fact I'll take that a little further and remind those of you who recognize the name Emile Zola might even know that he was the French author who wrote the newspaper article with the heading "J'accuse" (which means, for those of you who don't understand French, "I accuse").
Actually I wouldn't be surprised if there were quite a few people on NT who couldn't locate France on a map-- and probably some who might not be able to lacate Europe....
The truth is that most people, the vast majority, dont know anything about Alfred Dreyfus. I know a little about it but I would have to go to an article or book about it to refresh my memory in detail.
There are literally millions of articles , videos and websites that all compete for peoples attention. And to a relatively tiny extent , its the same here on Newstalkers.
Israel is not a hot everyday item for most Americans the way it is for you. Sometimes your articles about anti-semitism or the ones about how horrible Muslims are get a good number of comments and sometimes they dont. At least you keep trying.
You continue to try to bait me. I have said over and over again that I don't have a problem with Muslims, but I do with radical Islamists, but then so do reformer Muslims like Dr. Jasser and others I have written about and praised. Since you keep baiting me, you force me to retaliate.
I have read the book that Polanski based his movie on, but if you can watch the classic movie The Life of Emile Zola you'll get an education about the Dreyfus affair.
Dear Brothers in Spirit and Ethics: I am indeed pleased to see the high moral ground taken on this topic here.
It is good to keep in mind that the most vocal supporting hatred and violence do not represent the good common sense approach of live and let live, do well by doing good; supporting virtue over vice that is the bedrock of most of us.
We need the voices of the righteous to be audible.
There are so many issues competing for our attention.
We need all the vocalizations of truth and multilateral understanding to avoid conflict we can get.
Please do keep them coming.
Peace and Abundant Blessings to One and All, Without Exception.
Enoch.