Salut!

France and anti-Semitism: when the right for once seems right, is the left left wanting?

My look at the strangely changing nature of French politics, in which the far right reinvents itself as defender of Jews while elements of the left seem, by comparison, anti-Semitic. But be careful. As I try to explain below, in this Comment piece for The National (to which my usual thanks for permission to reproduce), there is nothing simple about the divisions arising from the deadly Israel-Hamas conflict ....

On Monday, French police arrested eight youngsters, aged from 11 to 17, suspected of chanting slogans calling for the death of Jews in an unsavoury episode on the Paris Metro last month.

Filmed on October 31 by another passenger, the group also targeted the police, sexual minorities, and France itself, before mocking one woman brave enough to intervene. “We are Nazis and we are proud,” they chanted during a tirade of hatred that lasted no less than 10 minutes, just weeks after Hamas killed about 1,200 people in southern Israel.

Image of the Battle of Gaza 312BC: from The illustrated history of the world

Voltaire, Gaza and beyond: why authorities mind you speaking your mind

That's me done with Voltaire. He's a great starting point for any discussion of free speech. But you always have to remember he didn't say it. He certainly thought it, but he never actually said or wrote - as far as is recorded - the words routinely attributed to him. For one last time, I invoked the great French philosopher for just that sort of discussion (and thanks to The National for letting me reproduce my articles here) ...

 

Nicolas de Largillière

Shamima Begum: the only moral decision is to make her face UK justice

This is not a post that will bring me popularity. It's not meant to. It is the argument I make against the British Government's decision to strip Shamima Begum of citizenship, even though she has no other viable nationality, because as a child she ran off to join the Islamic State.

I do not in any way seek to minimise the horrific nature of that sickening death cult or to excuse Begum for any crime she may have committed. But I strongly believe that there is no moral or intellectual case for what the Government has done. Bring her back, punish her if it is proved that she has broken the law - as civilised neighbouring countries do in comparable cases  - and strive to ensure she is genuinely deradicalised or, if suspicion remains, monitored

My Comment piece for The National (which consents to its reproduction here)...

Photo, issued by the Met police, of the girls as they began their dark adventure in 2015. Shamima Begum is on the right

A long-awaited homecoming but uncertain future for a Frenchwoman who swore allegiance to Isis

 

 

A piece for The National tracing the troubled life and bad choices of a Breton gendarme's daughter who looked up to macho Isis fighters and joined them in Syria ...

 

In the relative comfort of a prison outside Paris ― after nearly five years in a spartan Kurdish detention camp in north-eastern Syria ― a policeman’s daughter once described as a dangerous terrorist now talks of regaining “the life of a mother and a woman”.

Emilie Konig, now 37 and the mother of five children, three of them born in Syria, was among the 16 French women repatriated to France this week along with their 35 children.

She must now answer for her actions during a Syrian experience that began in 2012 when she turned her back on western society and her middle-class origins to join ISIS.

Behind the veil: Agnes de Feo (quoted below) spent 10 years researching Muslim women who wear the niqab to conceal their faces

Evian, a 'phantom museum' and moves to commemorate the historic accord intended to end Franco-Algerian conflict

 

Vladimir Putin's obscene attack on a neighbouring sovereign state, accompanied by the deliberate targeting of civilians, strikes many as a barbaric criminal enterprise carried out by a deranged dictator without trace of humanity or compassion. It reminds us, too, of an unquenchable global thirst for conflict. The Second World War ended 77 years ago but few visitors to Salut! would struggle to add to my list of the wars that have polluted post-war history: Korea, Israel-Palestine, Northern Ireland, the Falklands, Kashmir, Sri Lanka, Iraq, Iran, Syria, Yemen ... and, of course Algeria.

This is my piece for The National, a newspaper published in Abu Dhabi and which I helped to create, on today's 60th anniversary of the signing of the Evian Accords. The editor kindly permits me to reproduce my work here:

 

The signing of the Evian Accords on this day 60 years ago officially ended not only a bitter and bloody war of independence between France and Algeria but 132 years of colonial rule.

Named after the spa resort on the shores of Lake Geneva, where the French and Algerian delegations met to ratify its text, the 93-page agreement was meant to herald a new era of mutual respect and friendship.

From l'Algerie Mon Amour, an art exhibition marking the year of Algerian independence from France. It will continue ar the Institute of the Arab World in Paris until July. This item is listed as 'Baya, Musique, 1974, Gouache sur papier' and was donated by Claude and France Lemand

 

 

Reporting the Troubles. As Putin's odious war on Ukraine rages, journalists remember another conflict

 

 

A few minutes ago, I noticed on Facebook that a great French pal of ours, Hervé Amoric, is among the small army of brave journalists covering Putin's horrendous war, in his case from the western city of Lviv (Putin calls his invasion, and slaughter of civilians, a peace-keeping mission and apologists in the West swallow it whole).

Please stay safe, Hervé, and anyone working with you - I am thinking of poor Oleksandra 'Sasha' Kuvshynova, a young Ukrainian 'fixer' killed with a cameraman yesterday.

Hervé is based in London and Belfast. Few journalists know Irish politics and the story of Northern Irish Troubles better. A second volume of Reporting the Troubles has just been published; if a third edition should ever be planned, Hervé should be encouraged to contribute.

 

The Bataclan and terraces, death-cult ISIS killers and Hasna Ait Boulahcen, a woman drawn into their terrorist web

I loathe everything about what Hasna Ait Boulahcen became, a woman willing to consort and hide with terrorists after the murderous Paris attacks of 2015. But I recognise the horrendous reality of her childhood and youth and how, along with a gullible nature, it helped to propel her towards a choice that involved such despicable actions (no actual terrorist deed but a willingness to find refuge for mass killers). This is how I described for The National a film, premiered today in Venice, depicting her life ... I once again thank my editors for permission to reproduce it here

Hasna Ait Boulahcen

As the trial started of the alleged surviving member and accomplices of the ISIS gang that murdered 130 people across Paris in 2015, a cinema depiction of the life of a woman drawn into the terrorists’ web had its world premiere at the Venice Film Festival on Wednesday.

Hasna Ait Boulahcen, 26, was mistakenly labelled Europe’s first female suicide bomber when she was killed in a blast at a flat in the Parisian suburbs besieged by police three days after attacks on the Bataclan concert hall, restaurants and bars, and an international football game at the Stade de France.

The teacher beheaded for doing a teacher's job. Did pupil/s aid his killer?

Image: Silanoc UPDATE (Thursday Oct 22): two pupils aged 14 and 15, suspected of taking money from the killer, are among seven people 'mis en examen', as close as it gets in French law to being formally charged, with complicity in a terrorist attack. Among the adults are individuals accused of involvement in the online denunciation of Samuel Paty that may have led directly to his murder ...

 

It is not uncommon for me to reproduce here the work I have done for The National and successive editors have kindly given approval. It is less common for me to post straightforward news stories I've written, not least because knowledge about the events such reports cover tends to develop, often rapidly, and what is initially believed to be true sometimes turns out to be less so, or not at all.  The gruesome Islamist murder of a teacher in the Parisian banlieue is a reasonable exception because some of the emerging detail, about how the killer prepared and achieved his despicable mission, should be seen as widely as possible.

I have long believed that among the entirely sensible responses to terrorism should be the immediate arrest of anyone who had contact with the perpetrator/s. Yes, me included if for some reason I'd interviewed or otherwise met him/her/them. Innocents can be excluded quite quickly. This has happened following the Paris attack and what a shame the killer did not survive to see what he brought on his family, friends and associates ...