What happened in France?
One of the beauties of the Internet, is that I am not stuck just reading the London Free Press every day. Of all the newspapers in the world, I devotedly read two:- Ha'aretz, which is a left-wing, human rights-oriented Israeli newspaper (the online edition is in English), and The Scotsman, a newspaper that is both intelligent and weird, a combination of the New York Times and the National Inquirer, with the fey Scottish humour that enabled them to survive English occupation (and persecution). I was turned onto Scotland's national newspaper by Lukey, whoo happens to live in Belize, a small Caribbean country whose newspapers rival Canada's for boredom and second-hand content.
In ntoday's Ha'aretyz was an editorial of considerable brilliance, analyzing France's huge errors in social engineering. It is worth reading, so please feel free to do so:-
w w w . h a a r e t z . c o m
Last update - 16:23 14/11/2005 A country of erased identities
By Daniel Ben Simon
The signals of distress had been loud and clear for a long time. No decent Frenchman could ignore the growing Muslim anger, but they shut their eyes. They did not want to know.
The first cry of anguish was heard in the autumn of 2000 at the Stade de France, the fancy football stadium close to the immigrant neighborhoods of Paris. Some 100,000 Frenchmen crowded into the stands on a gloomy winter's day to watch a friendly match between Algeria and France. This was the first encounter between the two countries after the end of the French occupation of Algeria, which lasted 160 years and ended in 1960 in a bloody struggle that cost some one million victims. France initiated the game to show its former colony how much it loved it.
President Jacques Chirac sat in the grandstand, surrounded by members of the establishment. The moment the band began playing the French national anthem, thousands of people got to their feet and began whistling and booing. Chirac was beside himself. When the Algerians scored, the crowd went berserk. When the French scored, there were catcalls from the crowd. Toward the end of the match, angry spectators threw plastic bottles at the president and his entourage.
The incident made headlines and analysts spoke about how ungrateful the spectators, most of them of North African origin, had been. Parties on the political left and right condemned the "anti-republican" behavior of the immigrants. What amazed the French most was the fact that those who had protested the national anthem and the symbols of the republic were largely the youths who had been born in France. The general public expected them to behave like Frenchmen, but the youths behaved like Muslim residents of France.
France is a country where identities are erased, mercilessly. Anyone who does not assimilate into the country is seen as undermining it. Everyone - Christians, Jews and Muslims - is inculcated with the same values in school. There are no streams, no differences in the French education system. Only republican uniformity.
What in Israel is known as ethnicity is called communautarism in France. In the past few years, it exploded with a bang in every direction and threatened to split the uniformity into various splintered identities. It was against this backdrop that the government forbade the wearing of symbols that might reveal the origin of those wearing them. The law is universal, but everyone knew that it was not the skullcap or the cross that were causing sleepless nights to the country's leaders - rather the ominous awakening of the Islamic faith.
Simultaneously, the Muslim minority continued to demand equality, but the French continued to view them as foreign workers. Before the elections of 2002 in the country, the French foreign minister, Hubert Vedrine, visited Israel. When asked by Haaretz how he thought the Arab electorate would vote, he replied with surprise: "What Arab electorate? We don't have the same mess as you do. We don't know who is Jewish or Arab. We are all citizens of the republic."
Shortly after the law banning symbols was passed, I visited a school in one of the ghettos of the Seine St. Denis quarter outside Paris. All the pupils were children of Muslim immigrants. There were satellite dishes on almost every porch of the gloomy housing blocks. "What do you watch on TV?" the pupils were asked. "Only programs from the Arab countries!" they answered in unison. "And Al Jazeera," one of them shouted.
French television does not interest these residents because it does not represent them - nor do the media, politics, society or the state in general. They are sequestered in their ghettos, where their ethnic-religious identities are becoming stronger. They could not find role models outside. Only once in a while do they see a broadcaster who resembles them, or a senior journalist or politician who comes from their ranks, an academic who made it big. Six million Frenchmen felt unwelcome in their new country.
"They are not yet ready," said a professor of political science at the Ecole Normale Superieure, explaining why there was a lack of French Muslims at this prestigious institute. Only a few choice individuals have succeeded in entering the gates of other important institutes, such as the Polytechnique or the Ecole Nationale d'Administration, where most of the French elite are educated.
The Muslims' pain grew when they compared themselves to the Jews who came to France from the same countries. The latter's success aroused their envy and feelings of missed opportunities.
The writing was on the wall, but no one in the government or outside of it wanted to read it. Until the day Paris burned. Of all the immigrant-absorbing countries, France presented the toughest model of integration. It demanded of the immigrants total assimilation or nothing. Now it is clear that it went too far.
. I really think France, like the U.S.A. in tghe 1960s, is paying the price for not being a multi-cultural country, as the U.K. itself has paid with the summer bombings.
I always resented my mother-in-law for many reasons, not the least of which is because she'd always inundate us with press clippings, but this is MY livejournal, so....live with it:-)
Love,
Ian
In ntoday's Ha'aretyz was an editorial of considerable brilliance, analyzing France's huge errors in social engineering. It is worth reading, so please feel free to do so:-
w w w . h a a r e t z . c o m
Last update - 16:23 14/11/2005 A country of erased identities
By Daniel Ben Simon
The signals of distress had been loud and clear for a long time. No decent Frenchman could ignore the growing Muslim anger, but they shut their eyes. They did not want to know.
The first cry of anguish was heard in the autumn of 2000 at the Stade de France, the fancy football stadium close to the immigrant neighborhoods of Paris. Some 100,000 Frenchmen crowded into the stands on a gloomy winter's day to watch a friendly match between Algeria and France. This was the first encounter between the two countries after the end of the French occupation of Algeria, which lasted 160 years and ended in 1960 in a bloody struggle that cost some one million victims. France initiated the game to show its former colony how much it loved it.
President Jacques Chirac sat in the grandstand, surrounded by members of the establishment. The moment the band began playing the French national anthem, thousands of people got to their feet and began whistling and booing. Chirac was beside himself. When the Algerians scored, the crowd went berserk. When the French scored, there were catcalls from the crowd. Toward the end of the match, angry spectators threw plastic bottles at the president and his entourage.
The incident made headlines and analysts spoke about how ungrateful the spectators, most of them of North African origin, had been. Parties on the political left and right condemned the "anti-republican" behavior of the immigrants. What amazed the French most was the fact that those who had protested the national anthem and the symbols of the republic were largely the youths who had been born in France. The general public expected them to behave like Frenchmen, but the youths behaved like Muslim residents of France.
France is a country where identities are erased, mercilessly. Anyone who does not assimilate into the country is seen as undermining it. Everyone - Christians, Jews and Muslims - is inculcated with the same values in school. There are no streams, no differences in the French education system. Only republican uniformity.
What in Israel is known as ethnicity is called communautarism in France. In the past few years, it exploded with a bang in every direction and threatened to split the uniformity into various splintered identities. It was against this backdrop that the government forbade the wearing of symbols that might reveal the origin of those wearing them. The law is universal, but everyone knew that it was not the skullcap or the cross that were causing sleepless nights to the country's leaders - rather the ominous awakening of the Islamic faith.
Simultaneously, the Muslim minority continued to demand equality, but the French continued to view them as foreign workers. Before the elections of 2002 in the country, the French foreign minister, Hubert Vedrine, visited Israel. When asked by Haaretz how he thought the Arab electorate would vote, he replied with surprise: "What Arab electorate? We don't have the same mess as you do. We don't know who is Jewish or Arab. We are all citizens of the republic."
Shortly after the law banning symbols was passed, I visited a school in one of the ghettos of the Seine St. Denis quarter outside Paris. All the pupils were children of Muslim immigrants. There were satellite dishes on almost every porch of the gloomy housing blocks. "What do you watch on TV?" the pupils were asked. "Only programs from the Arab countries!" they answered in unison. "And Al Jazeera," one of them shouted.
French television does not interest these residents because it does not represent them - nor do the media, politics, society or the state in general. They are sequestered in their ghettos, where their ethnic-religious identities are becoming stronger. They could not find role models outside. Only once in a while do they see a broadcaster who resembles them, or a senior journalist or politician who comes from their ranks, an academic who made it big. Six million Frenchmen felt unwelcome in their new country.
"They are not yet ready," said a professor of political science at the Ecole Normale Superieure, explaining why there was a lack of French Muslims at this prestigious institute. Only a few choice individuals have succeeded in entering the gates of other important institutes, such as the Polytechnique or the Ecole Nationale d'Administration, where most of the French elite are educated.
The Muslims' pain grew when they compared themselves to the Jews who came to France from the same countries. The latter's success aroused their envy and feelings of missed opportunities.
The writing was on the wall, but no one in the government or outside of it wanted to read it. Until the day Paris burned. Of all the immigrant-absorbing countries, France presented the toughest model of integration. It demanded of the immigrants total assimilation or nothing. Now it is clear that it went too far.
. I really think France, like the U.S.A. in tghe 1960s, is paying the price for not being a multi-cultural country, as the U.K. itself has paid with the summer bombings.
I always resented my mother-in-law for many reasons, not the least of which is because she'd always inundate us with press clippings, but this is MY livejournal, so....live with it:-)
Love,
Ian