Israellycool

Ariel Sharon: So, how about those Mets..

Chirac: Stand there. Just like that. Perfect! Claude, can you bring me my dagger?

Eight out of 10 French people check their looks in the mirror at least once a day and say they like what they see, a survey by polling group BVA published this week showed.

Prime Minister Chirac has officially raised the French terror alert from “Run” to “Hide”. There are only two higher alert levels in France, which are “Surrender” and “Collaborate”.

 

The rise was precipitated by a recent fire which destroyed France’s white flag factory - effectively crippling their military.

Tokyo Governor Sued for Insulting French

 

A group of teachers and translators in Japan on Wednesday sued Tokyo’s outspoken nationalist governor for allegedly calling French a “failed international language,” a news report said.

 

Twenty-one people filed the lawsuit at the Tokyo District Court, demanding that Tokyo Gov. Shintaro Ishihara pay a total of 10.5 million yen (US$94,600) compensation for insulting the French language in remarks last October, national broadcaster NHK said.

 

In their suit, the plaintiffs accused Ishihara of saying: “French is a failed international language because it cannot be used to count numbers.”

 

“It’s natural for different languages to have different names for numbers and different ways of counting them, so it’s unacceptable for him to insult French in this way,” Malik Berkane, who heads a French-language school in Tokyo, told reporters at a news conference.

Tony Blair has refused to be drawn into a diplomatic row after the French president reportedly made insulting remarks about British food.

 

Jacques Chirac joked with German and Russian leaders: “One cannot trust people whose cuisine is so bad.”

 

As the G8 summit nears, Mr Blair said: “The G8 is going to focus on really important issues and to be quite honest I’m not going to disparage anybody.”

 

Mr Chirac also reportedly said Britain had the worst food after Finland.

 

Mr Blair was asked to comment on remarks attributed to President Chirac while he was in Singapore to boost the chances of London being awarded the 2012 Olympics.

 

He was asked if relations with France would damage London’s bid and the G8 summit in Scotland later this week but the prime minister declined to give a definite answer.

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However, Tory leader Michael Howard said he would be happy to prove the French president wrong about British food.

 

“My constituency is one of the closest in England to France … I’d like him to come to my constituency, over to Folkestone and Hythe, and I’ll take him to some restaurants that will match anything he can see in France,” he said.

 

Mr Chirac’s comments were reported in French newspaper Liberation after several journalists overheard his jokes with Gerhard Schroeder and Vladimir Putin.

 

The remark was reportedly made to the Russian and German leaders 

 

“The only thing they have ever done for European agriculture is mad cow disease,” Mr Chirac said, according to the newspaper’s report.

 

“After Finland, it is the country with the worst food.”

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British newspapers on Tuesday were indignant about the remarks attributed to President Chirac.

 

The Times regarded the president’s reported comments as “an astonishing diplomatic blunder”.

 

The Daily Telegraph said the insult had heightened Anglo-French rivalries on the eve of the G8 summit and the 2012 Olympic decision.

 

The paper said Mr Chirac’s behaviour was “no way to conduct high politics”.

 

The Sun suggested that what it calls the president’s “sneering” remarks may turn out to be bad news for the Paris Olympic bid.

 

The paper’s logic was that he also criticised food from Finland - the homeland of two members of the International Olympic Committee.

 

In the House of Commons, the Conservatives said Mr Blair should tell Mr Chirac that “Scotland’s agriculture and food production is a major economic asset”.

 

Shadow Scottish secretary Eleanor Laing said Robert Burns had been right to compare French ragout and fricasse that “wad make her spew” unfavourably with the haggis - the “great chieftain o the puddin-race”.

Several French journalists stalked out of a Paris news conference when a Hezbollah official refused to answer a question from an Israeli reporter.

 

Sety Hendler, who writes for Yediot Achronot, asked Ali Daamouch, Hezbollah’s head of exterior relations, about the status of prisoner-exchange talks with Israel. Daamouch asked Hendler his nationality, and upon hearing that he was Israeli, refused to respond to the question. Hendler left the room in protest, and several other reporters joined him in solidarity.

 

On her way out, a French journalist chastised those who remained behind, “He refuses to respond to a Jewish Israeli journalist and you stay! It’s scandalous, it’s shameful!”

 

A non-Israeli journalist repeated the question and received a vague response from Daamouch.

French Ambassador to Israel Gerard Araud stunned Israeli diplomats during a lecture he delivered at his office Wednesday, after telling his listeners Israel enjoys a favorable French attitude compared to Arab countries.

 

“Israelis think sometimes they are discriminated against compared to the Arabs, but that’s not true. You enjoy a favorable attitude,” he said, and pointed to a series of joint Israeli-European projects to back up his claim.

 

The ambassador also chose to resort to humor when addressing French arrogance, hinting that Israeli haughtiness is worse. Araud also shared 
with his listeners his views regarding the “misunderstandings and wrong perceptions” in relations between the two countries.

The envoy, who heard scathing criticism over Europe’s one-sided policy expressed by Israel’s ambassador to the European Union, Oded Eran, replied: “We, the French, are always blamed for arrogance within the EU, but when I listen to my colleague Oded Eran, I believe that if we let Israel join the EU, it will only help France’s reputation.”

Araud also attempted to get to the root of European-Israeli misunderstandings, and noted one of the problems was the negative European stigma when it comes to the words “occupation” and “colonization.”

“Those are two words that you cannot justify or defend in any way in Europe,” he said.

The envoy also sought to counter what he called the myth among Israelis regarding the influence exerted by the Muslim minority on France’s foreign policy.

 

“First of all,” he said, “the numbers presented are completely mad. In the press here, I hear that (the population of) France is 10 percent Muslim, meaning 10 million people. Demographers who deal with the issue put it at just 6 to 7 percent.”

Araud added that even those numbers are misleading.

 

“Ninety-five percent of those (Muslims) aren’t extremists or militants. They also aren’t involved or integrated within our political system,” he said. “You can see a number of Jewish names but hardly one Muslim name. Maybe in another 20 years, you can complain. At present, it’s a completely mistaken view.”

Araud said that in Israel it’s also very commonplace to quote marginal officials hostile to Israel when the French themselves barely notice them at all.

But sometimes being anti-Israel is in the eye of the beholder.

 

The French ambassador recalled his visit to Israel as a young diplomat in 1982.

 

“They said I was so anti-Israel. Why? Because, as European diplomat, I said that there has to be a Palestinian state and one must talk with the PLO. Today that’s the expressed policy of the State of Israel. Maybe the problem was that we were right too early.”

Language, history, cooking and support for rival football teams still divide Europe. But when everything else fails, one glue binds the continent together: hatred of the French.

 

Typically, the French refuse to accept what arrogant, overbearing monsters they are.

 

But now after the publication of a survey of their neighbours’ opinions of them at least they no longer have any excuse for not knowing how unpopular they are.

 

Why the French are the worst company on the planet, a wry take on France by two of its citizens, dredges up all the usual evidence against them. They are crazy drivers, strangers to customer service, obsessed by sex and food and devoid of a sense of humour.

 

But it doesn’t stop there, boasting a breakdown, nation by nation, of what in the French irritates them.

 

Perhaps unsurprisingly, Britons described them as “chauvinists, stubborn, nannied and humourless”. However, the French may be more shocked by the views of other nations.

 

For the Germans, the French are “pretentious, offhand and frivolous”. The Dutch describe them as “agitated, talkative and shallow.” The Spanish see them as “cold, distant, vain and impolite” and the Portuguese as “preaching”. In Italy they comes across as “snobs, arrogant, flesh-loving, righteous and self-obsessed” and the Greeks find them “not very with it, egocentric bons vivants”.

 

Interestingly, the Swedes consider them “disobedient, immoral, disorganised, neo-colonialist and dirty”.

 

But the knockout punch to French pride came in the way the poll was conducted. People were not asked what they hated in the French, just what they thought of them.

 

“Interviewees were simply asked an open question - what five adjectives sum up the French,” said Olivier Clodong, one of the study’s two authors and a professor of social and political communication at the Ecole Superieur de Commerce, in Paris. “The answers were overwhelmingly negative.”

 

According to Mr Clodong, the old adage that France is wonderful, it’s just the French who are the problem, is shared across Europe.

 

“We are admired for our trains, the Airbus and Michelin tyres. But the buck stops there,” he said.

 

Another section of the study deals with how the French see the rest of Europe.

 

“Believe it or not, the English and the French use almost exactly the same adjectives to describe each other - bar the word ‘insular’,” Mr Coldong said. “So the feelings are mutual.”

A prominent French bishop has warned that any sacrilegious practices by extremist Jews to Al-Aqsa Mosque will create a powder keg in the Middle East.

 

Speaking to IslamOnline.net, Michel LeLong said the Israeli government would be held accountable for any harm done to the mosque, Islam’s third holiest shrine, by the ultra-Orthodox Jewish groups.

 

He described threats by ultra-Orthodox Jews to storm the mosque as “an unacceptable scandal which contravenes with the principle of tolerance and respect of other religions, particularly Islam”.

 

“Muslims undoubtedly have historical rights in the Al-Quds [occupied East Jerusalem],” stressed the French bishop who chaired a Vatican organization on Islamic-Christian relations.

 

Asked on Jewish bids to raze Al-Aqsa Mosque and build on its ruins their alleged Haykal (temple of Solomon), LeLong said the mosque is a “red line” that should not be crossed.

 

“It is an axiomatic fact and cannot be changed,” he added emphatically.

 

The French bishop warned against heeding “extremists calls to revive history on the basis of illogical claims and religious myths inciting violence and fanning up intolerance.”

 

Jews claim that their alleged Haykal exists underneath Al Haram Al Sharif, which combines Al-Aqsa Mosque and the Dome of the Rock. 

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Bishop LeLong said that Israel is obliged by international law to end its occupation of Al-Quds.

 

“It is very important to view Al-Quds as a political problem created by the Israeli occupation of the city by force,” he added.

 

He said UN Security Council resolution 478 of 1980 clearly condemned the Israeli control over the holy city.

 

Under the Geneva Convention, the bishop added, Al-Quds residents should be protected because they live under Israel’s occupation which started in June 1967.

 

“Why on earth does the international community rush to implement other UN resolutions on countries like Iraq and Syria and doesn’t move a finger when it comes to Israel?” he wondered.

President Jacques Chirac praised the “ambitious programme of transformations” in Saudi Arabia and promised France would be “at the side of the Saudis” in the fight against terrorism.

Chirac: “I love your goatee..it looks a bit like France“

Crown Prince: “I try my best. Now would you kindly loosen your grip on my hand?”

While the French and Israeli national soccer teams gear up for Wednesday night’s World Cup qualifying match at Ramat Gan’s National Stadium, hundreds of French Jewish fans are torn over which side to support.

 

Some 1,000 French Jews arrived earlier this week on a solidarity visit, and purchased more than 300 tickets for the game, but pangs of dual loyalty still torment the group.

 

“There are a lot of French Jews who love Israel and want Israel to win,” said Dr. Joel Mergui, an organizer traveling with the group, “although I think that the majority will end up rooting for France.”

The threat to disrupt the national anthem brought back bad memories of a soccer game in the winter of 2001 at the beautiful Parc des Princes stadium in Paris. Pundits believed that game, the first time a French team went up against an Algerian team, played an important role in triggering Islamic extremism in France. Millions of French television viewers could not believe their eyes when their fellow citizens of the Muslim faith began booing when their adopted country’s anthem was played. The booing returned when the French scored a goal.

“I think it is mixed, whom the people will root for,” said Alain Calmat, the former French minister of youth and sport. “I hope that the French will be supported… I’m French, so I very much hope that France will win.”

Hermant is afraid history is repeating itself. “I must say I am terribly surprised at the politics that have been created around the game,” he said. “In France, we wrote about the game in terms of sport. Here, it’s something else. It’s very strange that since we landed in Israel, people at the airport and the hotel have welcomed us very nicely. Even Barthez.

“Apparently something happened to him in front of the cameras,” Hermant said. “Maybe he lost his head.”