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French President Accused of
Working for Israeli Intelligence
Furl the flag
By Gamal Nkrumah
11/04/07 "Al-Ahram"
--- - -As if his marital challenges were not enough cause
for concern, "Sarco the Sayan" has suddenly emerged as the most
infamous accolade of French President Nicolas Sarkozy. The
influential French daily Le Figaro last week revealed that the
French leader once worked for -- and perhaps still does, it
hinted -- Israeli intelligence as a sayan (Hebrew for helper),
one of the thousands of Jewish citizens of countries other than
Israel who cooperate with the katsas (Mossad case-officers).
A letter dispatched to French police officials late last winter
-- long before the presidential election but somehow kept secret
-- revealed that Sarkozy was recruited as an Israeli spy. The
French police is currently investigating documents concerning
Sarkozy's alleged espionage activities on behalf of Mossad,
which Le Figaro claims dated as far back as 1983. According to
the author of the message, in 1978, Israeli prime minister
Menachem Begin ordered the infiltration of the French ruling
Gaullist Party, Union pour un Mouvement Populaire. Originally
targeted were Patrick Balkany, Patrick Devedjian and Pierre
Lellouche. In 1983, they recruited the "young and promising"
Sarkozy, the "fourth man".
Ex-Mossad agent Victor Ostrovsky describes how sayanim function
in By Way Of Deception: The Making and Unmaking of a Mossad
Officer. They are usually reached through relatives in Israel.
An Israeli with a relative in France, for instance, might be
asked to draft a letter saying the person bearing the letter
represents an organisation whose main goal is to help save
Jewish people in the Diaspora. Could the French relative help in
any way? They perform many different roles. A car sayan, for
example, running a rental car agency, could help the Mossad rent
a car without having to complete the usual documentation. An
apartment sayan would find accommodation without raising
suspicions, a bank sayan could fund someone in the middle of the
night if needs be, a doctor sayan would treat a bullet wound
without reporting it to the police.
And, a political sayan ? It's rather obvious what this could
mean. The sayanim are a pool of people at the ready who will
keep quiet about their actions out of loyalty to "the cause", a
non-risk recruitment system that draws from the millions of
Jewish people outside Israel.
Such talk sends chills down spines, especially Arab and Muslim
ones. Indeed, the revelation did not go unnoticed in Arab
capitals or come as much of a surprise. Paris can be a sunny
place for shady people. When it comes to intelligence gathering
on behalf of Israel, a question mark is immediately raised on
the moral calibre of the person in question. But, how does this
scandal influence France's foreign and domestic politics?
It is of symbolic significance that Israeli Prime Minister Ehud
Olmert was on a state visit to France in the immediate aftermath
of Le Figaro 's exposé -- ostensibly to discuss Iran's nuclear
agenda and the Palestinian question. Proud and prickly France
under its supposedly savvy new president hopes to play a more
prominent role in the perplexing world of Middle Eastern
politics. On Monday, Sarkozy flew to Morocco, the ancestral home
of many of France's Jewry, soon after his Mossad connection was
made public. There is no clear evidence that the revelation is
to make France any more unpopular in the Arab world than it
already is, especially not in official circles.
On the domestic front, however, there are many conflicting
considerations. The Jews of France now display a touch of the
vapours, in sharp contrast to the conceited triumphalism with
which they greeted his election: "we are persuaded that the new
president will continue eradicating anti-Israeli resistance,"
Sammy Ghozlan, president of the Jewish Community of Paris
pontificated soon after Sarkozy's election. France is home to
500,000 Jews, mostly Sephardic Jews originally from North Africa
and Mediterranean countries.
Sarkozy's own maternal grandfather Aron Mallah, hailed from
Salonika, Greece, and is said to have exercised considerable
influence on his grandson. Even though raised as a Roman
Catholic, "Sarkozy played a critical role in moving the French
government to do what is necessary to address the ill winds that
threaten the largest Jewish community in Western Europe," noted
David Harris, the executive director of the American Jewish
Committee. Sarkozy, after all, was a political product of the
predominantly Jewish elite neighbourhood of Neuilly-sur-Seine,
where he long served as mayor.
France's Muslim minority was far from surprised by Le Figaro 's
revelations, even though some may have feigned disappointment.
Others have been more forthright. "France is not run by
Frenchmen, but by lackeys of the Zionist International who
control the economy," lamented Radio Islam, of militant Islamist
tendencies. When Sarkozy was France's minister of interior and
clamped down hard on Muslim immigrants, calling mainly Muslim
rioters "scum" in a widely-publicised interview, they retaliated
by calling him "Sarkozy, sale juif [dirty Jew]". Obviously there
is no love lost between the five million-strong French Muslim
community, the largest in Western Europe, and the French
president. He has grounds for concern. He assiduously courts the
Israelis. That much is known.
In the scientific annals of French politics there is a
cautionary tale of pantomime. French presidents are not always
what they seem. There are, however, two key observations
concerning Sarkozy. One, is Sarkozy's intention of implementing
a "new social contract" between employers and employees, capital
and labour. This smacks of Thatcherism. His determination to
force a "cultural revolution" in the collective national psyche
is a trifle farcical. And unprincipled to boot. He recently
introduced legislation -- in tandem with his pension cuts,
calling for genetic profiling of immigrants to ensure any
relatives intending to immigrate are linked genetically. The
strategy appears to be to soften the blow of the social security
cuts by appealing to xenophobic racism.
The state of race relations in France is an even more muddled
picture than the devastating caricatures by French-African
comedian Dieudonne suggest. He is notorious for playing the part
of a Hassidic Jew who mimics the Nazi salute. Few politicians
blame their troubles on cynical comedians, though, and Sarkozy
is no exception. His fans point accusing fingers at the
"irresponsible press".
The real magic starts when you power Sarkozy with his ex-model
wife. She, after all, played a part in the freeing of the
Bulgarian nurses and a Palestinian medical doctor. She, too, is
of Spanish-Jewish ancestry. But, that may be nothing but an
insignificant aside. France, generally, regarded their bust-up
as something of a bad joke. Unlike the Americans, the French do
not take the private lives of their presidents terribly
seriously. There was the late François Mitterrand, for example.
Hardly anyone in all France raised an eyebrow when it transpired
that he had an illegitimate daughter. The French are more
concerned with the ideological orientation and political
affiliation of their president and are not in the least
interested in their private affairs -- at least not in any
political sense.
The interesting twist, however, is that the contest between
Cecilia and Nicolas Sarkozy is a comic cross between a lover's
tiff and the battle of the sexes. It appears befuddled French
voters are being forced to turn a blind eye to their leaders'
antics. Sarkozy's divorce follows hard on the heels of the
separation of France's first female presidential candidate
Ségolène Royal, the "gazelle" of French politics, from her
lifelong lover François Hollande barely a month after she lost
the presidential race in May. Moreover, at the tender age of 19,
Royal sued her father for his refusal to divorce her mother and
pay alimony and child support. That was way back in 1972; barely
a decade later she won the case against her father. Ironically,
Royal's own mentor the late French socialist president
Mitterrand was notorious for his extra-marital affairs, the most
conspicuous being his love affair with Anne Pingeot and
subsequent disclosure towards the end of his life that he
fathered an illegitimate daughter Mazarine with her.
And, what of the voters? The latest hazard facing the French
president has been his socio-economic policies. Sarkozy's
showdown with the trade unions threatens to turn into a deciding
moment for France. Foreign policy, too, has come under much
scrutiny. France has become fanatically Atlanticist under the
presidency of Sarkozy. Although, unlike US President George W
Bush, Sarkozy does not make much noise about his own dubious
religious convictions. The commonest criticism of Sarkozy is
that he is overly conscious of his religious heritage, a trait
that is not appreciated by the fanatically secular French
political establishment. France is culturally the most
irreligious country in Europe, itself the most secular and
anti-religious of the world's continents.
For a politician acclaimed for his acumen, it is startling that
Sarkozy has been tripped up by events he should have seen
coming. His sagacity obviously failed him this week. Le Figaro
let the cat out of the bag. And his wife, too, after shopping
with Lyudmila Putin, the Russian first lady, apparently decided
that she had had enough of being treated as "part of the
furniture" and made their rift very public.
France is now in the awkward position of having no first lady.
The 49 year- old former model, lawyer and political advisor is
by no means media shy. "I gave Nicolas 20 years of my life," she
told the popular French magazine Elle in a special feature which
she asked for personally, despite the awkwardness of its timing.
She had long complained of being politically peripheralised.
Troubling as that interpretation is, it is in a way a consoling
one for Sarkozy. He is now free to handle his opponents without
his maverick Cecilia breathing down his neck or, on the
contrary, disappearing at crucial moments.
Even with his personal life in tatters, Sarkozy is obliged to
hoist the French tricoleur high in the international arena.
Which flag is it to be?
© Copyright Al-Ahram Weekly
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