Israelis have become so accustomed to the idiotic reaction by world leaders whenever Israel goes to war, that we now get a sense of satisfaction from the mere fact that such reaction is not totally one-sided. One Israeli paper has had a headline today saying: "Europe refrains from one-sided condemnation of Israel." Hurray!

Israel's Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni explained today that "[t]he international community understands that Hamas is an extreme Islamist organization that spreads its hatred in the entire region, which is being supported by Iran. And the international community needs to understand that this is the translation of the right of Israel to defend itself, that there is no other alternative and we are doing what we need to do in order to defend our citizens."

But does it really understand?

The much admired President of France, Nicolas Sarkozy - no doubt a better friend to Israel than his predecessors, and someone who does understand the need to fight against terror - has called today for "an immediate stop to the firing of rockets on Israel and to the Israeli bombings in Gaza and calls for all parties to use restraint." The not-as-much admired British Prime Minister, Gordon Brown, has said: "I am deeply concerned by continuing missile strikes from Gaza on Israel and by Israel's response today."

To be fair, these statements do show a predisposition by European leaders to "understand" that deterioration was caused by Hamas' decision to allow - or more accurately orchestrate - rocket fire into Israel. Thus, they preach first for "stop to the firing of rockets" and only then to "Israeli bombings." But one has to wonder: why the mention of Israel? Why the concern about Israel's legitimate response to the daily rocketing of its civilians? Why only the reviled US administration has the courage and the clarity to respond to the Gaza operation without feeling the need to engage in linguistic acrobatics?

"The United States strongly condemns the repeated rocket and mortar attacks against Israel and holds Hamas responsible for breaking the ceasefire and for the renewal of violence in Gaza," [State Secretary Condoleezza] Rice said.

Middle East complications aside, it is, sometimes, as simple as that.

Is there possibly a downside to marrying a 40-year-old multimillionaire supermodel who is most comfortable with no clothes on?

For France’s president, Nicolas Sarkozy—who married Carla Bruni in a low-key ceremony in Paris on Saturday—the answer might be “yes.” A comfortable majority elected him only nine months ago, but Sarkozy has slipped to a 41 percent approval rating, down 13 points on the previous month. Delicious Distraction: Mr. and Mrs. Sarkozy

There are political explanations for Sarko’s plummeting popularity: the French economy only grew two percent last year, his tax cuts are deeply unpopular in the traditionally leftist country, and the cost of living is rising. This is toxic for a man who ran on a promise to boost the economy.

But ask anyone in the street and it’s not the GDP that they’re talking about—it’s the new Mrs Sarkozy.

The French have always tolerated their politicians’ private foibles. Chirac and Mitterrand had strings of mistresses without causing Clintonian levels of public outrage. French leaders can shag whom they desire if they are discreet, and the French media is happy to be comply with their discretion.

Long-suffering French voters have been noticeably less impressed this time around, however, as the public soap opera has unfolded in the world media. Sarkozy has been acting like a pop star instead of doing his job, according to many voters, and anyone who has ever listened to French pop music will understand what a grave insult that is.

More to the point, many French citizens feel that supermodel Bruni is too showbiz and too "cheap" (despite her fortune) to make a fitting consort for the President of the Republic. We are talking about a woman who has slept with Mick Jagger, Kevin Costner and Donald Trump. Imagine George W. Bush running off with Cher and you begin to get the idea.

Mind you, Bush would love a 41 percent approval rating.

While the French are preoccupied with a new law that will prohibit smoking in public places, their president’s foreign policy is taking a strange turn. Remember how Sarkozy defended his invitation of Gaddafi through contracts that he did not end up getting? And how those contracts included “civilian” nuclear technology (which, we still don’t know for sure, he might have given off against the release of some prisoners)? Well, here’s a new twist.

Purportedly to retaliate for its role in messing up the latest Lebanese presidential elections, Syria was hit with a suspension of diplomatic relations with France -returning to its previous policy. WhileHa’aretz’s Daniel Ben-Simon is probably right to point out that the initiative is part of FM Bernard Kouchner’s personal investment in the resolution of the Lebanese crisis, and while indeed is it to be feared that further terrorist intervention from Syria in Lebanese internal affairs is to be seen again shortly, this move takes place in a larger and much more sinister Middle Eastern context.

Sarkozy’s announcement of diplomatic rupture with Syria might have come around one of his and Kouchner’s protected jogs -in Egypt, freedom of the press doesn’t exclude breaking journalists’ limbs-but it also came while Sarkozy was trying to sell French nuclear technology to the Egyptians… This is becoming a nasty habit, albeit sometimes humorous (as in when Sarko offered a baffled Angela Merkel some French nukes).

Why a possible connection to the Franco-Syrian diplomacy?  Because Syria is both an Iranian stand-in and a possible actor itself in the nuclear rise of the Evil Axis. And what did Iran offer to Egypt right about the same time France did, if not assistance with nuclear projects?

All the while, Egypt is appearing ambiguous in its alliances, probably to emphasise its pivotal role between the two blocks and to appease both sides in order to avert an internal crisis.

As I noted before, there is little new in French presidential foreign policy. However, this continued pragmatism -Sarkozy’s new friend now has the presidency of the UN Security Council- falsely sold as idealism (who can believe that France’s refusal to enter the latest Iraqi conflict had nothing to do with its petroleum needs?) means that Napoleon’s heirs are ready to wreck the world again by contributing to the dissemination of nuclear technology to less than tasty partners -we all remember the Osirak case.

Nothing much has changed in France’s so-called ‘Arab policy’. Paris is still willing to snuggle up to dictators, if it means they could -hypothetically- sell them some armaments or nuclear facilities. Gaddafi’s ridiculous stop in Paris during his European tour (Spain’s motivations for receiving him seem no more glorious) shows that the French are still cozying up to terrorists.

The analysis of the French commentators is also pretty habitual. Serge Moati failed to elicit any positive indignation from his panel -no-one thought that Gaddafi shouldn’t have been invited. Indeed, it was suggested in that same broadcast that it is perfectly normal to welcome the Libyan torturer since France is going to host Shimon Peres shortly: no-one seemed particularly shocked at the comparison. While the majority of the French public was opposed to his visit, it seems that a large part of the intellectuels (except for the usual crowd, including Bernard-Henri Lévy, who was subsequently disowned by his ‘friend’ Sarko) were not opposed to it, and they were joined by a number of… Africans, notably women. This is apparently Sarkozy’s excuse for his public opinion: the Arab world (a reference in matter of democracy, as we well know) doesn’t see Gaddafi as a dictator.

This state visit was, however, sponsored mostly by Sarkozy himself, with very dissonant voices in his very government. Rama Yade and Bernard Kouchner both expressed, in no uncertain terms, their displeasure at the dictator’s visit. This might be a slightly new factor in French politics, but in fact the true novelty lies in Sarkozy’s distraction from the Gaddafi visit -and from its failure to bring the promised lucrative contracts for France.

As soon as Gaddafi had left French soil, Sarkozy, faithful to his “people-isation,” as they say in French, of politics, turned the attention of the media back to a more valuable subject: his private life. While the highbrow media, while still avoiding covering the actual issues, delved into the traditional how-it’s-impossible-to-talk-about-the-serious-issues due to Sarkozy’s tabloid lifestyle complaint, everybody was just rushing to comment on the President’s new flirt -Carla Bruni, of modeling and singing fame.

Thus the real question in French politics this week is: how acceptable is the place of the first official date of Sarko and Carla -Disneyland Paris? Some laments are heard on the devotion of the media to the national authority, but seriously, what do you expect in a country where (all) journalists have historically benefited from an income tax discount?

The funny thing, of course, is the way in which Sarkozy plays with this very controlled publication of his private life. While the attacks on the stars’ private lives by the tabloids -and their leakage into general press coverage- are absolutely senseless and contribute to the dumbing down of content in the media, Sarkozy has no place reacting to paparazzi in the same way Julia Roberts or Nicole Kidman do. The point is not so much that Sarkozy is transforming French, supposedly issues-centered politics into American-style, supposedly personality based public debate; rather, it is that he is providing the French with what they like -sort of like the badly dubbed shitty old American soaps they love watching- while in fact practicing the same old, anti-liberal, public policy.

Jewcy's Abe Greenwald shouldn't worry so much about France -the Algerian government (well, one of its ministers, but he has received no official rebuttal) tells us who's really in charge: Sarkozy was put in power by the "Jewish lobby,which has the monopoly of industry in France;" Bernard Kouchner rallied the right-wing government because he's Jewish too. The Jews control everything: they even get themselves born and raised in Algeria to pretend that they have something to do with this country -what a provocation! Singer Enrico Macias, object of this attack, renounced accompanying Sarkozy in his state visit to Algeria -the rest of the official French delegation will be unaffected. The French Foreign Affairs Ministry simply expressed its "surprise" at the declarations of Algerian Minister Cherif Abbés.

Macias is by now a familiar target of official Algerian anti-Semitism. His apparent popularity with Kabyle taxi-drivers might not help. A singer who works for peace, that sounds bad to start with, a Kabyle one at that has all the chances of getting himself killed. In the meantime, I leave you with the secret weapon of the Judeo-Ziono-Masonic Conspiracy. Scary.

The representative of France said the Special Rapporteur had referred to his country twice in an unacceptable way.  Public statements by the highest authorities of France could be debated, of course, but it was unacceptable to say that they sought to legitimize racism.  President Sarkozy had reaffirmed several times that the fight against racism and xenophobia was among his priorities…

We learn who and what has earned Watson's respect, affection and tenderness: his father, his wife Liz, the University of Chicago, former Chicago president Robert Hutchins, teaching, Harvard students, art, and those he injudiciously refers to as 'girls'.

Watson is highly critical of science at Harvard, while expressing sympathy for the demise of former Harvard president Larry Summers. These events would seem to be largely irrelevant to the rest of the book, had Watson not been in hot water in the mid-1970s over 'girls' in science, and had he not been curious about the role of the genome in shaping human intellectual ability and in predisposing to such 'developmental failures' as autism, schizophrenia and Asperger's syndrome. He tellingly concludes: "If Summers' tactlessness does, in fact, have a genetic basis, much of the anger toward him should rightly yield to sympathy." In genome, veritas.

Watching the bewildered look on Leslie Stahl's face when Nicolas Sarkozy walked off the set of 60 Minutes last week was, for me at least, worth a whole national election (one in which I have absolutely no voting power, but still).

Can there be any doubt that America's greatest asset is the outspoken and often critical ally we now have in the Elysee Palace? The French president addresses a rare joint session of Congress:

“I want to be your friend, your ally, your partner,” he said, “but I wish to be a friend who stands on his own two feet.”

He was able to chide the Bush administration to take a leadership role on climate change and to warn of the effects of the dollar’s sharp decline to a position far below parity with the euro — a decline that helps American exporters and hurts European exporters — and still draw applause.

[...]

But Mr. Sarkozy, who has always stated clearly that France was right to oppose the war in Iraq, did not utter the word Iraq. France has refused to help the United States on the ground in Iraq.

So the extraordinary embrace of the French president by American lawmakers reflected their approval of a new European leader who actually likes America and the reality that support for the Iraq war is no longer the acid test of French-American friendship.

No one can call Sarkozy "Bush's poodle" (the term never fit Tony Blair either, but that's a separate story). "Sarko l'Americain" sounds like a pool hall huckster in 30's film noir, which is appropriate given the man's love for our popular culture and showy work ethic. (What would French New Wave have been without Notorious or Public Enemy?)

Dogged in his opposition to aiding the war effort in Iraq, Sarkozy nonetheless has shown great willingness to confront the danger of a nuclear Iran and speak out against the witless anti-Americanism that bedevils his country just as witless Francophobia bedevils our own. Our oldest ally has proven, then, at the nadir of U.S. stature and influence, to be our strongest. Viva la something, all right.

Egyptian and Jordanian foreign ministers arrived in Jerusalem representing the only two Arab governments that have signed peace deals with Israel. They spoke today about the peace initiative and specifically avoided referencing the Arab League, which has never recognized Israel. Yet, without mentioning the League, the two foreign ministers are pushing the Arab League’s peace plan for the region which stipulates three main conditions for normal relations with Israel: 1. full withdrawal from land occupied in the 1967 war, including Jerusalem, 2. the creation of a Palestinian state, and 3. a just solution to the Palestinian refugee problem. [Debka] [The Washington Times]

Beijing’s Xinhua news service reported today that Taliban rebels have demanded that eight Taliban prisoners be released in exchange for eight South Korean hostages. The hostages are primarily female members of a Christian group who were abducted last Thursday in Ghazni, southwest of Kabul. [Xinhua]

The deadline for releasing the Taliban prisoners was set for Tuesday evening and then extended indefinitely. Debka reported this afternoon that the Taliban has killed one of the hostages. [Debka]

Shvitz editor Michael Weiss, posted yesterday on Libya’s release of six medical workers—five Bulgarian nurses and one Palestinian doctor—who were held for eight years under the dubious and unsubstantiated charge of deliberately infecting children with the virus that causes AIDS. [Jewcy]

Susannah Sirkin, deputy director of Physicians for Human Rights, said, “The charges were fabricated; the nurses were tortured into confessing; there was no due process.” [The New York Times]

In the aftermath of the prisoners’ release, the EU has no problem normalizing relations with Libya’s leaders: French President Nicolas Sarkozy will travel to Tripoli to boost the EU-Libya ties. [BBC]

President Bush’s lynchpin: personal diplomacy via frequent video conferences with Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki of Iraq. They chat on troops and leadership and God, which is all well and good, but where are the results? [The New York Times]

David Remnick writes the Letter from Jerusalem in this week’s New Yorker profiling Avraham Burg, a former Speaker of the Knesset, and a “Zionist politician who has lost his faith in the future” (of Israel).

“People are not willing to admit it,” Burg said, “but Israel has reached the wall […] We are already dead. We haven’t received the news yet, but we are dead. It doesn’t work anymore. It doesn’t work. . . . There is no one to talk to here. The religious community of which I was a part—I feel no sense of belonging to it. The secular community—I am not part of it, either. I have no one to talk to. I am sitting with you and you don’t understand me, either.”

“After some fifteen, twenty years in political life I had a feeling all of a sudden that, to use the Biblical term, Israel was the kingdom without prophesy. I realized that the three founding narratives of the national idea of Israeliness were over: the mass immigration to the land, aliyah; the security of the land; and the settling of the land. All three had served their purpose and were no longer the core of the nation’s narratives.”

On the Holocaust as a reference point for Israeli statehood, Burg told Remnick,

"We confiscated, we monopolized, world suffering. We did not allow anybody else to call whatever suffering they have ‘holocaust’ or ‘genocide,’ be it Armenians, be it Kosovo, be it Darfur. In the last years, Israeliness has confined itself for itself only and lost interest almost for what happens in the world. For me, Israel is shrinking into its own shell rather than struggling for a better world."

Otniel Schneller, a Knesset member from Ehud Olmert’s centrist Kadima Party, has said that when Burg dies he should be denied burial in the special section of Mt. Herzl National Cemetery reserved for national leaders.

Today, more than 600 French Jews made aliyah. [JTA]

I will look at the positions he took on these three questions and conclude that when he said that the Vichy government was not an integral participant in genocide, when he thundered that France should not be embarrassed by its “civilizing” work in Algeria, and when he vowed that if elected he would “liquidate the heritage of May 1968,” which for 40 years has been a secret wound, a torment, sometimes the nightmare of the most radical reactionary right wing of this country, Nicolas Sarkozy cut himself off from men like me.

The new mission civilatrice for the French: le indoor treadmill.

“Is jogging right wing?” wondered Libération, the left-wing newspaper. Alain Finkelkraut, a celebrated philosopher, begged Mr Sarkozy on France 2, the main state television channel, to abandon his “undignified” pursuit. He should take up walking, like Socrates, Arthur Rimbaud, the poet, and other great men, said Mr Finkelkraut.

When it comes to the French president's ability to hold his cabernet, the Jewish genes are clearly dominant.

I have to say, I lucked out. My way with the stuff is nothing if not Irish. Friday night I did half a magnum of Shiraz with Strawn, plus two margaritas, plus two whiskies -- Craig was there, he'll tell you. And this was on top of hearing Kate fucking Bush caterwauling in the background. My little head didn't even hurt Saturday morning.

Take it from my cirrhotic Granddad McKenna: The liver that burns twice as bright burns half as long.

The good will of "New Europe" is no more, thanks to the bumbling of President Bush, says Anne Applebaum:

Putin's Cold War rhetoric is beginning to worry people all across the continent; he must be counting it a huge success. Yet it seems no one in the Pentagon ever imagined that anyone might object to the project, or that the locals might want some extra reassurance, or that a bit of judicious diplomacy might have smoothed the way in advance. According to some, the State Department didn't even know the missile shield was going ahead until the Pentagon had already made the decision. Sound familiar?

The only quibble I have with Applebaum's argument is that it doesn't take into account how amenable Old Europe has once more become to American interests. France and Germany now have heads of state with a professed tendency toward Washington, made ever starker by the possible vacancy in the role of world partner that will attend the resignation of Tony Blair in Britain.

Though there's every reason to suspect that David Cameron or Gordon Brown would be more reliable Atlanticists than they let on to their constituencies: Sarkozy and Merkel get away with snuggling up to Washington because their countries both opposed the one U.S. foreign policy decision credited with blackening our reputation: the war in Iraq.

Of course, that the administration has chosen now to press for the installation of the missile shield is telling in another way. It suggests that Bush has learned little since 2000, when an anti-nuclear defense system was a point in his virgin presidential campaign. (Instead of a "freedom doctrine" or nation-building, zapping rockets from outer space was on chief security concern of the GOP candidate.)

So the rationale that such a shield is designed to protect the United States from Iran and North Korea--regimes which have not yet got missiles that can reach the United States and certainly didn't have them in 2000--is transparently false. However, Applebaum is quite right to stress that Kremlin knows that the shield is not designed to antagonize Russia, which still ranks at the largest owner of nuclear warheads on the planet.  Recall that the Pentagon under Donald Rumsfeld had signaled China as the most exigent  military threat to the U.S. in the 21st century. China is the likelier target for such a hapless deterrent. 

Of course, it scarcely helps that Moscow and Beijing are bosom buddies on everything from human rights abuses to kleptocratic third world oil deals to squashing any attempt to bring justice to the criminal state murders of democratic reformists like Rafiq Hariri.

Welcome to the New World Order. Same as the old, really. 

Nicolas Sarkozy, the "French Kennedy," jogging up the steps of the Elysee Palace. His style is either invigoratingly breezy or gauche, depending on whom you ask. We'll hold off on further Camelot-izing until he incites a missile crisis with Vladimir Putin, but for now it's worth pointing out that le presidente's calves are the size of that meat flank that made Fred Flintstone's car tip over at the drive-in.

How nice for France to have president who isn't in the business of building Middle Eastern dictators nuclear reactors but stopping their manufacture:

Sarkozy announced that France will join the official US-led struggle against head of the International Atomic Energy Agency Mohamed ElBaradei, who recommended that Iran be allowed to enrich uranium in some of its nuclear plants.

Whatever 14 year-old cosmic titan's game of Stratego just made this happen must've felt bad about removing Tony Blair from the board:

PARIS, France (Reuters) -- French President Nicolas Sarkozy is set to pick maverick left-winger Bernard Kouchner as foreign minister, a move that would back up his campaign pledge to put human rights at the heart of France's diplomacy.

Doctor set to be foreign minister - CNN.com

David A. Bell says defeated French candidate Francois Bayrou's taking a languorous stroll down easy street as the man everyone want on their side:

Bayrou's UDF party (Union for French Democracy) is center-right, not centrist, and it has traditionally formed electoral coalitions with Gaullists, not Socialists. Bayrou himself served in two Gaullist cabinets. But Bayrou wants to destroy Sarkozy, whom he personally loathes, and he hopes to establish himself as leader of a permanent third force in French politics. Nicely for him, playing Hamlet (or Henri IV) allows him to pursue both aims at once.

A nice match-up, redeeming France from the fetor of 2002, when Le Pen proceeded to round two and the country to final jeopardy.  Also, voter turnout was high:

More than 84 percent of France’s 44.5 million registered voters cast ballots, about 13 percentage points higher than five years ago. The lines were so long at some polling stations that they had to stay open beyond their scheduled closing time of 8 p.m.

All signs point to Sarko absorbing Le Pen's 10.5%, with Bayrou as the wildcard. 

Thoughts? Francois?