(Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs) Freddy Eytan - Paris is very worried about the presence of Islamist and Salafist groups within France's Muslim community, which numbers more than six million. Mohamed Merah, who murdered three French soldiers and carried out the massacre at the Jewish school in Toulouse, has become a symbol and a hero among Muslim youth. President Hollande's decision to send a military force to Mali was taken after a very real danger emerged that radical Islamic groups would take over the country. France still has important economic interests there including raw materials such as oil, gold, and uranium. About a quarter-million French subjects currently live in Africa. Paris practices a double standard of morality, condemning Israel's retaliatory acts against Hamas or Hizbullah, while seeing fit to act against terrorists thousands of kilometers from its own territory. One should commend France's determined fight against global terror. But the time has come for sober internalization of the fact that the Islamic terrorists in Mali and the terrorists in Gaza, Sinai, or Lebanon belong to the same family and must be fought and eradicated together. The writer, a former Israel Foreign Ministry senior advisor who served in Israel's embassies in Paris and Brussels, was Israel's first Ambassador to the Islamic Republic of Mauritania.
2013-01-28 00:00:00Full ArticleBACK Visit the Daily Alert Archive