Betrayal: France, the Arabs, and the Jews

by David Pryce-Jones

Overview

David Pryce-Jones believes that France has done more damage to the Middle East than any other country. France encouraged the mass immigration of Arabs and that huge and growing minority in the country now believes that it has rights and claims which have not been met. This minority also believes that Israel should not exist. Middle East geo-politics are spreading from French soil to an increasingly Islamized Europe.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781594033049
Publisher:	Encounter Books
Publication date:	05/25/2008
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	192
File size:	208 KB

Editorial Reviews

Pryce-Jones, a British author and journalist, argues that France'spast imperialism, support for dictators, openness to immigration, and pro-Arab bias have destabilized the Middle East and led to interethnic violence within France. These are serious issues that deserve serious treatment, but Pryce-Jones has instead written a polemic -- disguised as an archive-based historical study -- that consistently assumes only the worst about French motives. He portrays France as having a unique bias toward dictators in the Middle East -- as if other Western powers have dealt only with the region's democrats. Arab immigrants in France are said to have benefited from special treatment and privileges -- when, if anything, they have suffered from prejudice and lack of opportunity. President François Mitterrand's criticism of the 1981 Israeli military strike on Iraq's nuclear reactor is seen as proof of an anti-Israel bias -- even though Ronald Reagan also criticized the strike and Mitterrand a few months later made a highly pro-Israel speech at the Knesset. The November 2005 riots near Paris are depicted as a sort of jihad -- when almost all observers agree they were far more socioeconomic than religious in nature. And France's opposition to the Iraq war is held up as proof of its perfidy -- as if recent developments do not suggest at least the possibility that France might have had a point about the war. The results of French policy in the Middle East and toward Arabs and Jews deserve real scrutiny but in a more evenhanded way than this blanket indictment provides.

Foreign Affairs