Source: Haaretz .
"The French have been avidly following the story of Justice Minister Rachida Dati, affectionately called Sarkozette (after President Nicolas Sarkozy, who appointed her), who recently confirmed she was pregnant, but refused to name the father.
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Dati will arrive in Israel Friday [Sept. 20] morning. Her first official visit will be to Ramallah, after her meetings with Palestinian officials, initially planned for Monday, were switched to Saturday because Saturday is the Jewish Sabbath. (...)
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"As soon as I was appointed to office, I received an invitation to visit Israel. Now I have the chance," she said, her sympathy toward Israel a sharp contrast to her predecessors' attitude.
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"It's hard to remain indifferent to Israel," she explained. "It is spiritual, democratic, free. In fact, it has a fine democracy. Nobody restricted my objectives for this visit. I had a sense of freedom."
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In an interview with a local Jewish community newspaper, Dati said she saw no difference between herself and a Jew. Asked what she meant, she said: "The statement was made following racist attacks, and I emphasized that the former reality of Jews and Arabs was different. I said my mother, who was born in Algeria, lived in the Jewish quarter and had wonderful relations with her neighbors. I think Israel itself has always been a varied, multicultural society. In Europe, it is reflected only through the conflict. But that's not what interests me, but rather the human aspect." (...)
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Dati was born in 1965 to a Moroccan bricklayer and an Algerian housemaid in Saint-R"my. She spent her childhood in Chalon-sur-Saône, in France's Burgundy region. She was the second of 12 children. Her mother died young, and she had to work in a medical emergency center while going to school. Afterward, she studied economics and business administration and soon obtained a post in the London-based European Bank for Reconstruction and Development. There, she met French economist and scholar Jacques Attali, an associate of François Mitterrand, who is seen to this day as one of her patrons.
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After establishing herself in the business world, Dati took the advice of another highly placed mentor, former minister and Holocaust survivor Simone Weil, and enrolled in the Ecole Nationale de la Magistrature in 1997. Weil also ordained her for her first judicial position.
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The hardworking, ambitious Dati met Sarkozy in 1999. Two years later, when he was interior minister, she became his advisor, working for him on an anti-delinquency project.
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The left despises Dati as Sarkozy's acolyte, while the extreme right looks down on her for her origins. The justice establishment resents the reforms she is pushing, citing her youth.
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"That's an elegant way of saying I can't do my job, or am inexperienced," she said. "I'm not 20, and experience isn't just joining a party and staying in political work for 30 years. I have varied experience. The old establishments are very conservative, and when someone different enters their territory, it's intolerable to them. The way I do my job should be judged by my actions. (...)"
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