Tuesday 11 October 2011

French journalist derides Mitt Romney and Walid Phares for Israel support

French journalist with Le Monde, the 'reference' newspaper in France as it likes to be called, Gilles Paris has a blog entitled "War or Peace" wholly devoted to Israel-bashing and, as a by-product, US-bashing.

The latest target of his wrath is Mitt Romney's advisor for the Middle East Walid Phares.  Gilles Paris finds Phares' views expressed here (described as "a neo-con") totally objectionable:

"Over the past many years, the body of experts serving the US foreign policy establishment “has not given the administration, the president, and Congress the right expertise.” In my book, Future Jihad, I describe how our academic expertise and the national security analysis that is derived from it are compromised. Most of those who give academic advice come from the universities, whose Middle East departments are funded to a large degree by petrodollar regimes with strings attached. Thus, we have generations that have been raised in the classroom with the ideas of apology for jihadism. In sum, this explains why the President and Congress did not have from their experts the right information on either the threat or the democracy forces in the region. The bigger change has to be done not in the Middle East but here in Washington."

Gilles Paris goes on to criticise the support Benjamin Netanyahu received in Congress and the fact that the funds given to the Palestinians have been frozen.

But he doesn't stop there. He also criticises Richard Prasquier, head of the Representative Council of French Jewish Institutions, because he does not like John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt's book.  For Gilles Paris there is one "lobby" and that lobby is not the Arab lobby.

No comments: