[Peace-discuss] Sarko the Sayan?

[Morton K. Brussel]

It's interesting that this broke in Le Figaro; I've not seen it  
mentioned in the more "liberal" Le Monde, not to mention th NYT or  
the Washington Post. Has it been?
--mkb

On Nov 5, 2007, at 5:23 PM, C. G. Estabrook wrote:

> [The French president visits DC this week to continue his audition  
> to replace Tony Blair as Bush's poodle.  The following story has  
> not been mentioned so far as I can find in the US media. --CGE]
>
> 	French President Accused of
> 	Working for Israeli Intelligence
> 	By Gamal Nkrumah
> 	11/04/07 Al-Ahram
>
> As if his marital challenges were not enough cause for concern,  
> "Sarco the Sayan" has suddenly emerged as the most infamous  
> accolade of French President Nicolas Sarkozy. The influential  
> French daily Le Figaro last week revealed that the French leader  
> once worked for -- and perhaps still does, it hinted -- Israeli  
> intelligence as a sayan (Hebrew for helper), one of the thousands  
> of Jewish citizens of countries other than Israel who cooperate  
> with the katsas (Mossad case-officers).
>
> A letter dispatched to French police officials late last winter --  
> long before the presidential election but somehow kept secret --  
> revealed that Sarkozy was recruited as an Israeli spy. The French  
> police is currently investigating documents concerning Sarkozy's  
> alleged espionage activities on behalf of Mossad, which Le Figaro  
> claims dated as far back as 1983. According to the author of the  
> message, in 1978, Israeli prime minister Menachem Begin ordered the  
> infiltration of the French ruling Gaullist Party, Union pour un  
> Mouvement Populaire. Originally targeted were Patrick Balkany,  
> Patrick Devedjian and Pierre Lellouche. In 1983, they recruited the  
> "young and promising" Sarkozy, the "fourth man".
>
> Ex-Mossad agent Victor Ostrovsky describes how sayanim function in  
> By Way Of Deception: The Making and Unmaking of a Mossad Officer.  
> They are usually reached through relatives in Israel. An Israeli  
> with a relative in France, for instance, might be asked to draft a  
> letter saying the person bearing the letter represents an  
> organisation whose main goal is to help save Jewish people in the  
> Diaspora. Could the French relative help in any way? They perform  
> many different roles. A car sayan, for example, running a rental  
> car agency, could help the Mossad rent a car without having to  
> complete the usual documentation. An apartment sayan would find  
> accommodation without raising suspicions, a bank sayan could fund  
> someone in the middle of the night if needs be, a doctor sayan  
> would treat a bullet wound without reporting it to the police.
>
> And, a political sayan? It's rather obvious what this could mean.  
> The sayanim are a pool of people at the ready who will keep quiet  
> about their actions out of loyalty to "the cause", a non-risk  
> recruitment system that draws from the millions of Jewish people  
> outside Israel.
>
> Such talk sends chills down spines, especially Arab and Muslim  
> ones. Indeed, the revelation did not go unnoticed in Arab capitals  
> or come as much of a surprise. Paris can be a sunny place for shady  
> people. When it comes to intelligence gathering on behalf of  
> Israel, a question mark is immediately raised on the moral calibre  
> of the person in question. But, how does this scandal influence  
> France's foreign and domestic politics?
>
> It is of symbolic significance that Israeli Prime Minister Ehud  
> Olmert was on a state visit to France in the immediate aftermath of  
> Le Figaro's exposé -- ostensibly to discuss Iran's nuclear agenda  
> and the Palestinian question. Proud and prickly France under its  
> supposedly savvy new president hopes to play a more prominent role  
> in the perplexing world of Middle Eastern politics. On Monday,  
> Sarkozy flew to Morocco, the ancestral home of many of France's  
> Jewry, soon after his Mossad connection was made public. There is  
> no clear evidence that the revelation is to make France any more  
> unpopular in the Arab world than it already is, especially not in  
> official circles.
>
> On the domestic front, however, there are many conflicting  
> considerations. The Jews of France now display a touch of the  
> vapours, in sharp contrast to the conceited triumphalism with which  
> they greeted his election: "we are persuaded that the new president  
> will continue eradicating anti-Israeli resistance," Sammy Ghozlan,  
> president of the Jewish Community of Paris pontificated soon after  
> Sarkozy's election. France is home to 500,000 Jews, mostly  
> Sephardic Jews originally from North Africa and Mediterranean  
> countries.
>
> Sarkozy's own maternal grandfather Aron Mallah, hailed from  
> Salonika, Greece, and is said to have exercised considerable  
> influence on his grandson. Even though raised as a Roman Catholic,  
> "Sarkozy played a critical role in moving the French government to  
> do what is necessary to address the ill winds that threaten the  
> largest Jewish community in Western Europe," noted David Harris,  
> the executive director of the American Jewish Committee. Sarkozy,  
> after all, was a political product of the predominantly Jewish  
> elite neighbourhood of Neuilly-sur-Seine, where he long served as  
> mayor.
>
> France's Muslim minority was far from surprised by Le Figaro's  
> revelations, even though some may have feigned disappointment.  
> Others have been more forthright. "France is not run by Frenchmen,  
> but by lackeys of the Zionist International who control the  
> economy," lamented Radio Islam, of militant Islamist tendencies.  
> When Sarkozy was France's minister of interior and clamped down  
> hard on Muslim immigrants, calling mainly Muslim rioters "scum" in  
> a widely-publicised interview, they retaliated by calling him  
> "Sarkozy, sale juif [dirty Jew]". Obviously there is no love lost  
> between the five million-strong French Muslim community, the  
> largest in Western Europe, and the French president. He has grounds  
> for concern. He assiduously courts the Israelis. That much is known.
>
> In the scientific annals of French politics there is a cautionary  
> tale of pantomime. French presidents are not always what they seem.  
> There are, however, two key observations concerning Sarkozy. One,  
> is Sarkozy's intention of implementing a "new social contract"  
> between employers and employees, capital and labour. This smacks of  
> Thatcherism. His determination to force a "cultural revolution" in  
> the collective national psyche is a trifle farcical. And  
> unprincipled to boot. He recently introduced legislation -- in  
> tandem with his pension cuts, calling for genetic profiling of  
> immigrants to ensure any relatives intending to immigrate are  
> linked genetically. The strategy appears to be to soften the blow  
> of the social security cuts by appealing to xenophobic racism.
>
> The state of race relations in France is an even more muddled  
> picture than the devastating caricatures by French-African comedian  
> Dieudonne suggest. He is notorious for playing the part of a  
> Hassidic Jew who mimics the Nazi salute. Few politicians blame  
> their troubles on cynical comedians, though, and Sarkozy is no  
> exception. His fans point accusing fingers at the "irresponsible  
> press".
>
> The real magic starts when you power Sarkozy with his ex-model  
> wife. She, after all, played a part in the freeing of the Bulgarian  
> nurses and a Palestinian medical doctor. She, too, is of Spanish- 
> Jewish ancestry. But, that may be nothing but an insignificant  
> aside. France, generally, regarded their bust-up as something of a  
> bad joke. Unlike the Americans, the French do not take the private  
> lives of their presidents terribly seriously. There was the late  
> François Mitterrand, for example. Hardly anyone in all France  
> raised an eyebrow when it transpired that he had an illegitimate  
> daughter. The French are more concerned with the ideological  
> orientation and political affiliation of their president and are  
> not in the least interested in their private affairs -- at least  
> not in any political sense.
>
> The interesting twist, however, is that the contest between Cecilia  
> and Nicolas Sarkozy is a comic cross between a lover's tiff and the  
> battle of the sexes. It appears befuddled French voters are being  
> forced to turn a blind eye to their leaders' antics. Sarkozy's  
> divorce follows hard on the heels of the separation of France's  
> first female presidential candidate Ségolène Royal, the "gazelle"  
> of French politics, from her lifelong lover François Hollande  
> barely a month after she lost the presidential race in May.  
> Moreover, at the tender age of 19, Royal sued her father for his  
> refusal to divorce her mother and pay alimony and child support.  
> That was way back in 1972; barely a decade later she won the case  
> against her father. Ironically, Royal's own mentor the late French  
> socialist president Mitterrand was notorious for his extra-marital  
> affairs, the most conspicuous being his love affair with Anne  
> Pingeot and subsequent disclosure towards the end of his life that  
> he fathered an illegitimate daughter Mazarine with her.
>
> And, what of the voters? The latest hazard facing the French  
> president has been his socio-economic policies. Sarkozy's showdown  
> with the trade unions threatens to turn into a deciding moment for  
> France. Foreign policy, too, has come under much scrutiny. France  
> has become fanatically Atlanticist under the presidency of Sarkozy.  
> Although, unlike US President George W Bush, Sarkozy does not make  
> much noise about his own dubious religious convictions. The  
> commonest criticism of Sarkozy is that he is overly conscious of  
> his religious heritage, a trait that is not appreciated by the  
> fanatically secular French political establishment. France is  
> culturally the most irreligious country in Europe, itself the most  
> secular and anti-religious of the world's continents.
>
> For a politician acclaimed for his acumen, it is startling that  
> Sarkozy has been tripped up by events he should have seen coming.  
> His sagacity obviously failed him this week. Le Figaro let the cat  
> out of the bag. And his wife, too, after shopping with Lyudmila  
> Putin, the Russian first lady, apparently decided that she had had  
> enough of being treated as "part of the furniture" and made their  
> rift very public.
>
> France is now in the awkward position of having no first lady. The  
> 49- year-old former model, lawyer and political advisor is by no  
> means media shy. "I gave Nicolas 20 years of my life," she told the  
> popular French magazine Elle in a special feature which she asked  
> for personally, despite the awkwardness of its timing. She had long  
> complained of being politically peripheralised. Troubling as that  
> interpretation is, it is in a way a consoling one for Sarkozy. He  
> is now free to handle his opponents without his maverick Cecilia  
> breathing down his neck or, on the contrary, disappearing at  
> crucial moments.
>
> Even with his personal life in tatters, Sarkozy is obliged to hoist  
> the French tricoleur high in the international arena. Which flag is  
> it to be?
>
> © Copyright Al-Ahram Weekly
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