[Peace-discuss] Sarko the Sayan?

[C. G. Estabrook]

Nor have I.  I found the LF article at 
<http://www.lefigaro.fr/france/20071012.FIG000000291_
les_etranges_accusations_d_un_cybercorbeau.html>.

It's hesitant to give too much importance to an anonymous denunciation. 
  The article concludes, "Et l'enquête se poursuit à la demande du 
parquet. Au risque de donner à cette affaire une importance qu'elle ne 
méritait pas."  --CGE


Morton K. Brussel wrote:
> 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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