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Does This Modern Hero Have A Mossad Background
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).
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Over 25 Years Of Intrigue
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".
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So Mysterious
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.
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Arabs Are Screwed
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?
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Israel's Olmert Gloats
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.
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French Jews Are Ecstatic
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.
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Grandpa Sarkozy
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.
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France's Muslims Realize Their Fate
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.
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Sarkozy Will Crush The Labor Movement
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.
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Sarkozy As A 28 Year Old
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".
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The Glamorous Wife
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.
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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?
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