May 9, 2007

Salonika

The port city at the north end of the Aegean Sea, spelled Thessaloniki since Greece seized it from the Ottoman Empire before WWI, would be a fine setting for an Umberto Eco novel or a Dan Brown knock-off of an Eco novel.

Salonika
had an appropriately Byzantine social history a century ago. It was the home of both Mustafa Kemal, founder of modern Turkey, and of the Donme, the crypto-Jewish followers of the 17th Century false messiah Sabbetai Zevi, who comprise much of the secular elite of Istanbul today. (In Turkey today, "Salonikan" is a synonym for Sabbatean.) Also, Masonic Lodges in Salonika played a role in the emergence of both the Young Turks who deposed the Sultan and, more indirectly, of the modern yogurt industry. I haven't found any links between Salonika and the Knights Templar yet, but I'm sure I just haven't burrowed deep enough into the fever swamps.

Salonika is back in the news as the birthplace of new French president Nicolas Sarkozy's beloved maternal grandfather Benedict Mallah, who was the scion of a wealthy Sephardic Jewish family in that remarkable city. Salonika was about half Jewish early in the 20th Century, before the great fire of 1917 scattered much of the Jewish community, and then the rest were murdered by the Nazis. (The Donme, as nominal Muslims, were shipped to Turkey in the population exchanges of 1923 that, at great cost, brought peace between Turkey and Greece, so they escaped the fate of the Salonikan Jews.)

Sarkozy's father, an anti-Communist Hungarian refugee of castle-owning minor aristocratic stock, abandoned his family, so little Sarkozy grew up in the small mansion of his maternal grandfather, who had converted to Catholicism upon marrying a French war widow in 1917 and then became a respected Parisian clap doctor.

"To this day many Mallahs are still active Zionists around the world," says the Australian Jewish News:


Sarkozy’s grandfather, Aron Mallah, nicknamed Beniko, was born in 1890.

Beniko’s uncle Moshe was a well-known Rabbi and a devoted Zionist who, in 1898 published and edited “El Avenir”, the leading paper of the Zionist national movement in Greece at the time.

His cousin, Asher, was a Senator in the Greek Senate and in 1912 he helped guarantee the establishment of the Technion – the elite technological university in Haifa, Israel.

In 1919 he was elected as the first President of the Zionist Federation of Greece and he headed the Zionist Council for several years. In the 1930’s he helped Jews flee to Israel, to which he himself immigrated in 1934.

Another of Beniko’s cousins, Peppo Mallah, was a philanthropist for Jewish causes who served in the Greek Parliament, and in 1920 he was offered, but declined, the position of Greece’s Minister of Finance. After the establishment of the State of Israel he became the country’s first diplomatic envoy to Greece.


During the Holocaust, 57 members of the Mallah family were murdered by the Nazis. Sarkozy's grandfather, who had changed his name to Benedict upon his conversion, had to lie low during WWII to keep from being caught by the Nazis in France.


Nicolas was especially close to Benedict, who was like a father to him. In his biography Sarkozy tells he admired his grandfather, and through hours spent of listening to his stories of the Nazi occupation, the “Maquis” (French resistance), De Gaulle and the D-day, Benedict bequeathed to Nicolas his political convictions.


During a visit to Greece in 2006, a visibly moved Sarkozy received a family tree album from a delegation of Thessalonikian Jews, saying "My roots are here."

By the way, each time I've tried to post something about Salonika, my computer acts up and tries to swallow my entry. I blame albino monks.


My published articles are archived at iSteve.com -- Steve Sailer

53 comments:

Anonymous said...

If we're going to have a larger military, we should use it to boot the Turks out of Turkey and give it back to the Greeks. While in control of that area the Greeks gave us a golden age, but the Turks have given us nothing.

Anonymous said...

is california becoming like france? the illegal aliens riot, and the politicians protect them and fire the police.

france is lost. we're looking at a real "Children of Men" situation there in a few decades, with the police struggling to handle all the arabs and blacks, with more coming every day.

Anonymous said...

Has Eco ever identified himself as, or given us reason to believe that he is a conservative (aside from his being intelligent and witty)?

Anonymous said...

Why all the positive press for Sarkozy on Huffington Post?

Bush With Brians

Not So Fast

Misreadding the French Election

Probably becuase they see he is just a conservative poseur.

Anonymous said...

As I recall, he got elected by promising to crack down on immigrant crime, something the media doesn't like to mention.

Just suck it up, Steve and Svigor. It may not be the general pattern but finally you have someone with Jewish ancestry who is not trying to break up the country's national identity. Is it that hard to understand that any rule can have an exception?

Anonymous said...

The impression that I think won Sarkozy the election is that he's the guy for whom the solution to every problem begins with a firehose. Royal's incredibly dumb threat about street violence should he get elected no doubt helped him in this regard. People don't like feeling bullied in their own home, (even the French, though their threshold seems to be higher).

I think a lot of this tough-guy image is highly exaggerated though, and any plans for economic reforms will be ground down by the inexorability of the French system.

BTW Steve, you must get a perverse pleasure out of watching the frothing of jew conspiracy nuts in the comments, since this kind of post is like catnip to them.

Anonymous said...

i don't know, only 1 out 4 of his grandparents is jewish. he's not very jewish.

he won't do anything conservative. that was all talk to get votes. he said those things to take votes from le pen.

he is the same as any american RINO.

Anonymous said...

Talk about Hobson's choice: between a fragrant-looking woman with nice bosoms and a neo-con Jewish dwarf.

Wasn't it Hegel who stated that a people get the government that they deserve?

Anonymous said...

Steve, what's all this about a "Holocaust", and the anti-communist stance of Sarkozy's Jewish grandfather? Are you deliberately trying to piss off your loyal readers who know that 1) there was no Nazi Holocaust, and 2) Any Jews who may have accidentally died from disease when they were rounded up by the Nazis in WWII were rounded up due to the legitimate threat of communism -- which, after all, was a Jewish movement.

Fred

Anonymous said...

i don't know, only 1 out 4 of his grandparents is jewish. he's not very jewish.

It's not a question of arithmetic, more one of status and identity.

Ah, how sweet it is to be Jewish at the end of this 20th century! We are no longer History's accused, but its darlings. The spirit of the times loves, honors, and defends us, watches over our interests; it even needs our imprimatur. Journalists draw up ruthless indictments against all that Europe still has in the way of Nazi collaborators or those nostalgic for the Nazi era. Churches repent, states do penance, Switzerland no longer knows where to stand ...

I noted a good example, only yesterday. The Canadian actress Neve Campbell, according to her Wikipedia page:

Campbell is Catholic, but also identifies as Jewish because of her mother's Sephardic Jewish ancestry, specifying that her "lineage is Jewish, so if someone asks me if I'm Jewish, I say yes".

What say you, Stevie boy?

Anonymous said...

"Ah, how sweet it is to be Jewish at the end of this 20th century!"

That's why George Allen was so proud of his Jewish ancestry, and also why European countries are always siding with Israel and against her Arab enemies.

BTW, this is the 21st century.

Anonymous said...

Sark isn't anti-immigrant. Among major French politicos, he stands out for supporting "positive discrimination," i.e. quotas for immigrants. Traditionally French politicians resist racial quotas, citing French identity concerns.

When the "firehose" tactic fails (as how could it not?), look for Sark to EMBRACE DIVERSITY.

On top of which, Sark is hell-bent of "putting France back to work" - i.e. eviscerate the power of labor organization in France - why? In order to please the multinational oligarchs, the folks who think a dollar a day is fine wages for billions of Chinese and other slaves.

Bearing all this in mind, it comes as no surprise to learn of Sark's pedigree...

Anonymous said...

Ned, H. L. Mencken said "The people get the government they deserve, and get it good and hard". Unfortunately I get the same government other people deserve and vote for.

Anonymous said...

This article explains Allen's supposed reticence over admitting his Jewish ancestry.

So the point stands. That's not to say, of course, there aren't certain circumstances in which being Jew-ish could have deleterious consequences.

Anonymous said...

OK, Mencken ripped off Hegel. The big guy was a very suggestive thinker.

Anonymous said...

i don't know, only 1 out 4 of his grandparents is jewish. he's not very jewish.

It's not a question of arithmetic, more one of status and identity.


Sarcozy says he is Catholic. He has been baptized. That is his status and identity.

Saint Paul himself wouldn't qualify as Christian by the standards of some of the Jew-haters here. ... including the Muslims posting here using American or Euro-sounding names.

As to Sarko being a stooge of the multinationals: maybe he's not. The Economist magazine's French coverage was slanted against him. Furthermore, in an apparent effort to slime Sarkozy, the oh-so business friendly and globalist Economist harped on his Jewish ancestry.

Isteve may be embarrassed to know he's taking a line on Sarko not altogether different from the Economist's.

Anonymous said...

Sarkozy couldn't be Jewish even if he wanted to be. According to religious law Jewishness is inherited solely through the mother's line, and because Sarkozy's mother's father (and not his mother's mother) was Jewish, his mother wasn't Jewish and therefore he isn't either. He'd have to go through the full conversion process in order to qualify as Jewish.

Now, if Sarkozy were an American, and his great-great-great grandfather were black, under the one-drop rule he'd be considered fully black. I would imagine that the French must consider America's one-drop rule the height of idiocy.

Anonymous said...

Has Eco ever identified himself as, or given us reason to believe that he is a conservative (aside from his being intelligent and witty)?

Eco is a postmodernist, meaning there is very little chance he is a conservative. He is, as you mentioned, a smart guy and a brilliant writer.

Anonymous said...

Peter said:

"I would imagine that the French must consider America's one-drop rule the height of idiocy."

Not after viewing the hundreds-of-cars burned nightly during their regular "Muslim" (black African) riots. Someone voted for Le Pen, after all...until sidetracked by Sark the half-jew.

Would France be better off, or worse off, if the French government adopted as law the "one-drop rule" and vigorously enforced it?

Interesting the neo-kahns first INVADE a country (e.g., French in Algiers, America in Iraq), lose in a protracted guerilla war, then end up INVITING that country and hordes of others into the very country that had previously affected to rule them.

As Steve says, INVADE the world...then INVITE the world!

The sure formula for national (i.e., racial) disintegration.

Anonymous said...

Gee Steve, the complex ethnic background of Sarkozy is about the least interesting thing about him.

What IS interesting is that he's not an ENArch. Not from ENA which all the other leaders of France since DeGaulle have been including Royal.

And that Sarkozy ran on and WON a populist revolt against the EU and ENArch elites who ran the place like a corrupt liberal autarchy.

Sarko promised law and order, which France being over-run with crime by Muslims desperately needs. When Policewomen are raped going off shift as a deliberate tactic things are getting bad.

I'm shocked you didn't pick up on "Red Light" the French film that's approximately like Death Wish and as relevant, politically. For those unfamiliar it concerns a husband, not very successful, who's high powered wife is raped by a paroled ex-con. Said convict has a beard, is not specifically depicted as Muslim but acts and looks like one. Husband kills the convict between Tours and Poiters, very significant and every Frenchman gets it (it's where Charles Martel defeated the Arabs and stopped the advancing Muslim invaders). Husband and wife grow closer after the husband kills the rapist and reasserts his manhood.

The French critics LOATHED it and the public LOVED it. Big hit over there.

Oh, and Sarko's economic policy? Growth oriented, eliminating the protections which prevent anyone from being fired after two months (and thus hired), which has led to job-stagnation, i.e. people stuck in jobs they hate and unable to get new ones because no one hires.

Over 500,000 Frenchman work in London, it's the seventh largest French-speaking city because of France's bureaucratic nightmare in the state-controlled labor market.

Other interesting facts: 52% of women voted for Sarko despite Royal pushing her gender. Sarko promised closer ties to the US and to stop pushing corrupt dictators as anti-American props.

But the MOST interesting thing about Sarko was his unabashed promotion of French National Identity and rejection of Multiculturalism, in contrast to Royal who denigrated the idea of the French Secular Republic and promoted multiculturalism.

And here is where Steve missed everything: Sarko's family history points out what happens when you don't have a strong State that protects all citizens who adhere to it's National Identity. It's no wonder Sarko promotes the Secular French Republic because his family history is an example of what happens when that Republic is defeated, weak, or overthrown.

Multi-culturalism had as it's dream the the State as sort of Universal Bureacracy that did not stand for anything much less National Identity. That failed, spectacularly in France, and Sarko won that argument so far.

[Children of Men? Sarko's policies specifically endorse larger French families, something Royal opposed.]

Sarko is not really a conservative. If anything he's more akin to an LBJ without the Vietnam War. A big government classical Liberal who believes in his nation's secular rationalist identity as the key to success. Will he succeed?

It will be very difficult. The ENArchs will try to stop him at every turn.

Anonymous said...

That Royal chick was hot...for an old broad!

Anonymous said...

Sarcozy says he is Catholic. He has been baptized. That is his status and identity.

Did you read the link to Australian Jewish News article, that Steve provided?

IN an interview Nicolas Sarkozy gave in 2004, he expressed an extraordinary understanding of the plight of the Jewish people for a home: “Should I remind you the visceral attachment of every Jew to Israel, as a second mother homeland? There is nothing outrageous about it. Every Jew carries within him a fear passed down through generations, and he knows that if one day he will not feel safe in his country, there will always be a place that would welcome him. And this is Israel.”

J'accuse!

Anonymous said...

I'm not saying he's Jewish, I'm saying he's Jew-ish.

And this discovery, especially in later life, can do strange things to a person. Look at Christopher Hitchens, for one. And our own Steve Sailer, another.

Anonymous said...

IN an interview Nicolas Sarkozy gave in 2004, he expressed an extraordinary understanding of the plight of the Jewish people for a home: “Should I remind you the visceral attachment of every Jew to Israel, as a second mother homeland? There is nothing outrageous about it. Every Jew carries within him a fear passed down through generations, and he knows that if one day he will not feel safe in his country, there will always be a place that would welcome him. And this is Israel.”

That doesn’t mean he’s a secret Jew. I’ll bet we could find similar politicians’ words from G. Bush Sr. or Jr. or by Ma or Pa Clinton.

And Sarkozy’s correct: Jewish people do need a big, strong Israelite heimat, extending from the Med. Sea past the Jordan River. Lessee, which river does the Old Testament say Israel borders on?

Fortunately or unfortunately for Nicky, it doesn’t seem that he would qualify for automatic citizenship there:

Nicolas’s grand father, Benedict, was the first child of seven children. His real name was Aaron but the family called him Benico. At the age of 14 Benico and his mother left for France where he studied medicine and served in the French army as a doctor during WWI, where he met his future wife Adel Bouvieux a pretty nurse.

In order to marry her he was baptized Catholic and took the name Benedict.

The couple had two daughters Suzanne and AndrĂ©e, the mother of Nicolas, who married in the 50’s an Hungarian immigrant Paul Sarkozy, the father of Nicolas.


http://ejpress.org/article/16221

Anonymous said...

I honestly don't care if the French go more market-oriented, it's their country, if they want to have less money so they can work less and be able to spend two hours at lunch savoring 50 varieties of cheese that's fine with me. Heck, I want some of that cheese.

Sarkozy didn't run on an economic platform, he ran on being tough on crime, which the French are sick of, and that's why I voted for Rudy Giuliani the first chance I got, and that's why I am happy he won.

The guy's fighting for law and order and you're all obsessed because he had Jewish relatives. You can oppose the immigration schemes supported by the liberal Jewish elite in the sixties and the Iraq war partially engineered by the neocon Jewish elite in the 2000s, but enough digging through people's pedigrees looking for big noses. Newsflash: the Nazis lost.

Anonymous said...

Whilst Sarkozy is France's first Jew-ish President, let's not forget the three-time Prime Minister Leon Blum. He spent time during WW2 under German protective custody, but his brother Rene was allegedly tortured and murdered at Auschwitz. Let's hope Sarkozy brings better luck with him.

Anonymous said...

In a few words: Sarko is the French equivalent of the neo-cons. Beware! Iran is next.

Anonymous said...

The guy's fighting for law and order and you're all obsessed because he had Jewish relatives.

Given the extent of the French problem with disaffected and criminal Muslim youths, I'm wondering if he's considering call in the IDF.

Anonymous said...

So what is he? a Jew? a Hungarian? a Greek? What difference does it make? Anything is better than the haughty purebred Segolene ice-queen Frog line of descent.

Anonymous said...

Well, if the Big Three of Sarzoky, Merkel and Brown give the European green light for the Americans to attack Iran, then we may all live to regret it.

Anonymous said...

Or we may live to thank them. Given Iran's shaky regime, nukes-a-plenty, and desire repeatedly stated to nuke America out of existence.

Some wars cannot be escaped Sammy. Iran has in one way or another been at war with the US and the West since 1979.

But I doubt either GWB or anyone else will do much about it, democratic politics means everyone wants to kick the can down the road. Even in Israel where everyone knows Iran and Hezbollah want to nuke them out of existence Olmert and Kadima cling to some fantasy of a peace deal. Heck Labor and Kadima both let the IDF wither down to it's current poor state (and poor showing against Hezbollah).

BUT ... it's going to be interesting to see how Jews respond to Sakorzy's experiment. France has HORRIBLE anti-Semitism, almost all of it by Muslims.

Two horrible murders, one of a Jewish man killed by his neighbor because he was a Jew, another of a young man lured by a Frenchwoman (white accomplice) of an Algerian Muslim gang, who tortured him to death with the help of friends, neighbors, and family for days (simply because he was a Jew) have accelerated the exodus of Jews to America or Israel.

Can France, which sent after Poland the highest percentage of it's Jews to the Gas Chambers, act as a Secular Republic open to Jews and a safe refuge from Muslim atrocities? It's an open question. Sarkozy's latest statement that France will not tolerate the Hijab nor female genital mutilation nor polygamy throws down the gauntlet.

Not just to Muslims.

But to Multiculturalists.

The elites who make up the PC Multicultis, the Media, Bureaucracy (in France this is the ENArchs), Leftist politics and NGOs, who are all married to each other and form interlocking social networks, have always feared the ordinary person the most. And use crime by the underclass particularly minorities to break the middle class, so that they may not just keep but expand their near-hereditary privileges.

WHY did the ENArchs in France not just tolerate but celebrate crime against ordinary citizens? Why did Dems do the same in NYC?

Simple. They wanted high crime as a means of driving out ordinary people and keeping a controllable underclass (about whom they can feel morally superior about) as the replacment. Rudy was the last stand of the NYC middle class. I imagine Sarkozy, Merkel, and a few others might be for the European middle class which is beset by PC anti-nationalism garbage like here and the same multi-culti crime and criminal-loving we saw in NYC under Dinkins.

Look at Mayor Tony in LA. He's rolling cops heads for busting the La Raza riots in MacArthur Park, where no one got seriously hurt.

Anonymous said...

Im so sick of Jews! All of our stupidest laws...Jews! Every idiot thats somebody is a lousy Zionist! Everybody is either discovering some long lost ancestot who's a jew,or bowing before the jews like their shite doesnt stink!! Bush,tho dumb,laid-back and simple is OUR 1ST JEWISH PREZ! (If a brilliant guy like Clinton can be our 1st black Prez...and he was!)Kow-towing to jews and Israel is our national sport! Even when we got a big fat money-grubbing private jet owning vacationing in Tahiti big shot on trial in Chicago--and he is not a jew,amazingly--he's MARRIED TO ONE and the dirty rat who is testifying against him (of course I speak of Black and Radler)of course keeps 2 sets of didhes! :0

Anonymous said...

Or we may live to thank them. Given Iran's shaky regime, nukes-a-plenty, and desire repeatedly stated to nuke America out of existence.

This is the boil-the-lance argument, but it's precisely because Iran's regime is shaky that we should play it smart and await developments.

Can France, which sent after Poland the highest percentage of it's Jews to the Gas Chambers...

Well, let's not argue about the gas chambers, but your numbers are incorrect. Various French authorities went out of their way to frustrate the deportation of Jewish French citizens. The large majority of the 76,000 Jews deported from France were stateless Russians, Poles, Germans, etc. And 76,000 from a population of over 300,000 was a lower percentage than either Holland or Belgium.

Anonymous said...

Anything is better than the haughty purebred Segolene ice-queen Frog line of descent.

She was kind of yummy looking, in an ice-queen kind of way.

Anonymous said...

Sarkozy, the quarter Jew posing as Christian is no new phenomenon. One need only look Spain after the expulsion of the Jews or to modern-day Turkey today for illustrations how these creatures co-operate for the despoilation of their hosts, even (or perhaps especaially) when they have changed their names, and feel that they now reside comfortably behind masks. They still recognize each other, they are still able to mass their resources to harm their neighbors, and most importantly, carry in their blood the imperative to destroy and enslave every people that they come among. As Goethe observed, "these clever people have internalized the principle that, where order reigns, there is no profit to be made".

That Sarkozy carries this imperative in his blood should shock exacty no-one. In additon to his promises to America to support imperial adventures in the interests of Jewry (Sarkozy wanted to tell his American friends that "they can rely on our friendship ... France will always be next to them when they need us.” - http://www.cnn.com/2007/WORLD/europe/05/06/france.election/index.html), for which stateside Jews treat him as the second coming of Moses, we also have his own words: he is eager for the day the phrase "of French stock" no longer exists,: the perennial Jewish-messianic dream, a nightmare for all the people they come among.

http://cat.novopress.info/?p=1384

Dans son livre de juillet 2006, TĂ©moignage, Sarkozy commence par vanter ses origines immigrĂ©es, comme si elles lui donnaient une supĂ©rioritĂ© sur les “indigènes”, et conclut l’ouvrage par ces mots :

“Je pense que les Français attendent une France d’après (…), une France oĂ¹ l’expression “Français de souche” aura disparu.» (p. 280)


Futhermore, he will be appointing an actual Israeli citizen as immigration minister, according to the Jerusalem post:

http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?cid=1178431601987&pagename=JPost%2FJPArticle%2FShowFull

Arno Klarsfeld, the son of renowned Nazi-hunters Serge and Beate Klarsfeld, is rumored to be the top candidate to become minister of immigration and national identity when French President-elect Nicholas Sarkozy chooses his cabinet in the coming weeks.

Arno Klarsfeld, a 41-year-old lawyer, undertook several missions for Sarkozy when he was interior minister, dealing with France's illegal immigration problem.

Born in France, Klarsfeld aligned himself with Sarkozy and the Right after he fell out of favor with French leftists when he acquired Israeli citizenship in 2002 and joined the Border Police. He served at checkpoints around Bethlehem.


One of the commenters at this site remarks above, ". . . finally you have someone with Jewish ancestry who is NOT trying to break up the country's national identity."

Obviously, you'll have to keep looking for that most elusive of animals, the so-called "good Jew". Sarkozy, the globalist elected to preside over France's demise, is certainly not him who you seek.



For research, links, and even some of the comments above, many thanks to the site majorityrights.com.

Anonymous said...

I'm not sure I get the 'steve sailer is jewish' joke, can someone explain it to me?

Anonymous said...

Can Sailer ever write a post about an interesting facet of someone's life without it being construed by so many readers as a sweeping proclamation about his feelings regarding Jews or the state of affairs of a foreign nation or its governance by a particular individual? What I took from this is that Sarkozy has some Jewish ancestry that is tied to a city in Greece with some intriguing history. That history happens to have its own links to the Donme, a subject that has captured Sailer's interest previously.

Anonymous said...

Anonymous 7:29pm:

"In additon to his promises to America to support imperial adventures in the interests of Jewry (Sarkozy wanted to tell his American friends that "they can rely on our friendship ... France will always be next to them when they need us.”

Ellipses can leave a lot out. Here's the full quote:

“I want to tell them that France will always be by their side when they need her, but that friendship is also accepting the fact that friends can think differently.

From the same NY Times article, Sarkozy also explained (and agreed with) France's opposition to the invasion of Iraq, in a speech at Columbia University in NYC in 2004:

"“We were kicked out of Algeria less than 50 years ago, so don’t tell us that we don’t remember and that we don’t understand,” Mr. Sarkozy told an audience at Columbia University in 2004 in explaining France’s decision to stay out of the Iraq war. “We lived what you are living through in America before you. We were in Vietnam before you, and our young people died in Vietnam.”

He added: “In France, history is something that counts. Please don’t be angry with us because we remember what happened to us. Is there even a single country of the world, at any time of history, that was able to maintain itself in a sustained way in a country that was not its own, uniquely by the force of arms? Never, not a single one, even the Chinese.”

The bottom line on Sarkozy is that he isn't a reflexively anti-American douche bag like Chirac, who gleefully supported every tin pot dictator who opposed the United States, no matter how awful they were. That doesn't mean he's going to rubber stamp all American foreign policy adventures.

Anonymous said...

Dan:

"I'm not sure I get the 'steve sailer is jewish' joke, can someone explain it to me?"

Courtesy of TGGP in a recent comment thread:

http://www.gnxp.com/MT2/archives/000770.html

Anonymous said...

Oh, wow.

Anonymous said...

Repoman -- yes but the same French Authorities also went out of their way to help deport French Jews. Papon and IIRC Mitterand fall into that category.

The two nations ironically that frustrated the Nazis the most were Bulgaria (which I don't understand but admire) and Denmark. Holland enthusiastically helped hunt down Jews. AFAIK Italy and Greece were not especially enthusiastic in finding Jews for the Gestapo but traditional Catholic anti-semitism helped in that regard, against Italian and Greek inefficiency and dislike to hatred of Germans (Greeks took a lot of proportional casualties).

Point being that Sarko is more in line with the old idea of French Nationalism ala the Revolution than anything else. I.E. you can be "French" if you adopt French values, language, etc. Interesting to see if he can pull that one off.

He made a big stand for France to be against the Burgua, genital mutilation, forced marriage, etc. A stunning rebuke to PC Multi culturalism. Also held to Global Warming orthodoxy though.

Anonymous said...

Can Sailer ever write a post about an interesting facet of someone's life without it being construed by so many readers as a sweeping proclamation about his feelings regarding Jews or the state of affairs of a foreign nation or its governance by a particular individual?

Perhaps we're just giving Steve the same treatment he gives Obama.

Anonymous said...

The other survey, by the San Francisco-based Institute for Jewish and Community Research, confirmed those findings but also found what the institute’s director and chief pollster, Gary A. Tobin, called an “explosive” statistic: 53 percent of its sample of 1,200 college and university faculty members said they have “unfavorable” feelings toward evangelical Christians.

A graph accompanying the story drove the point home. By comparison, only three percent of faculty members had unfavorable feelings toward Jews. What’s funny is that the latter survey was designed to gauge anti-Semitism.


http://www.getreligion.org/?p=2393

Ah, how sweet it is to be Jewish!

Anonymous said...

Jacko:

"Ah, how sweet it is to be Jewish!"

So why don't you convert so you can share in the luck o' the Jews? Can't handle the study workload?

Anonymous said...

Jacko, I also have unfavorable opinions of evangelical Christians, and I'm neither Jewish nor a college professor. I imagine it's pretty tough for anyone that has to think for a living to respect people who have blind faith in something they've never seen, are completely immune to reason, and worst of all, try to convert everyone they meet to their personal delusion. Most of the evangelicals I've met personally have been down and out sort of people who turned to Jesus as a way to find some sort of meaning and discipline that was severely lacking in their lives before.

Say what you will about the Jews, I've never had one try to convert me.

Anonymous said...

As a Jew who has met a fair share of Evangelicals while serving in the Army Reserve, they strike me as decent folk over all. Although I don't share their beliefs, it's pretty clear to me that belief in a "personal relationship with Jesus" does wonders for lots of people in this country.

Born again Christianity is probably responsible for keeping more recovering alcoholics off the sauce than any secular government program. Overall, I'd say Evangelical Christianity is overwhelmingly a force for good in this country (I'd say the same about Catholicism, despite some of the Catholics' well-publicized problems).

We are truly fortunate to have so many born-agains and Catholics in this country. The truth is, we aren't The Netherlands or Sweden: a lot of Americans need religion to keep them on track.

Anonymous said...

It could be said that Sarkozy owes his victory to the Ancien RĂ©gime:

The real story is far different. As to "the trounce," Trounc-ee Royal was in fact the trounc-er with a "very interesting" "little" slice of the population. She in fact handily topped Sarkozy among those who are in the 18-59 demographic. That ain't Gen X, my friends, that's more or less everybody on active duty in the workforce!

So how, in the end, did Sarkozy become the Ultimate Grand Trounc-er? Simple. He beat the bloody hell out of Royal among the 60-and-up crew. "Beat the bloody hell out of" equates to unheard of margins that were above 2-1.


http://www.tompeters.com/entries.php?note=009729.php

Anonymous said...

Futhermore, he will be appointing an actual Israeli citizen as immigration minister, according to the Jerusalem post …

Just the man to restrict Muslim immigration, mais non?

Obviously, you'll have to keep looking for that most elusive of animals, the so-called "good Jew".

Sarko will be an excellent Catholic of ¼ Jewish ancestry if he’s bad to Muslims.

Anonymous said...

The Sarkozy-Klarsfeld link is particularly interesting because of the Alois Brunner connection.

Brunner proved his worth to Eichmann, who posted him next to Salonica, Greece, the center of Sephardic Jewish culture in Europe. Salonica Jews, whose ancestors fled the Inquisition, had retained the language and some of the customs of 15th century Spain. Brunner forced Salonica's Jews into a ghetto, while he settled into a mansion with luxury gardens outside and torture chambers below. Witnesses have called Brunner the "most ferocious" of all the torturers. He packed 2,000 Jewish prisoners into each transport of sealed boxcars, which after ten days arrived at the gas chambers of Auschwitz. In six weeks Brunner destroyed a community that had persisted for five centuries.

In his next assignment as deportation expert in France (June 1943-August 1944), Brunner took over the transit camp of Drancy, northeast of Paris. He ruled by torture, reprisal, and deception (for example, encouraging prisoners to take personal belongings on transports to a so-called labor colony in Poland). Before Brunner's arrival, only Jews born outside France were deported. But Brunner began sending French Jews to death camps as well. He specifically marked Jewish children as targets, calling them "future terrorists," raiding children's centers, deporting hundreds of unaccompanied infants. Of the 23,500 people Brunner deported from France, only 1,645 survived.


http://www.answers.com/topic/alois-brunner

Anonymous said...

France's new president, Nicolas Sarkozy, lost 57 members of his family to the Nazis and comes from a long line of Jewish and Zionist leaders and heroes, writes RAANAN ELIAZ.

http://www.ajn.com.au/news/news.asp?pgID=3162

Anonymous said...

"Given Iran's shaky regime, nukes-a-plenty, and desire repeatedly stated to nuke America out of existence"...

Given the existence of the Tooth Fairy, Robert the Devil (a little French reference there), and Santa Claus...

Iran does not have nukes. Iran's regime is not shaky (wishful thinking on the part of its opponents). The Iranian government has not repeatedly stated its desire to nuke America out of existence (with what?).

Reminds me of Mr. Burns's grand monologue on The Simpsons about why he wishes to blot out the sun over Springfield. His long justfication begins: "Since the beginning of time, man has yearned to destroy the sun." From absurdities, atrocities.

Anonymous said...

"The port city at the north end of the Aegean Sea, spelled Thessaloniki since Greece seized it from the Ottoman Empire before WWI, "

Yes and the Israelis change the name of Al Quds to Jerusalem when Israel seized it from Britain?

The city was named Thessaloniki when it was founded about 2500 years ago. It continued with that name for about 2000 years. It was called Thessaloniki, Solun (Slavic) Salonik (Turkish) and Salonica (Sephardic) by the various groups living within the city during the Ottoman Period (a few hundred years).

The Greeks didn't change the name as you imply. They use their name.

Jim said...

Of course, now it is the center point of Alan Furst's new novel - Spies of the Balkans. Not medieval history as you write, but Salonika just before the invasion by the Germans in World War 2.