MIDDLE EAST: Prime Minister Mr Ariel Sharon used a welcome ceremony at Israel's international airport for a group of 200 French Jewish immigrants yesterday to try and heal a rift with the French government over anti-Semitism, writes David Horovitz in Jerusalem
Earlier this month, the office of French President Jacques Chirac declared that Mr Sharon was, temporarily, persona non grata in France, after he urged the 600,000 strong Jewish community there to immigrate immediately to Israel to escape what he called "the wildest anti-Semitism." But in an address to the new arrivals at Ben-Gurion Airport last night, the prime minister expressed appreciation for "the determined actions of the French government, as well as the French president's stand against anti-Semitism." While Jews should immigrate to Israel as "their homeland," he said, they should not be forced out of their native countries "because of hatred or fear." The prime minister's amended immigration appeal was clearly designed to help rebuild relations with Paris - a process the French government has made plain it also favours.
Nevertheless, other rifts between the two countries remain unhealed, with France at the forefront of criticism of Mr Sharon's policies on the Palestinians, and the Israeli government fuming at the French for, it asserts, leading the process by which the European Union voted as a bloc in support of the UN General Assembly resolution last week welcoming a ruling by the International Court of Justice in The Hague that requires Israel to dismantle its West Bank security barrier.
Despite French government efforts to tackle an eruption in attacks on Jewish targets, the number of attacks is rising. Only yesterday, dozens of gravestones were desecrated with Swastikas and other daubings in a Jewish cemetery outside Strasbourg. Still, such attacks have not produced a dramatic increase in immigration to Israel, yesterday's arrivals notwithstanding. Officials are hoping that some 3,000 French Jews will move here in the course of 2004, which would represent almost a 50 per cent increase on last year, but still falls short of the mass immigration Mr Sharon would like to see.
Several of those arriving yesterday predicted a dramatic upsurge of immigration in the near future, because of anti-Semitism. But Israeli officials say that many French Jews, even if they leave, will move to countries other than Israel.
Yesterday's airport ceremony was also attended by Israel's opposition leader Mr Shimon Peres and other dignitaries. Mr Sharon is making a habit of meeting new arrivals; he went to the airport earlier this month to greet a plane-load of American Jewish immigrants, and regularly addresses large groups of young Jews who visit Israel.