By Dr. Vacy Vlazna
“President Emmanuel Macron made a scene in occupied East Jerusalem on Wednesday when he angrily told Israeli security officers to get out of the Church of Saint Anne, which is traditionally under France’s control:
“Everybody knows the rules. I don’t like what you did in front of me,” Macron ordered. “Go out – outside!” Abunimah
Ah the Hypocrisy! Macron telling Israeli authorities to leave property under French control while supporting Israeli occupation of the land of Palestine which, according to the British Mandate, should have been under Palestinian control since 1947..
“The mandate document was based on Article 22 of the Covenant of the League of Nations of 28 June 1919 and the Supreme Council of the Principal Allied Powers’ San Remo Resolution of 25 April 1920. The objective of the mandates over former territories of Ottoman Empire was to provide “administrative advice and assistance… until such time as they are able to stand alone”.
Neither the United Nations nor Lord Balfour had a legal mandate to hand over a foreign land to European immigrants.
Moreover, identical to Australian First Nations, Palestinians never ceded their sovereignty over historic Palestine.
Macron’s hypocrisy lies in the certitude that everybody does know the rules – under international law:
that Israel’s occupation is against the rules, that the Israeli settlements are against the rules, that Israeli apartheid is against the rules, that Israel’s extrajudicial executions, massacres, incarcerations of Palestinian political prisoners are against the rules, that the Israeli blockade of Gaza has been against the rules for 13 years.
On the other hand there is no hypocrisy on Manu Macron’s part if one considers that he is referring to the brutal rules of colonial expansionism which France followed repressively to the letter in West, East, Equatorial, North Africa, Indo-China, in Oceania. Take Algeria for instance.
The barbaric rules that the French regime perpetrated against Algerians are –
whole scale massacres and napalm bombing in Setif, Kherrata, North Constantinos, the massacre of thousands of men in the Skikda stadium, collective punishment, humiliations, lynchings, impalings, collective rape, annihilation of villages and their occupants, mass arrests, disappearances, concentration camps, tens of thousands of summary executions, bombings of trade unions, terrible tortures in prisons and in homes in front of the family, curfews, checkpoints, rampant raids, looting, psychological warfare, blowing up homes, the relentless incitement fear and terror, military courts replaced civil courts, decapitation by guillotine, the Paris massacre of 300 Algerian protestors
All were executed with merciless French arrogance and indifference to the humanity of the ‘natives’. An arrogance that masks the moral inferiority of the colonist.
French colonial sadism exists to this day thus explaining why since 1947, Presidents from Auriol to Macron (with the exception of Pompidou and d’Estaing) have enthusiastically supported the savage colonialism of their Israeli frères d’armes:
Auriol: approved Partition Plan, voted for the Israel’s membership to the UN.
Coty: France and Israel cooperated “in research and production of nuclear weapons,” and build Israel’s Dimona nuclear reactor.
de Gaulle: “I raise my glass to Israel, our friend and our ally.”
(Pompidou and d’Estaing)
Mitterrand: “Indeed, the French nation is a friend to the nation of Israel.”
Chirac: “France is determined to strengthen Israel and I say that it is important that the process move forward towards full development and assure full security for the people of Israel.”
Sarkozy: “On behalf of France, we would like to declare our love for Israel – we love you!”
Hollande: “I will always remain a friend of Israel”
Macron – “French law prohibits … boycotting [Israel]. There is no question of changing that law and no question of acting indulgently on this. For me, these [BDS protests] are anti-Zionist moves, thus profoundly anti-Semitic … I condemn this approach both legally and politically.” and recently Macron says anti-Zionism and denying ‘Israel’s right to exist’ are antisemitic
As a Frenchman, Macron is an expert on antisemitism, white feathers and collaboration. Under German occupation, the French government capitulated. Rather than fight the Nazis, it signed an armistice on 22 June 1940 with Germany that divided France into occupied and unoccupied zones- the latter referred to as Vichy France though the Vichy regime administered both.
In 2017, despite denouncing France’s participation in the holocaust, Macron with Neo-Vichy fervour collaborates with Israel’s war crimes against Palestinians by trading arms with Israel in breach of the rules of the Arms Trade Treaty, by granting impunity for Israel’s war crimes by, on 3rd December 2019, signing onto the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) definition of antisemitism which includes anti-zionism and criticism of Israel.
And now Macron, on a hypocrisy roll, pledged to Netanyahu that “France was determined Iran would never gain a nuclear weapon” despite France’s primary role during the 1950s in setting up Israel’s not-so-secret nuclear program and maintains the farce that it doesn’t exist; no formal IAEA inspection of Israel’s arsenal of nuclear warheads has been carried out.
Ironically, hypocritically, consistently, Macron made the pledge while attending, in Jerusalem, the 75th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz where he stated “no one has the right to invoke (those killed by the Nazis) to justify division or contemporary hatred’ while dependably overlooking Netanyahu’s opportunistic turning of the Holocaust anniversary into an anti-Iran-hate-fest.
40 other heads of state also obsequiously stood by as Netanyahu ran roughshod with his Iran bandwagon over the memory of the holocaust Dead and the daily brutal violations under his watch of ‘Never Again’ against Palestinian families.
Protest to French UN Embassy https://onu.delegfrance.org/Contact-us.
*Dr. Vacy Vlazna is Coordinator of Justice for Palestine Matters and editor of a volume of Palestinian poetry, I remember my name. She was Human Rights Advisor to the GAM team in the second round of the Acheh peace talks, Helsinki, February 2005 then withdrew on principle. Vacy was convenor of Australia East Timor Association and coordinator of the East Timor Justice Lobby as well as serving in East Timor with UNAMET and UNTAET from 1999-2001.
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