Hi everybody, At least there's one thing positive about this topic: we don't get bored at JMDL, although sometimes I wish the world would leave Israel alone and stop scrutinizing its every move.
On the topic of France vs the U.S.: It was never my intent to say that the U.S. was all bad and France was terrific. If I spent 10 years in L.A. obviously I must have liked something. Ever since I was 15 years old I dreamed about moving there because I believed (at the time) that the society was more open than France. I accomplished that dream at age 22. Actually, I try not to relay my opinions about the U.S because everybody assumes I had terrible experiences while living there. The truth is at first it was a little rough but for the most part I was doing fine. If you had told me at age 31 that I would be moving back to France I would have said you were crazy. Then on january 1st 92, 1 month before my first child was about to be born, I realized I didn't want to raise american children, that I would always be a foreigner there and that my culture was French, whether I liked it or not. My wife, who's French, didn't even want to leave. 10 years later, we are sure we made the right move and that our assesment was realistic for a family. Although as a "wandering jew" we have to be ready to pack up and leave as soon as someone like Le Pen would get elected someday (God forbid). Who knows, we may be going back to the U.S. for survival one day. Like John Van Tiel said, there are good and bad points about each country. It all depends what one's priorities are. Of course I realize that L.A. is not representative of the U.S. Other parts of the country would have been much better but the weather in those parts was as bad as France so might as well go back there. On the topic of health care, one of my best friends was a MD resident in L.A. county hospital. Sure the poor people could get some treatment in the county hospital but in what conditions! Plus there was only 1 hospital for the entire L.A county that would accept people without insurance, so you can imagine the wait. I doubt the most sophisticated (i.e expensive) medical procedures are used there for those patients. Regarding the French: it's true that for a long time they resented Americans. I think it was pure jealousy + de Gaulle's personal resentment for being left out at Yalta . Now nobody cares, at any rate we live in a McWorld culture. If you don't behave like an "ugly american", being obnoxious and waiving dollars, then there's no reason for you not to enjoy a trip to France. Middle East: I've been called "condescending and know it all" and that I'm relaying my own propaganda. When I first got involved in this debate last august, there was some professional propaganda being relayed by Azeem in London (who by the way has disappeared since september). The initial letter which I posted that sparked the debate was written by a certain Dr Morley. Being alone against a major backlash, I decided to ask Dr. Morley for help. His only response was: "read". So I did just that. Believe me if you want, but none of the books I've read have been written by jews, let alone Israeli propagandists. For example, some of the info in Friday's post came from a book written in 1980 (feels like it could have been written yesterday!) by an intellectual french political writer named Suzanne LABIN, called: "Israel, the crime to live". This writer got the "Freedom Prize" in 1957 and the "Henry Malherbe Writers prize" in 1979. She has been writing for 30 + years about Stalin, China, URSS vs USA, Vietnam, Chile, drugs, so I mean here is a non-partisan writer as far as the middle east goes. The reason I'm saying all this is quite simple: I feel the media (in France, + BBC news which I watch all the time) is totally biased in favor of the new palestinian underdog. I mean when you show an israeli tank next to a stone throwing boy, this itself conveys a message. So, all my friends in France who get their only source of info by watching TV or reading newspapers have pretty much the same opinion as the people who are posting on JMDL. I don't blame them nor do I blame the JMDLers I disagree with, in fact we're still friends. They can't help thinking what they do with this media coverage. All I'm saying is you need to look at the whole picture by reading history and then you can make your own opinion. True, simplistic lies make me mad. I've tried to supply historical facts, not hearsay, that can be easily verified in many history books (non-partisan of course). So far I've not gotten any facts to contradict me. We can debate until dawn about Sabra & Shatila but, in all due respect, this is not the whole picture. So, I'd be very happy to meet JMDLers, including the ones who disagree with me, in France or elsewhere, for coffee and cake. Laurent
