Elif Kayi, Z Word’s European press reviewer, reports on coverage in the French press of President Sarkozy’s visit to Israel.

In recent years, the debate over French policy towards Israel has been complicated by two factors: firstly, a perception among Israelis that France is tilted towards the Arab side in the conflict, secondly, the issue of antisemitism.

Indeed, prior to French President Nicolas Sarkozy’s visit to Israel earlier in June, arguably the most memorable event in recent memory was the speech delivered in July 2004 by Ariel Sharon, the then Israeli Prime Minister, urging French Jews to move to Israel because of rising antisemitism around them. Some commentators noted that because of the brutal attack on a young French Jew in Paris on the eve of Sarkozy’s departure, antisemitism would overshadow his visit too. “The president of the Republic will have to explain himself,” wrote Yves Thréard in Le Figaro. “In order to move around the fear of the old and tenacious evil which reappears from time to time in the Israeli collective consciousness, he will have to say, to repeat, to claim: no, France is not antisemitic. The ignorance, the stupidity and the hate of some kids cannot translate into a general climate and a national feeling.”

Sarkozy was mostly positively depicted in the French media as a friend of Israel”. The leftist weekly Marianne couldn’t resist a reference to the President’s Jewish origins, “…since his grandfather was a ‘Jew from Salonica, and even though he repeats that he is ‘not Jewish’ - which is true, since his mother was not. But he always had sympathy for the culture and the religion, especially when these were rejected by the environment around him. He also admires the scientific and intellectual prowess of Israel and the vitality with which the country stands up to the Arab world.”

Some writers noted that the French President is held in high personal regard in Israel, not least by French citizens living there. “During the presidential elections in 2007, the French who settled in Israel massively voted for him, as well as - it seems - members of the French Jewish community”,” observed Marc Hecker, in the weekly Le Nouvel Observateur.

The business daily Les Echos ran the headline ““Sarko the Israeli” and reported on the warm portrait penned by Ha’’aretz: “”After several years of tense relations between France and the Jewish State, the visit of Nicolas Sarkozy is welcomed by the Israeli press which underlines, in the manner of the leftist daily Haaretz, that ‘rarely has a European dignitary been welcomed in Israel with such warmth.’“

Much of the coverage concentrated on Sarkozy’s relations with the Palestinians. Many commentators pointed to Sarkozy’s repeated emphasis on Israeli security and the imperative of preventing Iran from obtaining nuclear weapons. “But,” commented le Nouvel Observateur, “if Nicolas Sarkozy presents himself as a friend of Israel, he also asserts that friendship includes criticism. Thus, he did not spare himself condemnation of Israeli colonization policies, including around Jerusalem.”

The Belgian daily Le Soir was fulsome in its tribute to Sarkozy’s statesmanship, pointing out that he stood at the Knesset podium and called for Jerusalem to be the capital of two states. “All that required courage and a sense of history, qualities that one will have to associate with Nicolas Sarkozy from now on”.

Writing in Le Figaro, Renaud Girard argued that Sarkozy had offered the hand of friendship to the Israelis; their leaders now had to show wisdom and grasp it. In Le Nouvel Observateur, Marc Hecker claimed that a warming in relations between Israel and France always takes place at a cost to relations with the Arab world. Meanwhile, the communist daily L’Humanité complained that all this diplomacy was taking place at the “expense of the legitimate rights of the Palestinians.”