PM Netanyahu in France [A Jerusalem News Current Affairs Special] (14 January, 2015, 23 Tevet, 5775)
Contents:
1. Brit-Am Introduction: PM Netanyahu represents Israel
2. ACD BLOG.  Charlie Hebdo - A Missed Opportunity by Rachel Ehrenfeld
3. French Jews Grateful for Visit of PM Netanyahu by Dr. Aaron Lerner.
 4. PM Netanyahu's Remarks at the Great Synagogue of Paris 11/01/2015 GPO.
5. French PM Valls: If 100,000 Jews leave, France will no longer be France
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1. Brit-Am Introduction: PM Netanyahu represents Israel
France, at least officially, tried to dissuade the PM of Israel from attending the international rally against terrorism.Â
Criticism has been levelled against the PM for attending. He is also said to have pushed himself to the first row of the marchers, and  at the end of a rally when boarding a bus to have pushed in to the line. Exactly what happened is not clear. It may all have been a misunderstanding. On the other hand it may also have been a circumvention of French security machinations intended  to demean the PM.
Apart from that,
Netanyahu represents Israel. He should be in the front row and he should be the first allowed on the bus, if only for security considerations.
As for coming to France against the alleged wishes of the French government:
PM Netanyahu is the PM of the State of Israel. He represents the Jewish people. The Jews in France were victimized and have been traumatized. They needed Netanyahu there and he was.
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2. ACD BLOG
 Charlie Hebdo - A Missed Opportunity by Rachel Ehrenfeld
Extract:
French President Francois Hollande, who called for this weekend's rally in Paris, managed to turn the message of the biggest symbolic protest against Islamist, anti-Semitic terrorism into farce...
Hollande's national security adviser, Jacques Audibert, delivered a message to the Israel's Prime Minister office, saying, "Hollande would prefer that Netanyahu not attend because his presence would be 'liable to divert attention to other controversial issues, like Jewish-Muslim relations...'." When Netanyahu did not comply, Hollande immediately invited the Palestinian Authority's (not a state) anti-Semitic Chief Mahmoud Abbas, who earned his Ph.D. in Holocaust Denial from Moscow's Patrice Lumumba University and who sends his al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades to kidnap and murder Jewish children just because they are Jews. His presence was complemented by his supporter Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov. Lavrov's attendance occurred as the Moscow police arrested "Je suis Charlie" sign-carrying demonstrators.
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3. French Jews Grateful for Visit of PM Netanyahu
by Dr. Aaron Lerner.
www.imra.org.il
For video http://youtu.be/ge8h8XCeaGs
 [Dr. Aaron Lerner - IMRA:
 It was an extremely emotional moment. Yes. The crowd applauded up to this point of Mr. Netanyahu's remarks.
Yes. they applauded when he said "You have the full right to live in safety and tranquility as citizens with equal rights wherever you wish, including here in France."
But there was a COMPLETELY DIFFERENT response to the following lines:
 "But Jews of our time have been blessed with another right, a right that did not exist for previous generations of Jews: The right to join their Jewish brothers and sisters in our historic homeland, the Land of Israel; the right to live in our free country, the one and only Jewish state, the State of Israel; the right to stand tall and proud at the walls of Zion, our eternal capital of Jerusalem. Any Jew who wishes to immigrate to Israel will be welcomed with open arms and warm and accepting hearts. They will not arrive in a foreign land but rather the land of our forefathers. God willing, they will come and many of you will come to our home. Am Yisrael Chai [The People of Israel Lives]."
There are some in the Israeli media who are so hell bent to spin every iota of news in order to try and defeat Binyamin Netanyahu in the coming elections that they insisted on putting these words in a bad light - as if the French Jews hearing it were somehow offended.
 But the French Jews in that room responded in a way that indicated that they were anything but offended.
They ROARED IN APPROVAL.
 They cheered these words in a way that made their response to everything before it no more than a formality.
And then the cantor lead in the singing of the Prayer for the State of Israel. The media in Israel has been going overtime picking away at Netanyahu's visit. Some are claiming it was improper for Netanyahu to push to the front line of the march - the front line that [master world leader?]
Abbas was already strategically placed in for the photo op. Improper?Â
Anything but. He did his job.
And then some of the same idiots are complaining that when the bus Binyamin Netanyahu was supposed to board pulled out without him that it was bad behavior for Netanyahu and his security team to push ahead of many to get into the next bus. Why idiots?  Because the clock was ticking for a security nightmare.
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 4. PM Netanyahu's Remarks at the Great Synagogue of Paris 11/01/2015 GPO.
 Translation.
Extracts:
 On this day, all citizens of Israel and Jews around the world stand with France and the French people. I greatly appreciate the determined stance of the President of France, Francois Hollande, and Prime Minister Valls against any expression of anti-Semitism or anti-Zionism and against terror. This stance is important to France and it is important to the world. I wish to convey my condolences to the families of the journalists and police and all those innocent people who were murdered while realizing their most basic rights: freedom of expression, freedom of thought and freedom of belief, even the freedom not to believe. These are the values on which modern France is built and these are values that are worth fighting for. Today I marched through the streets of Paris, in one line with leaders from around the world, in order to say that terror must end. It is time that we fight against terror together. And I would like to use this opportunity to salute the French security forces who acted with remarkable bravery, as well as to express my appreciation to the Malian, who is a Muslim, who helped save seven Jews.
My dear brothers and sisters, I came here from Jerusalem, the eternal capital of Israel, to share in your pain over the murders of Francois-Michel, Philippe, Yoav and of Yohan, who bravely tried to grab the terrorist's gun and was fatally wounded. The memory of our four holy brothers will be forever engraved on the hearts of our people.
Unfortunately the people of Israel have experienced this pain. We have experienced it many times because we have been fighting against terror for many years, and like many in Israel, I am personally familiar with the wounds of terror as well as the agony of bereavement.
As a soldier, I was wounded in an operation to free hostages who had been kidnapped on a Sabena airplane.
My late brother, Yoni, was killed in Entebbe when rescuing the hostages kidnapped on an Air France airplane.
For years, the best of our sons and daughters were killed in many terror attacks, and the finest of our fighters fell in heroic battles against terrorism, including just recently during Operation Protective Edge.
Today we bow our heads in memory of the victims in Paris.
However, as representatives of an ancient and proud people, we stand tall against evil because we can overcome it.
"The more they were oppressed, the more they multiplied and spread" [cf. Exodus 1:12]
 because truth and justice are on our side.
....it is not a coincidence that radical Islam has sought to destroy Israel from the very day it declared its independence: Because Israel is the only Western democracy in the Middle East, because Israel is the only place that is truly safe for Christians, women, minorities,
that respects all human rights. Well, here is another truth:
Radical Islam does not hate the West because of Israel. It hates Israel because it is an organic part of the West.
It rightly views Israel as an island of Western democracy and tolerance in an ocean of fanaticism and violence that it wishes to impose on the Middle East, Europe and the entire world.
Israel is not under attack because of this or that detail of its policies, but rather because of its very existence and nature. But we are not the only ones under attack. ...
 Israel stands with Europe and Europe must stand with Israel. As the civilized world today stands with France against terror, so must it stand with Israel against terror. It is the exact same terror. Those who slaughtered Jews in the synagogue in Jerusalem and those who slaughtered Jews and journalists in Paris belong to the same murderous terrorist movement. They should be condemned in the same measure and they must be fought in the same manner.
 Website: www.imra.org.il
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5. French PM Valls: If 100,000 Jews leave, France will no longer be France
http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-4613798,00.html
Published: 01.11.15, 13:00 / Israel News
Brit-Am Note:
French Prime Minister Manuel Valls has a Spanish father and a Swiss mother. His wife is a Jewish violinist from Russia. This explains his reference below to "100,000 French people of Spanish origin"
"If 100,000 French people of Spanish origin were to leave, I would never say that France is not France anymore. But if 100,000 Jews leave, France will no longer be France. The French Republic will be judged a failure, French Prime Minister Manuel Valls said Sunday ahead of a memorial rally in honor of those killed in France in recent days.
Â
"Jews were sometimes marginalized in France, but this was not Spain or other countries, they were never expelled, and they play a role in the life of France that is central," Valls said, adding that "To understand what the idea of the republic is about, you have to understand the central role played by the emancipation of the Jews. It is a founding principle."
He made the comments in as world leaders descended on Paris for a march in honor of the victims of this week's Islamist militant attacks, which saw seventeen people, including journalists and policemen, die in three days of violence that began with a shooting attack on the satirical newspaper Charlie Hebdo on Wednesday and ended with a hostage-taking at a kosher supermarket on Friday. The three gunmen were also killed.