The French

Someone sent me several witticisms concerning France. Among them were two quotations from Mark Twain:

"France has neither winter nor summer nor morals. Apart from these drawbacks it is a fine country.

France has usually been governed by prostitutes."

The reason I bring it up is because I read that according to AFP the Israeli Ambassador, Nissim Zvili, has written letters to the Municipality of Clamart, to the state prosecutor’s office and to Interior Minister Dominique de Villepin. He requested that the Arafat death certificate be corrected to show his place of birth as Egypt and not Jerusalem.

One may say who cares where he was born, as long as he is dead. Nonetheless it should be corrected because of the symbolic implications. All biographers agree that his place of birth was Cairo, but the French base their revision on the fact that when his daughter was born the forms included his self-serving assertion that he was born in Jerusalem.

Records of births and deaths are the purview of the French Interior Minister, Dominique de Villepin. Does the name sound familiar? It should. In his previous incarnation he was the French Foreign Minister. You remember the fellow who flew around the world in less than 80 days to try and persuade all and sundry not to support the US and its coalition partners’ plans with respect Iraq. But as Norman Scwartzkopf aptly pointed out: "Going to war without France is like going deer hunting without your accordion."

And so Dominique stopped traveling and became Interior Minister. What is it the French say: plus ca change, plus ca la meme chose. Or to paraphrase: whatever the office, the man is the same.

I think it was Regis Philbin who quipped, "the only time the French want us to go to war is when the Germans are sitting in Paris drinking coffee." But that is not quite accurate. When France’s former colonies are concerned, and without UN approbation, they are quite prepared to go in shooting. Remember the Ivory Coast, which is only the latest example.

Yes, Mark Twain was right.