Betrayal : France, the Arabs, and the Jews

David Pryce-Jones believes that France has done more damage to the Middle East than any other country. France encouraged the mass immigration of Arabs and that huge and growing minority in the country now believes that it has rights and claims which have not been met. This minority also believes that Israel should not exist. Middle East geo-politics are spreading from French soil to an increasingly Islamized Europe.

France has betrayed its proud humanistic values in its very different dealings with Arabs and Jews, argues David Pryce-Jones, and this betrayal portends a crisis in the Western world.

Traditionally, French leaders assumed that Arabs and Muslims existed to serve French national purposes-an assumption that resulted in policies of imperialist violence. More recently, but just as misguidedly, French appeasement and surrender have allowed the likes of Saddam Hussein and Yasser Arafat to dictate the national interest. Meanwhile, France has permitted the immigration of Arabs and Muslims in such numbers as to threaten the country's fundamental character.

At the same time as Arabs and Muslims have been encouraged to maintain their own cultural identity, Jews have been granted citizenship on condition that they possess no distinct identity. Extending this requirement to foreign policy, the French ruling elite have consistently opposed Zionism and the state of Israel itself.

Pryce-Jones has followed the evolution of these destructive attitudes and policies through the archives of the Quai d'Orsay, France's foreign ministry. In this brilliant and hard-hitting book, he explains how and why France has become a danger to itself and an ill omen for the West.

David Pryce-Jones believes that France has done more damage to the Middle East than any other country, backing Yasser Arafat and the Palestinian cause, supporting Saddam Hussein, giving safe harbor to the Ayatollah Khomeini. One aim of these policies was to sponsor the Arabs' belief that they could be incorporated into a Franco-Arab power bloc that might one day rival the United States. Simultaneously, France encouraged the mass immigration of Arabs. A huge and growing minority in this country now believes that they have rights and claims which have not been met. This minority also believes th