Anti-Dreyfus poster - Circa 1890's

"In signing my name below I petition for the removal of Daniel Bernard from all governmental positions; I demand the French government actively seeks out perpetrators of anti-Semitism; and I demand the French government put an end to anti-Semitism. I hereby boycott all French products and publicize this petition to all I know, until the French government halts anti-Semitism in law and in print, and publicizes punitive measures for perpetrators of anti-Semitism, and punishes such perpetrators."   Name: Email: Click this box if you wish to receive our e-mails, and to receive the NEW JewishTimes FREE. (Approximate number of signatures: 57,608)

ALL supporters of Israel should boycott French wine, cheese, perfume and clothing, as well as refuse to visit France as tourists, until the French government recalls its ambassador to Britain, and either cashiers or demotes him.

Last week, the recently appointed French ambassador to Britain, Daniel Bernard, attended a reception at the home of Conrad Black and his wife, Barbara Amiel. Black is the publisher of newspapers in Canada, the United States, Britain and Israel. Amiel, a reporter in her own right, said that at the party Bernard called Israel a "shitty little country," adding, "Why should the world be in danger of World War III because of those people?"

Bernard does not deny he made the statements, and his spokesman stated that Bernard was "absolutely shocked" by suggestions he was anti-Semitic. Really? He must be thin-skinned indeed to be so easily shocked. That little country and the Jewish nation, never more than one-third of one percent of the world's population that he so vulgarly described, gave birth to Moses, King David, King Solomon, Jesus, Freud and Einstein, as well as approximately 20 percent of the world's Nobel Prize winners.

The response by Benjamin Disraeli, prime minister of Britain during the reign of Queen Victoria, to an anti-Semite seems particularly appropriate, "Yes, I am a Jew, and when the ancestors of the right honorable gentleman were brutal savages in an unknown island, mine were priests in the temple of Solomon."

Bernard used to serve as France's delegate to the United Nations. One can safely assume he supported with pleasure the prejudiced resolutions against Israel offered time after time by the Arab countries, effectively supporting Palestinian terrorism against the civilian population of Israel, while denouncing Israel because it exercised its right of self defense.

That support shouldn't shock us. After all, wasn't it in Vichy France during World War II that French cops rounded up and delivered 61,000 Jews at Drancy to the Nazis without a request by the Nazis that they do so? Those Jews were then shipped to Nazi death camps where they were gassed.

We now know, notwithstanding Herculean efforts to cover up the history of the Nazi occupation, that large numbers of French collaborated with the Nazis, and only a small number - mostly Communists responding to the orders of Stalin - continued to fight underground.

It was the French government of 20 years ago that financed and built the Iraqi nuclear bomb plant that - fortunately for the allies in the Gulf War of 1991 - no longer existed because Israel bombed and destroyed it in 1981.

It was France that made a bargain with the PLO in the 1970s that it would not arrest Arab terrorists using France as their base planning attacks on Israel and Jews so long as they did not engage in terrorism on French soil. And it is France at the United Nations that now opposes requests by the United States and Britain for additional sanctions against Iraq for its refusal to admit UN inspectors required by UN resolution.

French anti-Semitism is well known. I have no doubt that had Bernard been alive during the infamous Dreyfus trials, he might well have defended the French government with something like, "Why is that shitty little Jew protesting his innocence when the French government and the French army says he is guilty of treason?" - as did so many others.

If a French ambassador had assailed Saudi Arabia in the same way - a country that exports not only oil, but terrorists - the French government would have fired him on the spot. Incidentally, 15 of the 19 who blew up the World Trade Center and hit the Pentagon were Saudis.

Where are the supporters of Israel willing to stand up and actively lead boycotts and picket lines against France until it fires Bernard?

Let me add that if a quarrel arose between France and Germany, I would hope we in the United States would remember how, when Ronald Reagan was president, the French government refused to allow our military planes to fly over France on their way to bomb Libya, and that we would support the Germans.

Boycott, boycott, boycott France.