The rightful heirs of Palestine

Sarah Honig
Another Tack/JPost
14 May '10

In 1799, just before he failed to conquer Acre, Napoleon Bonaparte penned a momentous letter “to the Jewish nation.” At that point, still confident of military triumph, he perceived himself as the great liberator of history’s most oppressed people – the “Israelites.” They constituted “a unique nation, which, during thousands of years, lust of conquest and tyranny have deprived of its ancestral lands, but not of its name and national existence!”

When Napoleon aspired to establish a renascent state in Palestine, it was unquestionably to be a Jewish state. He had no doubt whose ancestral land this was, with whom it’s associated and who were the only people who ever made it a distinct sovereign unit.

Addressing Jews as the “rightful heirs of Palestine,” Napoleon announced he was fighting to avenge “the almost 2000-year-old ignominy imposed upon you; and, while time and circumstances would seem to be least favorable to a restatement of your claims or even to their expression – and indeed compellingly advocate their complete abandonment – France offers you at this very time, and contrary to all expectations, Israel’s patrimony!”

BUT WHEN the current French head of state speaks of the rightful heirs of Palestine, he means Arabs – descendants of foreign conquistadors or of itinerant latecomer migrants from the entire Mideast – who have only in recent decades discovered the European-minted moniker of Palestine (mispronounced as Filastin). Nicolas Sarkozy wants Arab sovereignty established here posthaste, without any pesky pedantry about Jewish rights, not even about bothersome Jewish self-defense.

Sarkozy fails to mention that the Arab state he fancies on Israel’s eastern flank, will leave Israel’s soft underbelly – its densest population center – exposed and that the Jewish state’s narrow waistline would shrink to nine untenable miles. Minor quibbles like Jewish survival mustn’t interfere with automatic compliance with his grand scheme.

Sarkozy moreover is petulant and demonstratively impatient. His will must be done and done now. He, after all, is a superior purveyor of wisdom who must be dutifully acknowledged as such with no hesitation or deviation.

When obedience isn’t immediate or sufficient, Sarkozy is understandably piqued. That’s why he lashed out at Israel’s prime minister for being too slow on the uptake. “I’m disappointed with him,” Sarkozy reportedly said. “Despite the friendship, sympathy and commitment we have toward Israel, we still can’t accept this foot-dragging. I don’t understand where [Binyamin] Netanyahu is going or what he wants.”

Herein lies the crux. Sarkozy isn’t just making imperious demands; he is issuing his diktats as a friend. Professed friends presume they possess moral authority to put their protégés in their place. Righteous rebuke from friends is meant to sting far more than chiding from unfriendly sorts.

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