Author: David Pryce-Jones

ISBN: 1594031517

Having authored nine novels and twelve books of non-fiction, David Pryce-Jones has now turned his attention to France’s dealings with Arabs and Jews with his Betrayal: France, the Arabs, and the Jews. This book actually started out as an essay Pryce-Jones contributed to the French magazine Commentaire in May 2005 which has now given rise to this revised and extended version.

Pryce-Jones has selected much of his material from culling the archives of the Quai d’Orsay, France’s foreign ministry and its principal foreign policy institution. The result is a kind of narrative divided into sixteen chapters that moves from a general introduction pertaining to the working of this branch of France’s government to examining such topics as the Jews in the view of the Quai d’Orsay, the Catholic factor, French designs and how they clash with Zionism, the rescue of the Mufti of Jerusalem during the World War II, the disposition of the former Ottoman provinces, French writers and their influences on France’s foreign policies, Ayatollah Khomeini and his exile from Iran, and other topics that evidence France’s hostility to Jewish self-determination while at the same time furthering their dream of passing itself off as a “une puissance musulmane” (a Muslim power). It was and still is the belief of the Quai d’Orsay that France and the world of Islam share a common destiny while it has the ability to define Jews and ordain their future in a way that would be better than the Jews can do for themselves.

Unfortunately, as Pryce-Jones illustrates, the dream has become a nightmare as France tries to fit Arabs and Jews into a grand design based on French requisites. The result has become catastrophic as the relationship between the two communities has advanced to crisis point where there have been several instances of brutal anti-Semitic incidents as well as Muslim rioting that has placed France in a dangerous situation.

As the inside cover of the book states, “France has betrayed its proud humanistic values in its very different dealings with Arabs and Jews.” Pryce-Jones does not hide his feelings pertaining to the damage that was done by misguided policies that have appeased such tyrants as Saddam Hussein and Yasser Arafat and, as he quotes Christian Pineau a one-time foreign minister well disposed towards Israel, that  “the Quai d’Orsay was motivated its Middle East policy by a ‘more or less conscious’ anti-Semitism.”

In view of all that has happened in the Middle East and Africa over the last century up to the present day-the period that this book covers-you have something that approaches required reading if we are to understand France’s behavior that is proving to be quite dangerous to the interest of everyone concerned.

The above review was contributed by:  NORM GOLDMAN:  Retired Title Attorney: Editor & Publisher of Bookpleasures. Here are  Norm Goldman's Reviews