Stephen Green has a piece about a former French minister warbling about the Middle East. There has been a huge amount of guff written about Israel and it reminded me of the built in paranoia that a lot of French people have. When the heir to the French throne was killed in a little colonial scuffle with the British in 1879 , the French nation was convinced it was all planned by Queen Victoria. Never mind that Prince Louis Napoleon had been brought up in in Britain, his father having been rejected by the French. It was all 'perfidious Albion's fault' , as usual
Christian, my otherwise intelligent french friend , was shocked some years ago when I pointed out that the then French President, Mitterand, had served in the war time Vichy government. 'Why weren't we told ' he gasped.

Why indeed.