On Friday I posted an item consisting largely of two excerpts of translations - made by Douglas at Last of the famous international playboys - from pieces in Le Monde. The first excerpt concerned recent attacks on Jews in France and there is nothing I wish to add to, subtract from, or amend in, that part of my post.
The second part of it was an excerpt from Serge Klarsfeld which begins by quoting a brief statement that comes from a speech to the National Assembly by Clermont-Tonnerre in 1789. The context in Klarsfeld's argument is to show a line of opposition on France's part to Jewish nationhood, starting that long ago and stretching to the present. Chris Bertram at Crooked Timber traced Clermont-Tonnerre's statement back to its source in his speech as a whole - available online - as I had not. Read within the whole speech, the statement does not mean what it appears to mean in the context of Klarsfeld's argument. Clermont-Tonnerre is evidently making a point about the meaning of civil and legal equality, and not any statement against Jewish nationhood.
This and the comments thread that has arisen at Crooked Timber prompts the following observations on my part. First, I make no apology for not having followed the quoted statement from Clermont-Tonnerre to its source. It would have been better had I done so, but the citing of material from others is a standard practice in blogging, one cannot check absolutely everything, and one takes a certain amount on trust. All of it is open to scrutiny and correction by others - as this has indeed been corrected by Chris Bertram's efforts, a correction I am more than happy to repeat on my own behalf, as I just have in the paragraph above. I do want to add a second correction, however.
For my own purpose in quoting the Klarsfeld excerpt had not specifically to do with the meaning of the Clermont-Tonnerre statement. It was to associate myself with the view Klarsfeld was expressing that, but for the period 1946-1967, French foreign policy hasn't been even-handed as between Israel and the Arab countries - a view which much of the discussion on the CT thread has bypassed. It is an impression in any case which I myself have formed, and this is why I excerpted the Klarsfeld piece. But it turns out to have been an incautious thing to do because I do not have the historical knowledge to back that Klarsfeld view. Whether it's true or not, I'm not at present in a position to argue for it persuasively. This is therefore the correction I wish to add for my own part, more important to me than the one about the sense of Clermont-Tonnerre's words: I withdraw the association which my post implied with Klarsfeld's view - for the time being at any rate.
As those led for the first time to the Crooked Timber thread I refer to will discover, there is another aspect to some of the discussion there than the substantive matters I've dealt with here, but I disdain to comment on this publicly other than to register its existence.
I leave my original post on the topic standing, for the record, but will add a link from it to these corrections.
