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Photo: Yonatan Davis
Yaron London
Photo: Yonatan Davis

Foreigners aren't the enemy

French Foreign Legion proves that nationalism not only a product of ethnic origin

European TV stations broadcasted the ceremonies marking this weekend's Bastille Day and much time was devoted to the resplendent military parade that went through the Champs Elysees as it does every year. According to tradition, the parade ends with the French Foreign Legion, wearing their white hats and red shoulder tassels while marching their slow steps – exactly 80 steps per minute.

 

It occurred to me that the majority of these elite soldiers, who are prepared to die under the French flag, are not in fact French nationals, and this thought led me to ponder a statement made by Meir Sheetrit in a Yedioth Ahronoth weekend interview.

 

Sheetrit, who recently took up the post of interior minister, proposed amending the Law of Return so that, according to him, we would not resemble the Foreign Legion. He loathes the hodgepodge of nationalities that have gathered here and he wants to end the influx of non-Jews into the country.

 

Some 300,000 people immigrated to Israel thanks to the extended clauses of the Law of Return, a similar number accounts for tourists whose visas have expired, and there are tens of thousands of non-Jews who have been classified as descendents of the lost tribes.

 

Obviously Sheetrit didn't want to compare immigrants he dislikes to the illustrious divisions of the French army; however, the association he precariously made sheds light on one of the gates opened by an important nation before advantageous foreigners. Perhaps we can learn something from this nation that took in millions of foreigners without much fanfare.

 

The Foreign Legion is a particularly interesting case in point, because naturalization through its ranks demands a high price to be paid in advance: The willingness to fall in battle.

 

The Legion was established in 1831 when France overtook Algeria and launched a series of conquests across three continents. To conquer and maintain the land, the country was in need of a large army and so it enlisted troops from among the many refugees who sought refuge there. Germany is France's historic enemy, but many Germans have always served in the Foreign Legion, and during the world wars they even fought against their own people.

 

Between the two wars, hundreds of Jews, who were refugees from Eastern Europe and Germany, joined the Legion, and thus it transpired that Jews and Germans fought alongside each other against the armies of Mussolini and Hitler.

 

In the last few decades Foreign Legion units participated in the first Gulf War, were dispatched to the Balkans, and quelled several civil wars in African countries.

 

Currently foreigners account for some 75 percent of the Foreign Legion troops and a tenth of its officers. After three years of faultless service, the legionnaire's request for citizenship is accepted, and if he is wounded during service, the naturalization process is expedited thanks to a law titled "Spilling blood for the sake of France."

 

Hundreds of thousands of families in France know that their forefathers arrived from faraway lands, and that they purchased their citizenship in exchange for their willingness to protect the homeland that took them in; however, their ethnic origin is no more than a family legend.

 

They are French through and through, they speak French, think in French and they eat French food, their children are enrolled at public schools. In this sense they resemble the French president, who has a considerable amount of Hungarian and Jewish blood flowing through his veins.

 

Don't be mistaken in thinking I recommend establishing an Israeli Foreign Legion. What I am doing is speaking  out against the notion that views nationalism as a product of ethnic origin. Nationalism is a culture, and culture is a memory and memory is plastic and elastic in essence.

 

Any man who so wishes, and if the society where he finds himself so wishes, can switch from one national identity to another. It is apparently easier to block and expel rather than change memory components.

 

 


פרסום ראשון: 07.20.07, 07:14
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