Inclusive society can wean away French Arabs from militancy: Analyst
Date
11/18/2015 11:05:45 PM
(MENAFN- Asia Times) A French Arab covers his eyes as police charges pro-Palestine protesters with tear gas in this file photo
Before going into the root cause of the deep social malaise that turns some of the young North African Arabs into jhadists Mercier draws the attention of readers to a neocolonialist bias of the Western press in news coverage.
On the same day terrorists carried out a series of attacks in Paris attacks occurred in Beirut Lebanon targeting Hezbollah-controlled areas killing at least 40 people.
Western press merely noted the incident. No extensive follow-ups or expressions of sympathy.It was as if French lives mattered quite a lot more than the loss of lives of people in the Middle East.
How will young French people of Arab origin who are usually at the very bottom of the socio-economic ladder feel about this neocolonial bias by Western Press the author asks.
Their anger and frustration will only mount because for decades they have been treated like outsiders. Being socially alienated they can be easily persuaded to doacts of violence and even suicide missions Mercier says.
People with such grim social prospects turn to IS whose ideology helps them give vent to their pent-up anger toward a society which had rejected them.
An inclusive society that gives them hope for a better future could address France's deep social malaise and make jihad less attractive to young French people of North-African origin.
But most of France's political class and ruling elite instead of addressing this serious issue followed a policy that pushed these Arabs to the dead end of repression and exclusion.
Disenfranchised young French-Arabs know and feel the misery that their brothers and sisters in the Middle East have suffered in Iraq Libya Syria and Gaza from the guns and bombs of the US and its European sidekicks Mercier says.
The confusion from that pain makes them believe that ordinary Parisians would also suffer the same way.
The French author views Paris attacks assymptoms ofa systemic failure.
According to him victims of Paris attacks can be viewed as yet more civilian collateral damage neither more nor less important than innocent victims of say US drone attacks elsewhere in a world where the net result of absurd Western policies is always the spread of misery and death.
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