Michel Gurfinkiel

Michel Gurfinkiel is the executive director of Jean-Jacques Rousseau Institute and a regular contributor to several neoconservative publications. His writings usually are a combination of the 'New Antisemitism' campaign with a mix of Islamophobia ('Muslims' outbreeding whites, taking over Europe) . He is a member of the Editorial Board and former Editor-in-Chief of Valeurs Actuelles, a French conservative newsweekly , and a member of the Editorial Board of Commentary (Paris), the French political quarterly founded by Raymond Aron.

Gurfinkiel frequently publishes in the Wall Street Journal, Middle East Quarterly, Commentary, the Weekly Standard, Hamodia (Jerusalem), New York Sun and the Jerusalem Post. He also contributes to Le Figaro and Le Spectacle du Monde (Paris), to The Times (London), and Azure (Jerusalem), Dreuz (a French far-right newspaper) and to Nativ (Tel Aviv). He makes frequent appearances on various French TV and radio stations, on the BBC, and on Deutsche Welle.

He is currently a Shillman-Ginsberg fellow at the US-based Middle East Forum.

Views

On anti-semitism

In a 2013 Mosaic article, he advanced the idea that anti-semitism was on the rise again in Europe, due to 2 factors: the loss of Israel's popularity ('[t]o the degree that Israel’s popularity had been an important factor in Europe’s postwar embrace of its Jews, the growing rejection of Israel undermined the Jewish image and standing') and the immigration of Muslims to Europe. On the latter point, he warns that 'France will become a half-Islamic and half-Islamized nation' unless the progress of Muslim immigration is stopped, and that 'this is quite problematic in itself' because 'Islam overlaps with radical Islam: a philosophy and a way of life that reject democracy, the open society, and, needless to add, Jews'.

According to him, 'islamist violence' is often direct at Jewish people. He characterises islamist violence as mostly 'petty crime and racketeering, threatening behavior on trains and buses, or full-fledged rioting and looting', adding that, although 'not always openly Islamic in character' they still count as islamist violence as they 'primarily involve Muslim youths'. Believing in the power that Muslim communities have over the French state and society, he predicts the 'end of French Jewry' in a few decades from now, due to the rising hostility and fear Jewish communities suffer.

On Islam and Islamification

In a 2015 article for the Institut Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Gurfinkiel outlined what was important to consider, for him, when analysing Islam:

• 1. The best way to understand any religion is not to read the founding texts, nor to interrogate its theologists, as there is a difference between texts, the theology that proceeds from it, and the way the religion is practiced.
• 2. Although all religions are confronted with 'the political', Islam does not see itself as a 'religion', but as a political and judicial system perfectly organised by God.
• 3. Islamic civilisation is not compatible with Judeo-Christian civilisation, because its ethics are not founded on the 'innocence/culpability' duality, but rather on the 'pride/shame' one.
• 4. While Christian and Jewish religions both believe in the Old Testament, Muslims only believe in the Quran, which is, for him, the actual motivation for the Isreali-Palestinian conflict: the Jewish community take their right to their territory from the Bible, and recognizing that fact would mean recognizing the Bible, and thus rejecting the Quran.
• 5. Due to its chronological disposition, the Quran situates itself in a perpetual present, which is why most Muslims (who are radical) still which to impose ancient ways of living in order to imitate their prophet.

He also claimed in an article for The Daily Caller that, due to the non-Judeo-Christian character of immigration today, 'unchecked immigration could lead to civil war', and praised the fact that even liberal or 'left-wing' elites were awakening from their multicultural dreams by scrapping the Schengen agreement, deporting asylum seekers who have committed crimes (Angela Merkel) and generally tightening rules on immigration and asylum policies.

Gurfinkiel is a proponent of the 'Grand Replacement' theory, which believes non-white immigrant populations (primarily Muslims) will overtake the white populations in Europe, numerically and culturally-speaking. In a March 2016 article, he claimed, among other things, that 25% of French youth were Muslim. An article in Libération contested those figures, stating that the study referred to was only made in one region, the Bouches-du-Rhône (around Marseille), whose demographics are not representative of the French population as a whole. Another study done over the whole of the territory showed that only 13% of youth were Muslim.

2006 Paris Riots

Commenting on the Paris riots of 2006:

'Still, it would be wise not to write off entirely the possibility of a green-red alliance. There is a historical precedent in the spread of Islam itself, in the 7th century. It is well known that the newly founded religious empire from Arabia overran in less than two decades the two mightiest powers of the time, the Christian Byzantine Empire and the Mazdean Persian Empire. What is less well known is that the Arab expansion coincided, in both places, with a deep ethnic, religious, and social crisis. In fact, the Arabs didn't outright conquer Palestine, Syria, Anatolia, Egypt, North Africa, Iraq, and the Iranian plateau. They struck alliances with the local rebels: the Copts and the Syriacs, the Nestorians and the Donatists, the Jews and the Mardakites, with those who spoke neither Greek nor Persian and shared neither the beliefs of the basileus nor those of the shah. Even the green flag of Islam was borrowed from non-Arabs: It was originally the symbol of rebellion in Byzantium, the equivalent in its day of the red flag in ours'.

'Can history repeat itself, and fundamentalist Islam subdue Europe in the 21st century with the help of European extremists? Will the green flag and the red flag wave side by side? Buses are burning in France and nobody, so far, seems to know how to stop that.'.

On Brexit

M. Gurfinkiel very clearly stated his Euroscepticism in an article for the Middle Eastern Foundation after the 2016 'Brexit' vote. He claimed that, after the EU developed its bureaucratic apparatus:

'Instead of the ever-increasing prosperity they had taken for granted for a half-century, many Europeans had to face zero growth, bankruptcy, and long-term austerity programs. Instead of more democracy -- free expression, the rule of elected and responsible governments -- they were getting more political correctness and more bureaucracy. Instead of more global security, a new pervading sense of powerlessness in front of Russian imperialism and jihadist terror. Instead of more stability, more social disruption -- especially in such essential areas as family and national identity.'

He blamed the 'pro-Brexit' shift on 'the EU political leadership's failure to address the global Middle Eastern and North African issues -- from the rise of ISIS to the return of Russia', and directed his attention especially to Angela Merkel's decision to welcome 800,000 asylum seekers into Germany in 2015. This decision, for him, 'puzzled' the British, and lead many to think that 'Eurofederalism was leading to reckless, ill-conceived, and unstoppable decisions in such essential fields as mass immigration'.

Affiliations

• Jean-Jacques Rousseau Institute - Executive director
• Valeurs Actuelles - Former editor-in-chief and current vice-president of the Editorial Committee
• Outre-Terre (Paris) - member of the Editorial Board
• Commentaire (Paris) - member of the Editorial Board
• Benador Associates - Expert circa 2007 .
• Member of the Institut de Stratégie Comparée (ISC), at the French School for Advanced Studies (EPHE).

Publications

• Israel: Geopolitique d'une Paix (Michalon, 1996)
• Geopolitique de la Criminalite (La Documentation française/Institut des Hautes Etudes de la Securite Interieure, 1996).
• La Cuisson du Homard (Cooking the Lobster), an essay on the present crisis between Israel and the Arab world (Michalon, Paris, 2001).
• Le Retour de la Russie (The Return of Russia), a comprehensive study on Russian history and the post-communist regime (Odile Jacob, Paris, 2001).
• Islam in France: The French Way of Life Is in Danger, Middle East Quarterly, March 1997

Contact

Web: http://michelgurfinkiel.com/

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Twitter:http://twitter.com/#!/gurfissimo