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 the Editor in Chief of Valeurs Actuelles (Paris), a French conservative newsweekly, and a member of the Editorial Board of Commentaire (Paris), the French political quarterly founded by Raymond Aron.

Gurfinkiel frequently publishes in the Wall Street Journal, Middle East Quarterly, Commentary, the Weekly Standard, 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), and to Nativ (Tel Aviv). He also makes frequent appearances on various French TV and radio stations, on the BBC, and on Deutsche Welle.

Michel Gurfinkiel is a member of the Institut de Stratégie Comparée (ISC), at the French School for Advanced Studies (EPHE).

2006 Paris Riots

Commenting on the Paris riots of 2006 the institute's director Michel Gurfinkiel commented:

"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".

Affiliations

• Jean-Jacques Rousseau Institute - Executive director
• Valeurs Actuelles - editor-in-chief
• Institut de Stratégie Comparée (ISC) - member
• Outre-Terre (Paris) - member of the Editorial Board
• Commentaire (Paris) - member of the Editorial Board

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