clipped from: direland.typepad.com 
Yesterday's New York Sun -- a small, conservative New York daily noted for its slavishly pro-Israel politics and its pandering to the worst fears of New York's large Jewish community -- yesterday published a hallucinatory article, "France's Le Pen to Strike a Deal with Muslims," It claims that neo-Fascist and notorious anti-Semite Jean Marie Le Pen (left) -- the Führer of the racist Front National party -- is "poised to strike an alliance with France's large immigrant Muslim community."
The author, one Michel Gurfinkiel, goes on to assert, "Islamic
leaders in France are advising their followers to act as "democratic and responsible citizens," i.e., to register as prospective voters and to enter as full-fledged activists into all major political parties, either right of left. Indeed, a reconstructed, Muslim-friendly National Front stands a good chance to win many of them."
Now, I lived in France for nearly a decade, and have written frequently on the European extreme right (see, for example, my article in The Nation explaining why Le Pen created a political earthquake when he defeated the Socialist Party's candidate for a place in the 2002 presidential run-off, "Le Pen: The Center Folds".) My immediate reaction to the Sun's article was that it was bilge. But just to make sure I hadn't missed any recent developments, I e-mailed the article to several French journalists of my acquaintance -- and all agreed that the Sun's claims were complete tommyrot.