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Benyamin Netanyahu (2 from L) is welcomed by the CRIF leadership at the Paris Press Club.
Photo: Alain Azria
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PARIS (EJP)---Likud party leader Benyamin Netanyahu told leaders of the French Jewish community, the largest in western Europe, how much “it is good today to be Israeli in France."
During a meeting Thursday evening at the Paris Press Club with Jewish leaders, organized by CRIF, the umbrella representative body of French Jewish communities, Netanyahu said that his talks with French President Nicolas Sarkozy and with French ministers on Thursday confirmed his view that France has changed in a more favourable way towards Israel.
Netanyahu, whose Likud party is leading in polls in Israel ahead of the February general elections, said Nicolas Sarkozy in France and Barack Obama in the US have emerged on the world scene as two important leaders with a huge prestige.
Their international credit is great and they both oppose the military nuclearization of Iran, Netanyahu said, citing Sarkozy’s recent statement that he would not shake hands with Iran’s President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad who said that Israel should be wiped off the map.
For Netanyahu, the world economic crisis, with the fall in the oil prices, has weakened the Iranian regime. This offers the world new possibilities to pressure Tehran.
“ We are at an historical crossroad. World governments will have to make a choice, to be on one or the other side. They will be judged by history in function of this choice,” he told the CRIF representatives.