If you go back to those links, you will find reports by the BBC and other non-US news sources of Chirac's denial that anything anti-semitic had happened. If I can find the article, he was quoted by reliable news services as saying it was just kids being wild. Some of the articles have headlines declaring that he finally acknowledged the problem.

This cannot be mapped to the church arson, as they are totally unrelated issues. As I mentioned before, the French government is primarily concerned with maintaining order, not guarding civil liberties. At the time of these attacks, the Palestinian population (what did the articles say, something like 3 million?) were being brought to a boil and, if you remember, were protesting the United States. IIRC, it was at the time the US either went into Afghanistan or Iraq (I think the former). The situation was very bad there and French law enforcement was scared. To this day I don't know if shrugging off the violence at the time was the right thing to do. MANY organizations brought pressure on the French government to publicly recognize the violence. All that is documented. They did gloss over the violence. (BTW, that is one reason Gulianni (sp?) was considered such a hero in NYC. When anti-arab sentiment became very strong following the WTC tragedy, he said that not only would crimes against Arabs and Moslems be prosecuted, they would be prosecuted as bias incidents. He just said no. Very few mayors could have done that. Thank goodness the mayor wasn't someone like Lindsey. Imagine what the French must have been going through when they had a large Palestinian population in a country that opposed the US invasion of Muslim countries at such an emotional time).

I learned years ago to get my world news from international sources as well as US sources. Each country "underemphasizes" different stories. The US news services played down this issue, but the stories are available on English and Israeli websites, not to mention the Jewish Federation and sites of some non-partisan civil libertarians.

So I absolutely positively disagree with the view that these incidents could not have been glossed over. They were. Not like the church burnings, this is much closer to incidents in the US where mistreatment of blacks is sept under the rug. Do you not believe that there are still such communities in the US? Or do you think the law is egalitarian, equal for those with and without power, connections, education and money? You don't believe that local sherrifs and judges have the power to tip a few scales? But you know, that is a totally different issue and I'm getting tired.

There is no reason for me to try to prove the French denials and glossing over of the incidents. Anyone can start at the last set of links I posted and find them.

But again, the point is that Mel Gibson is acting irresponsibly, and that a large part of the American population gives public figures the power to make such an impact.

I respect your opinion and wish I shared them.