Category: Encounters

On 27 March I hosted the conference “Saving the Democracy in Israel” in the European Parliament, organised jointly with JCall and Centre Communautaire Laïc Juif de Bruxelles (CCLJ David Susskind).

30 years after the fall of the Berlin Wall, many doubts are voiced. Only 38 percent of Germans would consider that reunification was a success; do divisions still exist? Do the economic gaps between the former GDR and the rest of Germany, broadly speaking, reflect the image of a two-speed Europe?

Finally, I had the right to do it. I could not when I had been only a journalist, but as elected representative and politician, I finally had the right to give the advice to these militants that they asked for. “Could we, they asked, do as the Iranians did when they were shouting out their thirst for freedom into the night, standing in their windows and on the rooftops of their buildings?”

She was taken aback by my interest for her country. She could not imagine that a Frenchman could be curious to know more about Austria, and as I told her that I had lived in Vienna, known Kreisky and just written a book which delved into the question of the coalition between the political right and the extreme right Austrian Freedom Party (FPÖ), Claudia Gamon’s eyes widened with surprise.

The shyer of the two younger Bahraini took the plunge and explained, with a harrowing modesty, the 63-day-long hunger strike he did for his father in front of the London embassy of the small kingdom. His father, Hassan Mushaima, seventy-one years old, one of the principal figures of the opposition was thrown into prison after the Arab Spring of 2011. Ali, the son does not even demand the release of his father, it would be hopeless, he said. It would be totally in vain, the other two Bahraini added. No, Ali would like only that the royal family allow his father to be treated for cancer.