French and Jewish Psyches

Just like that of the French, the Jewish nation’s psyche
towards all insults are perhaps too supersensitive,
This most distressing fact can’t change just like a pair of Nike shoes,
for most offended Frenchmen as for most offended Jews.

Towards them both one must be honi soit qui mal y pensative,
however much you’re galled by someone who’s a Gaul or Ikey.

In the 9/23/21 NYT Norimitsu Onishi writes (“An Uncomfortable Question in France: Are We Still a Great Power?”):

Beneath France’s angry outbursts about a secretive “knife-in-the-back”  American deal to provide nuclear-powered submarines to Australia lay a single question that, as the French say, put the finger where it hurts.
After much tiptoeing in France around the issue, the newspaper L’Opinion asked at the top of its front page a question familiar to anybody who knows “Snow White.”
“Mirror, mirror on the wall, tell me if I’m still a great power?’’….
All of a sudden, French assumptions about its foreign policy — the West, working alliances, its place in the Pacific — were overturned, said Bertrand Badie, an expert on French international relations at the Sciences Po university.
“And we were viewed as being small,” Mr. Badie said. “That kills a country like France.’’

Gershon Hepner is a poet who has written over 25,000 poems on subjects ranging from music to literature, politics to Torah. He grew up in England and moved to Los Angeles in 1976. Using his varied interests and experiences, he has authored dozens of papers in medical and academic journals, and authored “Legal Friction: Law, Narrative, and Identity Politics in Biblical Israel.” He can be reached at gershonhepner@gmail.com.