Hamas Supporters Burn Cars In France; Israel Supporters Don't

Paris was a witness to two distinct demonstrations this weekend, in the same general neighborhood, with radically opposite behavior and comportment on display.

On Saturday, a mob of thugs expressed their support for HAMAS and "peace" in the Middle East by burning cars and looting stores, as well as mounting an assault on the Israeli Embassy.

From Tiberge's translated account at GalliaWatch:

According to Le Parisien, 21,000 persons demonstrated in Paris against the Israeli offensive in Gaza. A few hundred attempted to get into the Israeli Embassy but were stopped by police barricades around Place Saint-Augustin and Boulevard Haussmann.

Some vandals threw chairs taken from cafés at the riot police, who, in turn, used tear gas. Some climbed on top of cars; public property was destroyed; two Israeli flags were burned; on Boulevard Haussmann three cars burned, about 15 others were turned upside down, then pillaged; storefronts were broken...

Le Figaro reports that 20 rioters were arrested; they also specify that the targeted stores included a telecommunication shop, a jeweler, and a glass store. Of the dozen or more vandalized cars, one vehicle belonged to police, and of the three torched automobiles one was a police car. Ten police were wounded during the rioting.

On Sunday, a noticeably different standard of behavior was exhibited at the pro-Israel rally held on the streets of Paris.

Translated from the French paper La Provence:

Several thousand people rallied [early Sunday afternoon] on Matignon Avenue in Paris to support “the self-defensive actions of Israel” and to recognize “the memory of the Israeli victims of Hamas.” 12,000 people participated in the demonstration, according to CRIF [Representative Council of Jewish Institutions of France]. The police estimate 4,000 people.
...
The supporters, wrapped in large Israeli flags or brandishing small flags of the Jewish state, listened to speeches in the cold, and sung chants in Hebrew, as well as La Marseillaise.
…

No cars set on fire, no vandalism, no pelting police with projectiles, no pillaging of stores, as happened with the previous "anti-violence" demonstration.

What irony that the Israeli Embassy in France finds itself on a street named for author Francois Rabelais; a writer who defined his philosophy as "...une certaine gaieté d'esprit confite de mépris des choses fortuites" ("a certain gaiety of spirit preserved in contempt of the accidents of life") [Gargantua et Pentagruel]... to savor the promised fruits of peace, to "take all things in good part, and [interpret] every action in the best sense; he neither vexed nor disquieted himself... since all the goods that the earth contains... are not of so much worth as that we should disturb or disorder our emotions, trouble or perplex our senses or spirits..."