A Blog by the Editor of The Middle East Journal

Putting Middle Eastern Events in Cultural and Historical Context

Friday, January 9, 2015

"Nous sommes tous Français": La Marseillaise from Casablanca

Immediately after September 11, 2001, Le Monde, one of the world's great newspapers but rarely one with a pro-American tilt, ran the front page sidebar "Nous sommes tous Américains."  I know the fashion now is to write Je suis Charlie, and of course the attack on Charlie-Hebdo was barbarous and appalling, but rather than endorse their often openly racist humor it seems to me the better response is to echo Le Monde and say, "Nous sommes tous Français." And of course, as an editor, I defend complete freedom of the press, no matter how offensive.

Or as an earlier generation of Americans once put it, "Lafayette, we are here."

Or as Casablanca put it back in 1942:

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