Anti-American Sentiment?

America's love affair with their new commander-in-chief has spread across the globe. Over the past few weeks I've noticed more and more French magazine covers, political and otherwise, with Obama and his wife Michelle featured on them. I have even seen a few of the iconic CHANGE campaign signs on a few walls here and there. 

Yesterday my friend Sarah and I tried to get into an American restaurant here, Breakfast in America, to watch the inauguration but couldn't get a seat and no standing room was allowed. We watched outside with a crowd on a tiny television with no sound for a while and decided to run over to the Canadian pub to watch. The pub, just like the country it represents, was big and empty with a few scattered people. We sat down just in time to watch Aretha Franklin perform and Joe Biden get sworn in. 

As Obama took the oath of office, the excitement in the pub was palpable -- even though I'm pretty sure a good portion of the small crowd there was not American, they, like the American public that elected him to the highest office in the world, are looking for a shift in the world atmosphere. Paris is a very political city, people are passionate about government and their effect on it -- I think it is a legacy of countries whose governments were formed by revolution. Americans and the French both know what they did to change the course of their history, whereas countries like Canada sort of amble along without the fire felt inside bellies filled with cheeseburgers and foie-grois across the globe. 

This past Friday evening and Saturday afternoon, I was invited for meals at Rabbis Bloom and Asseraf of Chabad of Paris -- both delicious meals in taste and spirit. On Saturday afternoon at Rabbi Asseraf's we heard the yells and chants of a crowd. This was another planned protest against Israel's defensive attacks on Hamas in Gaza. The Rabbi moved to close the window because he said the chants were turning nasty. 

I left the Asserafs' home and began walking back toward my house. My walk happened to run parallel to the protest route. I have never seen a crowd so angry in all my life, so filled with rage. As they moved through the police-lined streets, the crowd smashed the windows of the McDonald's around the corner from my house (I guess anti-American sentiment had to come in somewhere). The protest effectively jammed the streets of Paris as the wails of sirens could be heard anywhere you were and the site of riot-geared police on the streets was not unusual.

I saw a child, who couldn't have been much older than four-years-old, wearing an "I love Palestine" shirt which I thought was about the nicest message of the day. Completely unlike the man who appeared to be his father who was holding a sign with a Star of David crossed out. The two messages couldn't have a more different tone, one expressing love for the land they struggle for and one condemning the land's neighbours with hate. If only the father, and other protestors like him, expressed what his son's shirt said maybe the protest wouldn't have turned so nasty. Maybe there wouldn't be a need for protest if there wasn't such blind hate. I wish I saw more "I love Palestine" shirts or signs, but they were few and far between other, more threatening, ones. 

The people in the pub last night all heard the sirens run through the city all day on Saturday, there's no way they couldn't have. I think those CHANGE signs across Paris, those magazine covers at all press stands are a call for action against hate. As much as the French and Americans like to talk about how much they don't like one another, there's a respect for similar history. They have fought for the countries they love, for the governments they elect every few years and now, in the midst of world crisis a plenty, the two countries are calling for a change across the globe. Let's hope President Obama can help bring along that change. And maybe make Canadians more passionate about their position as citizens because a Facebook group doesn't count as passion or protest -- but one step at a time. I know.