PARIS: With the signing of a major contract between an Israeli company, Entopia, and the French Defence Ministry, France has been hearing increased grumbling on the part of the press and political authorities who are concerned that the country, in spite of recent assurances by Prime Minister Jean-Pierre Raffarin, may very well be in the process of abandoning its traditional pro-Arab foreign policy.
Both the French foreign affairs and defence spokesmen have been badgered at recent press briefings by journalists concerned that France is going out of its way to placate Israeli representatives, notably over their concern that France’s foreign policy has traditionally been slanted too much towards the Arab world — indeed that the country has become, to use the words of Israeli Vice Minister Michael Melchior earlier this year, a “hotbed of anti-Semitism”.
Most recently, the French press has expressed concern over the presence in Paris of Israeli Defence Minister Benyamin Ben Eliezer, who met Foreign Affairs Minister Dominique de Villepin. Much concern is being expressed over the news that France is in the process of acquiring some weapons systems from Israel, which in a first phase includes several reconnaissance drones.
It’s largely in this context that the Israeli-American company Entopia, which describes itself as a specialist in “knowledge management software,” has announced not only the opening of a European headquarters in Paris, but also of the signing of a major contract with the French Defence Ministry — through its Delegation generale a l’armement (DGA), a self-owned subsidiary.
Entopia — which was founded by a French citizen, Lionel Barraban, and an Iranian national Kamran Elahian, but which is technically listed as a joint Israeli-American start-up — says it’s sold to the DGA its Quantum software, a knowledge management system “which enriches the search for information as a function of preceding searches.”
To many critics of France’s apparent decision to align itself more than previously on Israeli foreign policy, the new software acquired by the French Defence Ministry could very well prove to be nothing less than allowing the entry into France’s highly-secret communications systems of “a wolf in sheep’s clothing.” The software in question possibly allowing Israel open access to French military secrets.