French press review 17 November 2015

A day of tears, roses and pledges of resistance as France mourns the 129 victims of the Paris terror attacks. President Hollande rallies nation at an emotional meeting of the congress in Versailles where he laid out a raft of measures to fight the Islamic State armed group at home and abroad

DR

The papers roll out more special issues as the nation rallies together to pay tribute to the 129 victims of last Friday’s terror attacks in Paris -- the worst-ever attack on French soil.

Today’s L’Humanité is a 17-page spotlight on the moving events in the country marked by the observation of a minute of silence at midday as thousands of well wishers gathered at the sites of the carnage, roses in hand, tears streaming down their cheeks and vowing resistance.

The Communist party daily welcomes what it called ‘a turn around' by President François Hollande who in the face-to-face encounter with terrorism pulled out a constitutional weapon.

In a moving address to an extraordinary session of both houses of parliament gathered in Versailles on Monday, Hollande announced plans to amend the constitution to allow for tougher security measures and called for an extension of the state of emergency by three months. That was on top of his unveiling of a plan to create 8,500 new police and judicial jobs to help counter terrorism.

This was only the first time in more than 150 years that a French president was addressing a joint session of parliament and most of the papers noted lawmakers burst into an emotional rendition of the "La Marseillaise" national anthem, in a display of unity behind the President.

Liberation claims that Monsieur Hollande gave a boost to his status as a war leader after he ordered the deployment of the flagship aircraft carrier Charles de Gaulle to the eastern Mediterranean to boost operations in Syria as Paris intensifies a bombing campaign against the Islamic State group there.

According to the left-leaning newspaper with 26 fighter jets on board, the nuclear-powered carrier will dramatically increase France's capacity to carry out air strikes, and adds to the 12 French planes currently stationed in the United Arab Emirates and Jordan overall.

For Libé, by installing a permanent state of emergency in the country Francois Hollande has more or less pulled the carpet under the feet of the security-minded main conservative opposition even though as it noted his plan raises genuine concerns about civil liberties.

Le Figaro welcomes the rare solemn moment of dignity and national unity displayed by the lawmakers in Versailles, the multi-front front offensive launched against the Islamic State armed group, the hardening of President Hollande’s security policy and most importantly his plea at last for the creation of a single grand coalition in Syria extending from US President Barack Obama to Russian leader Vladimir Putin.

Le Figaro also approved his plan on the home front to revoke the French nationality of jihadists of immigrant origin. That’s a measure the right-wing Les Republicains party had been clamouring for but which the Socialist government rejected, according to Le Figaro. The conservative newspaper regrets that it took him so long to decide.

Le Figaro argues it would have been better for him to say how he intends to crackdown on the “Islamization of delinquents”, the shut down of fundamentalist mosques and to tackling the immigration influx, instead of amending the constitution.

La Croix, reflects on the embarrassment Islamism is causing France’s moderate Muslims. It emerged on Monday that two of the gunmen who killed 89 people at the Bataclan, were French: Omar Ismail Mostefai a 29-year-old Paris native and 28-year-old Samy Amimour charged in France in 2012 for "conspiracy to commit terrorism."

According to the Catholic newspaper, it has been a moment of self criticism for the faithful who came out in great numbers with roses in hand, to join other religious leaders in prayer for the victims.

For La Croix, Dalil Boubakeur, rector of the Grand Mosque in Paris is right when he described mainstream French Muslims equally as victims of the barbarism urging them to reaffirm their affiliation to French society and to shun the radical preachings of the Salafists.