President Yitzhak Navon, in a rare political statement, yesterday blasted French President Francois Mitterrand for comparing Israel Defense Force actions in Lebanon to the Nazis deliberate razing of a French village, Oradour-sur-Glane, and massacring its inhabitants during World War II.
“With this calumny you have gone too far,” Navon declared in a speech marking Theodor Herz’s Memorial Day in Jerusalem. He said Mitterrand’s comparison was “terrible” and was an offense against all victims of Nazism, both Jews and the inhabitants of the village in the southwest of France. “This … calumny cannot be allowed to resound through France and Europe unchallenged,” Navon said. Premier Menachem Begin was present at the memorial meeting and observers assumed that Navon’s remarks had been coordinated in advance with the Premier.
Mitterrand reportedly made the comparison in a statement during his visit to Budapest last Friday. French sources in Paris said yesterday that the President had been “grossly misquoted.” They noted that Mitterrand was asked by the correspondent of the Palestinian news agency, Wafa, what he thought about the “Oradour carried out by the Israelis in Lebanon.” Mitterrand answered, according to French sources, “I did not condone Oradour in France and I would not condone it in Lebanon.”
At the weekly Cabinet session here yesterday, Foreign Minister Yitzhak Shamir said he had instructed Ambassador Meir Rosenne in Paris to submit the “strongest possible protest” at Mitterrand’s remark. (See separate story.)
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