French President Charles de Gaulle, in his remarks at his Paris press conference last Monday, went far beyond a political attack on Israel and, in fact, impugned the Jewish people “through the ages” for having “provoked” and “caused” ill will ” in certain countries at certain times.” He said that it was always feared that “once they gathered on the site of their former grandeur (meaning Palestine) they might come to change into a fervent and conquering ambition, the very touching hopes that they had for 19 centuries.”
These remarks by de Gaulle appeared in the official translation of his press conference, issued here today by the French Mission to the United Nations. They were made in a lengthy preface that Gen. de Gaulle attached to his reply to a question from an Israeli correspondent, who had asked what the French leader thought of developments in the Middle East since last June’s Six-Day War.
President de Gaulle said that the establishment of the State of Israel after World War II had raised apprehensions, “even among many Jews” that “implantation of this community on land that had been acquired under more or less justifiable conditions, and in the middle of Arab peoples who were thoroughly hostile to it, was going to produce constant and interminable friction and conflict.” Gen. de Gaulle described the Jews at this point as having remained “what they had been down through the ages, an elite people, sure of itself and dominating.” He said that “despite the tide, sometimes mounting, sometimes receding, of ill-will that they provoked, that they caused more exactly, in certain countries and at certain times, a considerable capital of interest and even of sympathy had formed in their favor, especially, it must be said, in Christendom; the capital that resulted from the vast memory of the Bible, nourished at all the springs of the magnificent liturgy, maintained by the commiseration inspired by the ancient misfortune and poeticized in our own country by the legend of the Wandering Jew, heightened by the abominable persecution that they experienced during World War II, and swelled since they had again found a homeland, by their constructive efforts and the courage of their soldiers.”
“That is why,” de Gaulle said, “independent of the vast assistance in money, influence and propaganda that the Israelis received from the Jewish circles in America and Europe, many countries, among them France, saw with satisfaction the establishment of their state on the territory that had been recognized them by the powers, while hoping that they would succeed, by using a little modesty, in finding a peaceful modus vivendi with their neighbors.”
SAID WARRIOR STATE EMERGED AFTER SUEZ CAMPAIGN IN 1956
De Gaulle went on to say that “these psychological factors have changed somewhat since 1956; as a result of the French-British expedition, we saw in fact appear a State of Israel, warrior and determined to enlarge itself. Then, the campaign it conducted to double its population through immigration of new elements led one to think that the territory it had acquired would not be sufficient for long
He said that, last June 2, the French Government officially declared that it would blame any conflict in the Middle East on “whomever would first enter into combat” and that, on May 24, he had personally warned Israel’s Foreign Minister Abba Eban, in Paris, that “war in the Middle East cannot fail to increase a deplorable tension in the world and to have very unfortunate consequences for many countries, so much so that it is on you, having become conquerors, that the disadvantages would be blamed. We know,” he said, “that the voice of France was not heard,”
De Gaulle said that “once the Algerian affair was concluded we resumed with the Arab peoples of the Middle East the same policy of friendship and cooperation that had been France’s for centuries in that part of the world, and that reason and sentiment dictate must today be one of the fundamental bases of our foreign action. Of course,” de Gaulle said, “we did not let the Arabs ignore that, for us, the state of Israel was a fait accompli, and that we would not allow it to be destroyed.”
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