Washington Report on Middle East Affairs, October/November 1999, pages 81-82

Middle East History: It Happened in November

De Gaulle Calls Jews Domineering, Israel an Expansionist State

By Donald Neff

It was 32 years ago, on Nov. 27, 1967, when President Charles de Gaulle of France publicly described Jews as an “elite people, sure of themselves and domineering” and Israel as an expansionist state.¹ De Gaulle’s comment came in the context of his disappointment that Israel had launched the 1967 war against his strong advice and then had occupied large areas containing nearly a million Palestinians. A firestorm of charges of anti-Semitism followed his remarks, culminating in an interesting exchange by two of the world’s great elder statesmen, David Ben-Gurion and De Gaulle.²

While the rare public exchange of views between these two heroic figures caught the headlines, little noted was a profound geopolitical shift taking place. France was ending its strong support of Israel and the United States was replacing France as Israel’s major patron. Up to this point the United States had sometimes taken a fairly balanced attitude to the Middle East conflict.

After the 1967 war, when France severed its close ties to Israel, U.S. policy under the influence first of Democratic President Lyndon Johnson and later of Republican Secretary of State Henry Kissinger became blatantly pro-Israel.

It was a shift that was to cost America over the rest of the millennium around $100 billion in aid to Israel and the abandonment by Washington of all semblance of American even-handedness. Henceforth, the United States became not only Israel’s patron but increasingly its protector, and ultimately what it has become today—the defense attorney for the Jewish state against the world community’s condemnations of Israel’s repeated violations of international law.

Relations between France and Israel had been especially warm in the 1950s as France was losing its colonial grip on Algeria. Although France joined Britain and the United States in 1952 in the Tripartite Declaration, banning arms sales to the Middle East, France soon began secretly supplying Israel with weapons, including tanks and warplanes and ultimately facilities for a nuclear weapons program. By 1956, the France-Israel connection was so close that, with Britain, they plotted a joint war against Egypt that became known as the infamous Suez Crisis.

On Oct. 29, Israel struck across the Sinai Peninsula, its troops occupying the east bank of the Suez Canal within a week. A vast armada of British and French ships and warplanes then began pounding Egypt west of the canal, and landing troops in the Suez Canal zone. It was only stern opposition from President Dwight D. Eisenhower that forced the three countries to withdraw their forces in deep humiliation.³

The shared humiliation left Franco-Israeli relations closer than ever. The two countries had signed in 1953 a modest nuclear cooperation agreement covering heavy water and uranium production. A year after the Suez Crisis, nuclear cooperation was substantially broadened. Although the details remain secret the agreement was believed to have provided Israel with a large (24-megawatt) reactor capable of producing one or two bombs’ worth of plutonium a year.⁴ France also provided Israel with blueprints for a reprocessing plant for turning spent fuel into weapons’ grade plutonium.⁵

Relations began to cool with the accession of Charles de Gaulle as president of France’s Fifth Republic (1958-1969). At the same time, Israel’s relations with the United States began improving. The coming to power of John F. Kennedy in 1961 saw the first sale of major arms to Israel by Washington. His successor, Lyndon B. Johnson, became the most pro-Israel president up to that time, substantially opening America’s arsenal to Israel.

The breaking point for De Gaulle was Israel’s launching of the 1967 war against Egypt, Jordan and Syria. He had urgently implored Israel not to attack. But Israel ignored him and attacked on June 5. As late as May 24, President De Gaulle had prophetically warned Foreign Minister Abba Eban: “Don’t make war. You will be considered the aggressor by the world and by me. You will cause the Soviet Union to penetrate more deeply into the Middle East, and Israel will suffer the consequences. You will create a Palestinian nationalism, and you will never get rid of it.”⁶

On the day of Israel’s attack, France announced a total arms embargo on the Middle East. By that time, however, Israel was receiving its major weapons from the United States and the embargo had little effect.⁷ De Gaulle also quietly ended France’s support of Israel’s nuclear program. He reveals in his memoirs that “...French cooperation in the construction of a factory near Beersheva [Dimona, Israel’s nuclear facility] for the transformation of uranium into plutonium—from which, one fine day, atomic bombs might emerge—was brought to an end.”⁸ Israel’s program, however, was so far advanced that it no longer needed France.

De Gaulle voiced his pique at Israel in his public remarks in late 1967, when he called Jews dominating and Israel expansionist. The remarks brought Ben-Gurion’s response, accusing De Gaulle of using “surprising, harsh and wounding expressions...based on incorrect and imprecise information. You spoke of the establishment of a ”˜Zionist’ homeland between the two World Wars; the changing of a sincere desire into burning and conquering ambition, a lack of modesty, the Israeli state warlike and bent on expansion, the dream of those who wanted to exploit the closing of the Strait of Tiran.

“It is not through strength, not simply through money, and certainly not through conquests, but through our pioneering creativity that we transformed a poor and arid land into fertile soil and created townships, towns and villages on desert-like and abandoned terrain.” He added that if the Arab countries had obeyed U.N. resolutions and the U.N. Charter, “there would have been neither war nor quarrels between ourselves and the Arabs to this day....[Israel’s frontiers] are enough for us as long as the Arabs are willing to sign a peace treaty with us on the basis of the status quo.”

Ben-Gurion, now 81, also denied in his letter responsibility for the Palestinian refugees, maintaining they had fled in 1948 during the British Mandate before the existence of Israel, a claim that was certainly not supported by later research. He recalled at some length the sufferings of the Jews over the centuries, and denied Israel was expansionist by noting that Palestine historically had included both sides of the Jordan River until Winston Churchill had created Transjordan as a separate entity in 1922.

In his friendly response, De Gaulle, 77, said France had been ready to guarantee Israel’s security and therefore the Jewish state should have acted with “strict moderation in her relations with her neighbors and in her territorial ambitions. This is all the more so since the lands initially recognized by the world powers as those of your state are considered as their own property by the Arabs; that the latter, among whom Israel was settling, are for their part proud and respectable; that France feels an old and natural friendship for them, and that they, too, deserve to develop despite all the obstacles placed in their way by nature, the serious and humiliating and backwardness they often suffered over centuries because of successive occupations and, finally, their own disunity.

“But I remain convinced that by ignoring the warning given in good time to your government by the French Government by taking possession of Jerusalem and of many Jordanian, Egyptian and Syrian territories by force of arms, by exercising repression and expulsions there—which are the unavoidable consequences of an occupation which has all the aspects of annexation—by affirming to the world that a settlement of the conflict could only be achieved on the basis of the conquests made and not on the condition that these be evacuated, Israel is overstepping the bounds of necessary moderation.”

Turning to his provocative words in November about Jews being domineering, De Gaulle wrote: “Some people claim to see this assessment as derogatory, whereas in fact there cannot be anything disparaging in underlining the character thanks to which this strong people was able to survive and to remain itself after 19 centuries spent under incredible conditions. And now? Israel...has become a real state, whose existence and survival depend on the policies she follows, as is the case for all others. These policies are only valid if they are adapted to reality, as so many peoples have experienced in turn.”

Thus ended the first major phase of Israel’s foreign relations. It now turned its attentions to the United States, where it was considerably more successful than in France.

RECOMMENDED READING:

Crosbie, Sylvia Kowitt, Tacit Alliance: France and Israel from Suez to the Six Day War, Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1974.

De Gaulle, Charles, Memoirs of Hope: Renewal and Endeavor, New York: Simon and Schuster, 1971.

Eban, Abba. An Autobiography, Tel Aviv: Steimatzky’s Agency Ltd., 1977.

Ledwidge, Bernard, De Gaulle, New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1982.

Love, Kennett, Suez: The Twice-Fought War, New York, McGraw-Hill Book Company, 1969.

*Neff, Donald, Warriors at Suez: Eisenhower takes America into the Middle East, New York: Linden Press/Simon & Schuster, 1981, and Brattleboro, VT: Amana Books, 1988.

Sheehan, Edward R. E., The Arabs, Israelis, and Kissinger: A Secret History of American Diplomacy in the Middle East, New York: Reader’s Digest Press, 1976.

Spector, Leonard S., Nuclear Proliferation Today, New York: Vintage Books, 1984.

FOOTNOTES:

1Henry Panner, New York Times, 1/18/68.

2The text is in New York Times, 1/10/68. Ben-Gurion sent a long letter Dec.6 and De Gaulle replied on Dec. 30. The letters were made public with approval of both men on Jan. 9, 1968.

3Love, Suez, p. 503; Neff, Warriors at Suez, pp. 409-10.

4Spector, Nuclear Proliferation Today, p. 119.

5Ibid., p. 125.

6Sheehan, The Arabs, Israelis, and Kissinger, p. 31.

7Ledwidge, De Gaulle, p. 331.

8De Gaulle, Memoirs of Hope, Renewal and Endeavor, p. 266.