August 1 , 2006

Dear Colleague,

    De Gaulle was a great admirer of Israel. As president of the Fifth Republic, he sent military hardware--Mirage IIIs, tanks, helicopters, and patrol boats--to Israel. He did so, no doubt, for geopolitical reasons, but also because of his admiration for Ben Gurion, the Israeli prime minister. Of him, De Gaulle wrote: "David Ben Gurion came to see me more than once. I had developed an immediate liking and respect for this doughty warrior and champion. He was the personification of Israel, which he now ruled, having presided over her foundation and her war of independence. I could not fail to be attracted by the grandur of an enterprise which consisted in re-establishing an autonomous Jewis nation in a land that bore the traces of its fabulous history."

    Now, that's starry-eyed admiration, isn't it? Can it be more whole-heartedly expressed? Nevertheless, De Gaulle added:

But while the existence of Israel seemed to me to be more than justified, I considered that a great deal of caution was called for in her handling of the Arabs. The latter were her neighbors, and would always remain so. It was at their expense and on their lands that Israel had set herself up as a sovereign state. In doing so, she had wounded them in their religion and their pride. For this reason, when Ben Gurion spoke to me of his plan to settle four or five million Jews in Israel, which could not contain them in her present frontiers, and revealed to me his intention of extending these frontiers at the earliest opportunity, I urged him not to do so... You have brought off a remarkable achievement. Do not overdo it now. Rather than pursue ambitions which would plunge the East into terrible upheavals and would gradually lose you international sympathy, devote yourselves to pursuing the astonishing exploitation of a country that was until recently a desert, and to establishing harmonious relations with your neighbors (Jean Lacouture, De Gaulle, p. 436)

    American politicians over the entire political spectrum say that the root problem of violence in the Middle East lies in the existence of Hamas in Palestine and Hezbollah in Lebanon. Surely, the root goes deeper than that? De Gaulle's prognostication of troubles to come seems to me far more deeply rooted. Support for Israel is America is total, no matter what Israel does. Hilary Clinton is reported to have said that, for her, the two captured Israeli soldiers might as well be American soldiers, so deeply does she identify with them. There are times when I wonder whether the USA is an independent country, with a foreign policy of her own. In America, I have heard thus far only one small, lone voice raised in protest against the overwhelming use of force in Lebanon, and it comes from the Jewish Committee for Peace and Justice in Milwaukee. So there you are! That which gives Israel--the idea and ideal of Israel--its unsurpassed moral grandeur is not totally dead.

Best wishes,

Yi-Fu