click to enlarge

click to enlarge

click to enlarge

" Everywhere, blood and fragments of flesh "
by Arno Klarsfeld - Journal du Dimanche 4 May 2003

"It is around 1 a.m. ln Tel Aviv, this is a time when the bars and cafés on the Tayelet are packed with young people. You're walking past the American Embassy and a nearby café known as Mike's Place. Fifty meters further on, and there is an explosion, a deafening noise. You feel the blast and the heat of it. And then, silence. A silence that lasts only for a second, but that seems to go on for much longer. And then corne the screaming and the panic. Someone is running, body wreathed in flames, someone else is clutching his stomach, someone is disfigured. You move forward to try and help, but what can you do? You feel powerless, you weep. Everywhere there is blood and fragments of flesh, the stench of burned bodies. The ambulances and the police arrive. Just an hour ago and it was the day of Yom Hashoah in Israel, the day of commemoration of the six million Jews exterminated simply because they were Jews.

Europe, and France in particular, pretend not to understand that there can be no peace while terrorism continues. It is not the occupation that is the cause of the terrorism; it is the terrorism that is prolonging the occupation. Those masterminding these attacks are well aware of the fact, because the one thing they do not want is two states for two peoples. What they want is the disappearance of the state of Israel as a Jewish state, just as the Nazis wanted the physical disappearance of Europe's Jews.

The wound that this deliberate blindness on the part of France's foreign policy inflicts on the heart of Jews in France grows ever deeper, and will continue to grow still further until the country bas clearly chosen its path; not the path of barbarian dictatorships in a multi-polar world, but that of democracy and respect for human value."

click to enlarge

"Iraq: Uncle Sam is right"
by Arno Klarsfeld - Le Figaro , 1 August 2002

What is the point of all those chairs of History in French universities if France's foreign policy refuses to learn the lessons of the past? Dictatorships settle their external conflicts in the same way they settle their internal conflicts: by violence. All that can prevail within dictatorships, until such time as they fall, is an armed peace, as was the case with the USSR, or an open conflict if the threat they pose proves too dangerous for the democracies to tolerate, as is now the case with Iraq. Between dictatorships and democracies, there can be no true understanding.

The USA bas decided to overthrow Saddam Hussein's regime. lnstead of supporting and standing shoulder to shoulder with a nation that enabled her to win the First World War, to escape becoming a Nazi conquest and to figure amongst the victors of the Second World War, and then not fall under the yoke of Soviet imperialism, France adopted a policy of fear, a policy that is contradictory and will prove hannful in the long term.

ln asserting that the Israeli-Palestinian conflict must be resolved, or at least on the road to resolution, before taking any action against Iraq, France is deliberately perpetuating an illusion. It is illusory to imagine that a peace can be achieved between Israelis and Palestinians as long as Iraq is headed by a regime that preaches pan-Arabism and Iran by a regime that preaches pan-Islamism. Two nations which openly finance the terrorism aimed at Israel.

While Saddam Hussein continues to offer 25 000 dollars -almost twenty five year's worth of an average salary -to the family of every suicide bomber, Iran is busy financing Hezbollah, an organisation equally dedicated to the destruction of the state of Israel. It is very much in the interests of these two regimes that there should not be peace between Israelis and Palestinians. Their very survival depends on the conflict to inflarne the crowds and divert the attention of the masses from the reaf cause of their wretchedness: the corruption of their leaders and the lack of concem those leaders feel for the individual happiness of their people

All the western countries should unite to strengthen the democracies and weaken the dictatorships. ln the Arab countries, however, there is no sign of emerging democracy. Peace between Israelis and Palestinians will only corne into being as the result of total victory over terrorism and of growing democracy in the Arab world, two targets that French foreign policy continues to hinder.

"For the war"
by Arno Klarsfeld - Le Monde, Tuesday 11 February 2003

I am for the war in Iraq because I was taught in high school that if France had stood up and stopped Hitler from remilitarising the Rhineland in 1936, there would probably have been no Second World War.

I am for the war in Iraq because I was also taught that Edouard Daladier. returning from Munich where he had humiliated France by signing the peace agreement that sacrificed Czechoslovakia, whispered in the ear of the secretary general of the Quai d'Orsay as he gazed on the cheering crowds in Paris waiting to acclaim him, "What fools!".

I am for the war in Iraq because if Saddam Hussein ever acquired the atomic bomb he was seeking by all possible means to obtain, he would instantly drop it on Tel Aviv to destroy the State of Israel, and would pass it on to terrorists to explode in New York.

I am for the war in Iraq because it is in the most vital interests of the democracies to impose the democratic process on the Arab world by force, just as the Allies succeeded in doing with Germany and Japan.

I am for the war in Iraq because peace between Israelis and Palestinians can only emerge from a total victory against teITorism and from the first steps towards the democratisation of the Arab world.

I am for the war in Iraq because aggressive, expansionist dictatorships like those of Saddam Hussein settle their external conflicts the same way they settle their internal conflicts: by violence. Between such dictatorships and the democracies there can be no real understanding.

I am for the war in Iraq because France should have stood shoulder to shoulder with a nation that enabled ber to win the First World War, to escape becoming a Nazi conquest and to figure amongst the victors of the Second World War, and then not fall under the yoke of Soviet imperialism.

I am for the war in Iraq in the name of human rights, because Saddam Hussein is also the torturer of his own people and of the Kurdish people. and because he has set up a police state so effective in its terror that a popular uprising or even a putsch would seem to be out of the question except in extraordinary circumstances such as war.

Arno Klarsfeld: "Like it or not, this is a battle of democracies against dictatorships"
Writer and lawyer Arno Klarsfeld supports the US and British action in Iraq. - Le Parisien, 1 April 2003

How can anyone say, as you do, that they are in favour of the war?

AK. No one likes war, but this war is in the interests of the Iraqi people; they will be freed from a bloody dictatorship and from a man who has had no hesitation in massacring his own people. It is also, like it or not, a battle of democracies against dictatorships. The United States are defending their own interests, defending the interests of all the democracies, and so defending our interests.

Isn't it hard being pretty much a lone voice defending this argument?

It is harder still being bombed in Baghdad or fighting in the US army... Anyway, after the Papon case, I got used to being a lone voice and being proved right.

What is your view on France's official position?

All policies, including those of the United States, start out as mercantile policies. Each state acts in its own interests, but there are short, medium and long term interests. To my mind, the US is acting for the medium and long term in the interests of our democracies. Jacques Chirac, on the other band, is making a calculation that is both financial and political. Financial, because of contracts with Iraq, Iraq's debts to France, arms sales and also the longstanding friendship between France and Iraq. Political because by opposing the US, Chirac is looking for the support of a large part of the world that is hostile to the Americans, and of all those naive young people who say no to war on principle, whatever the reason behind it.

"I know the Americans. They will see it through to the end."

Are you struck by how badly the image of the US has been affected?

Struck? No. By nature, people are rarely grateful. They prefer to shut their eyes to reality. And yet they know how much Europe owes the United States: liberation from Nazism, the fact that we did not fall to communism, the Marshall plan, clothing, fashion, the cinema! A bit like children who live in a world of prosperity that is underwritten by the USA, and who don't want to have to do the dirty work. But the dirty work has to be clone. When you are faced with ideologies as dangerous as Islamic fundamentalism or dictatorships as bloody as that of Saddam, the democracies have a duty to be strong. We may like the Americans not very much, not at all, or very much: but they represent the democracies, and on the other side are people parading the streets with portraits of Saddam. Incredible as it may seem to me, there has been so much collective blindness throughout history. In 1938, for example, when Daladier came back from Munich, everyone was cheering him but he knew enough to whisper "What fools..."

Might the Americans lose?

No. l've lived in America. I know the Americans. They will see it through to the end.

Does the emergence of suicide bombers change things?

As in any dictatorial regime, there are people with nothing to lose, particularly the political police. They are going to be ki1led, either by the Americans or by the Iraqi people once they are free. And then there are the fanatics, those willing to die: every dictatorial regime breeds fanaticism.

Israel-Palestine: the real causes of the conflict
by Arno Klarsfeld - Le Monde

The true root of the Middle East conflict is neither Jerusalem nor the extent of the territory that will fall to the share of the future Palestinian state. The root lies in the refusal by Arab leaders and Palestinian leaders to accept the state of Israel as a Jewish state. 

The failure of the Camp David and Taba negotiations is due to Palestinian determination to impose on the state of Israel the right of retum for Palestinian refugees and their descendants. Jews would thus find themselves in a minority in Israel, and Palestinians in a majority in three states: Jordan, the new Palestinian state and Israel.

"If there had not been a state of Israel, there would have been no Palestinian refugees." True as this statement may be, does it necessarily imply any moral and/or political responsibility? Had the Arab states not opposed the joint creation of an Arab state and a Jewish state in Palestine, as laid down in a UN resolution of 24 November 1947, there would have been no Palestinian refugees.

If Arab leaders and the "Palestinian elite" had not called upon the Palestinian population to flee into neighbouring countries until such time as the Jews were "cast into the sea", there would have been, if not no Palestinian refugees, certainly far fewer. 

The Arab states did nothing to assimilate these refugees, though they were supposed to be "their brothers". These refugees were deliberately left in a state of poverty and deprivation for decades by their leaders (a situation previously unknown in history), in order to be used as a "weapon" against Israel. These refugees can make their home in the new Palestinian state. Finally, it could be legitimately argued that an exchange of population has taken place, since at the same period 900 000 Jews were expelled from Arab countries and forced to leave everything they possessed behind them. Most of these refugees were taken in by Israel. ln 1948, there were some 700 000 Palestinian refugees. 

If one accepts the legitimacy of the state of Israel by virtue of the UN votes on the division of Palestine and the recognition of the state of Israel, in May 1948, then one is logically forced to admit that responsibility for the existence of refugees stems not from the state of Israel but from the intransigence of the Arab countries in refusing to accept ifs existence.

The setting up of the British mandate in Palestine owes its origins to a decision by the great powers of 1917, later solemnly echoed by the League of Nations, to come to the assistanœ of the Jewish people, in particular the persecuted Jewish masses of Europe, to enable them both to find secular shelter and to achieve their religious ideal in making their home in Palestine where they could create a new Jewish national life.

This decision was a political application of the principle accepted by the Allied powers of the right of people to self-determination.

Over the centuries and epochs, the Jews had preserved and maintained their traditions without assimilating, and this non-assimilation was proof not only of their religious faith but also of their love for their lost homeland.

The Congress of Basel in 1897 marked the institutional beginning of the modem Zionist movement based on two key ideas advanced by Theodor Herzl: a state for the persecuted Jewish populations of Europe, and employment legislation that was indeed far-sighted for the period, including as it did the 35-hour week that has only now become law in France. 

ln 1917, the year of the Balfour Declaration, Palestine consisted of the territory now covered by Israel, the West Bank and Transjordan. Not until 1922 was Transjordan divided to create Palestine and the state of Jordan. 

The Balfour Declaration had been preceded, on 4 June 1917, by a letter from Jules Cambon, France's Foreign Secretary, in which he expressed the French government's sympathy for the Zionist cause, having in mind particularly the establishment of a Jewish national home in Palestine. 

ln February and May 1918, the French and Italian governments declared their acceptance of the Balfour Declaration and in August of that same year President Woodrow Wilson expressed his satisfaction at the progress made by Zionism, and his agreement with the declaration. 

Under the terms of the Balfour Declaration, which was included in the preamble to the British mandate in Palestine established by the League of Nations, the right to establish a national home in Palestine could be conferred only upon the Jewish people; this right ruled out the establishment of any other national home in the mandated territory, and the Arabs in Palestine did not at the time appear to constitute a nation in view of the social, ethnic, cultural and religious links by which they were joined to the Arabs of Syria, the Hejaz and Mesopotamia. 

This national home, created as a refuge for Jews being persecuted in Europe, was refused by the Arabs, obliging the British to impose drastic limits on Jewish emigration to a land that had been promised to them. 

When Arab leaders disclaim any responsibility, even indirect, for the Shoah, it is not true. If the persecuted Jews of Germany, Poland, Hungary, Romania and elsewhere had been allowed to emigrate to Palestine, as had been agreed and recognised by the League of Nations, the number of Jews exterminated would have been far smaller. One cannot reproach the Swiss for failing to throw open their borders to persecuted Jews, and not remind the Arabs of Palestine and elsewhere that they knowingly closed their borders to a Jewish population in mortal danger, when there was no shortage of space to welcome them. 

The Grand Mufti of Jerusalem had committed his support to the Nazis, had visited Berlin in 1941, had encouraged the extermination of Jews in Palestine and asked Hitler to "settle the Jewish question according to the German model, in the interests of the nation and the people".

Arab leaders persist in teaching their peoples to hate the Jews. When Bashar El Assad declared before the Pope that "Israel is a deicide people" and that "Zionism is the equivalent of racism", this was nothing, or next to nothing, compared to what is printed in the newspapers, preached in the mosques, seen on the television, and heard on the radio in most Arab countries, not to mention the indoctrination of a whole generation of schoolchildren, through the content of their school textbooks, to hate the Jews. 

Before peace can be established between two nations, there must, above all else, be a renunciation of hatred and of terrorism as a political means. But is such a renunciation in the interests of Arab leaders and the Palestinian Authority? Peace with Israel would mean, at some point in the future, the democratisation of the Arab regimes and, with that, the fall of the dictatorships. Better for the dictators to keep their people hating the Jews and Israel. 

Arafat knows without doubt that if today's violence were not directed against Israel, it would be turned against a corrupt Palestinian Authority, while his people, for their part, have lived a marginalized existence for decades, in almost complete deprivation. This is the deliberate choice of the Arab and Palestinian leaders. 

"Israel is occupying the West Bank," they say. True, but nobody said anything about the Hashemite Kingdom which had annexed the region to Jordan until Israeli troops occupied it in 1967. Yet though Israel did occupy the West Bank, it was not in pursuit of any territorial ambition but as a lever in pressing for peace talks with its neighbours. Israel bas always considered this occupation temporary, until such time as a peace treaty is signed in due form. Only the eastem section of Jerusalem (because it contains the Wailing Wall and Temple Mount) was annexed by decision of the Knesset. 

The state of Israel has always recognised and respected Muslim places of worship, but the same bas not been true of the Arabs: prior to 1967, they destroyed the synagogues in the Jewish quarter of Jerusalem, banned Jews from praying at the Wailing Wall or used Jewish tombstones from the cemetery on the Mount of Olives to build latrines.

Some propose that Israel should withdraw from the occupied territories and build a wall to guarantee its security. Quite apart from the negative symbolism involved, along what line would the wall be built? Every state needs clearly defined and recognised frontiers.

"Jewish settlements in the occupied territories are an obstacle to peace," they say. Perhaps. But it could be tumed around another way. Why should Jews not live in the West Bank and Gaza, when a million Arabs live in Israel? 

"There has to be an end to the cycle of violence," they say. What cycle? On the one side there is a genocidal determination to exterminate as many Jews as possible and, on the other, a legitimate desire to punish the terrorists responsible for these atrocities and preparing to commit more. 

"They say, "France and Germany were reconcilied, and yet how many millions were lost between the two people". True, but never has France or Germany denied the right of the other to exist as a state. 

Meaningful negotiations can only be resumed if, as a first step, the Palestinian side renounces the right of retum which would sound the death-knell of the Jewish state and if the Israelis agree to withdraw from the West Bank and Gaza. After this, and only after this, during the negotiation phase there could be discussions on the right of retum for certain refugees and an exchange of territory between the Palestinian state and Israel to enable settlements in the West Bank to be incorporated into the state of Israel. 

Last of all, one might also wonder about the logic of a tiny, divided and over-populated Palestinian state set alongside a Jordan that is vast, sparsely populated and inhabited for the most part by Palestinians. Some thought will one day have to be given to resolving this territorial absurdity. Perhaps then there may be a retum to the "Jordanian option", but only after the creation of an independent Palestinian state.

NEXT