And the Sea Is Never Full (46 page)

Here is something that may surprise some who knew him better and longer than I: I never heard him say anything derogatory about his opponents, even in the midst of the electoral campaign or during the first
cohabitation
, which surely was painful for him. Of course, he did not cover them with compliments either, and I could tell when he did not like this or that person—his face would cloud over abruptly. But he rarely used his sharp sense of humor to wound.

Still, I know that he could be severe, unfair, even merciless with anyone stupid enough to annoy or cross him. He had no tolerance for contradiction. He was incapable of ever admitting that he might be wrong on any subject. A saint he was not; far from it.

That he loved gossip, political and other, became evident only when we were not alone. In his entourage, official and private, there were always people whose company he enjoyed because they knew how to entertain him with funny tales about public figures.

I like his simplicity—which is genuine. At the beginning of his seven-year term, he went home every evening to his apartment on the Rue de Bièvre. The Élysée, he explains, is only a workplace for him, an office for dealing with affairs of state.

For many, his most appealing trait is his intelligence. For others, it is his tenacity. For me, it is his loyalty to friends. Those closest to him repeat this to me often enough: Friendship for him is more important than anything else, the only thing that matters. I am told he never lets down a friend, even when the friend is wrong. That pleases and touches me. Of course, that was before …

My notes are full of impressions of our encounters. Of course, as is usual for me, every time I walked into the Élysée Palace, I remembered where I came from and wondered in what possible way a former yeshiva student from Sighet could interest the leader of France and one of the world’s great men. Probably too respectful and certainly more than awkward, I let him go on indefinitely without ever interrupting him. Even when we had our dialogues—I’ll return to that subject a little later—I chose to make him talk rather than to express myself. I liked listening to his confidences, to his analyses of the workings of high international politics. The man intrigued me. I saw in him a living symbol of the Resistance. Whenever I left the Élysée, I
felt that I had been close to a leader with great impact on current events, and I would rush to the Bristol to jot down his every word in my diary.

Some of the questions:

God? “I’m an agnostic.” A strange agnostic, fascinated by mysticism.

Nuclear peril? It preoccupies him, of course. I say: “Let us imagine the following scenario: Your red phone rings; it is late at night. A general informs you that the Soviets have just launched a nuclear missile in the direction of France; it will hit its target in seven minutes. What will you do? Whom do you call first? On what basis will you decide to give the order to respond?” Silence. I insist: “Do you know now what you would do then?” He says very quietly, “Yes, I know.” And he immediately adds: “But I also know that we must do everything to prevent this from happening.”

Israel? Israel holds a crucial place in his political philosophy. He knows the country that according to him belongs more to history than to geography. Israel, for him, is the land in which the Bible and its characters still live and communicate with one another. For him it is the place possibly inhabited by God, and certainly by Abraham, David, and Ezekiel.

The Middle East conflict? The historical claim of the Jews on the one hand, and that of the Arabs on the other, the tragedy of two peoples bound to the same—largely arid—soil. “What is evident,” says Mitterrand, “is that over these last centuries the Arabs have settled there; therefore it is their country too.” That is his view of the “incredibly confused” situation in which we live today: “two peoples, two Gods, two religions, two prophets all crowded into one small land.”

Israel, a political challenge? For Mitterrand it transcends politics. Politics deals only with the present, albeit with an opening toward the future; Israel defines itself by its past as well. Israel is Jerusalem, and Jerusalem signifies the ineffable. One day, contemplating what he might do at the end of his mandate (he was then finishing his first seven-year term), he formulates a sort of wish, a hope: “I’ll go to Israel, to Jerusalem…. I feel like spending some time there … perhaps I’ll do some writing…. It’s one of those places that arouses all kinds of aspirations in me. It’s not the only one, but it may be the one that brings together the most spiritual, intellectual, historical, and political elements….” I tell him that all my life, since my earliest childhood, I have done nothing, in a way, but sing of Jerusalem, the light, the luminosity
of Jerusalem. He responds: “Everything in that region is intensity. Not only Jerusalem. One must wonder about all those peoples who, over centuries and centuries, have been burned by faith…. As though each stone contained a force, as though there were explosive atoms with religious characteristics…. It is a land scorched by passion.”

What is it that fascinates him the most: the people, the country, or the history of Israel? Perhaps it is the destiny of Israel. Everything Jewish arouses his interest. The Jewish attitude toward death and toward the stranger. What Judaism says about suffering. The role of Exile in our tradition. Is there such a thing as specifically Jewish ethics? Can one be Jewish outside Israel, or against Israel? Can one be a Jew outside the Jewish community? And anyway, what exactly does it mean to be a Jew?

He has his own ideas about all these questions. So do I. Often they are not the same.

In preparing my “dialogues” with François Mitterrand in 1988–1989 and again during the summer of 1993, I plan to keep the theme of memory for the end. Memory in regard to the Holocaust, that is. We had often spoken of World War II and even of the death camps, but not of Vichy and Pétain. That was before the heartbreaking—and for me at the time, incomprehensible—report of the wreath he chose to lay secretly on Pétain’s grave. And before the publication of Pierre Péan’s revelations about his connections with the Vichy regime. The deportations, the death camps, the Warsaw Ghetto uprising—he told me that he knew about them at the time, through the underground press. But what about Vichy and the complicity of the French authorities? How was one to understand his measured views of Vichy and his silence about Pétain? I hoped he, a former member of the Resistance, would explain it all to me one day. I still didn’t know about his own past at that time. It was well before the Bousquet affair.

Until September 1994, our most serious disagreement had to do with Yasir Arafat’s visit to Paris. I had picked up warning signals a few weeks earlier and had confided them to an Israeli friend, who in turn hastened to inform Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir, who refused to believe him: “How can President Mitterrand receive Arafat when he has just welcomed me so cordially?” Shamir was naive. A more seasoned diplomat would have understood the connection between the two events, the policy of “evenhandedness.” Mitterrand most likely
had received him so cordially as part of the groundwork for the invitation to Arafat.

Whose idea was it? Jacques Attali acknowledges that it was his during a painful discussion over dinner, in the presence of Marion; his wife, Elizabeth; and his publisher, Claude Durand. And why? To start things moving in the Middle East, to exert pressure on the Shamir government; for Israel has to be saved in spite of itself. Because, for Attali, Israel embodies the Book, the triumph of the spirit, the power of its ethical message. His brand of logic leads him to say that if he had to choose between the State of Israel and the Book of Israel, his choice would be easy. Out of concern for justice and truth I must specify that all this took place during the Intifada. According to him, Israel was in danger of losing its soul—and I my credibility, if I did not publicly denounce Israel.

Later on, Attali told me that he had had mixed feelings about the visit of the PLO chief, and that he had had trouble coping. He told me that on that day, which happened to be the Day of Remembrance of the Holocaust, he had put on a black tie.

What is certain is that Mitterrand had been encouraged by Jewish (and non-Jewish) intellectuals to reach out to Arafat. They probably told him that since a number of Jews, Americans and others, were meeting with Arafat, why should he continue to boycott him?

As for me, for personal and objective reasons, I do not agree. I feel Mitterrand is making a mistake, which could well harm Israel and the Jewish community and himself as well. To the journalists who try immediately to get my reaction, I do not hide my disappointment: “As far as I can tell, Arafat does not yet deserve to be received at the Élysée. There is still time to cancel the invitation. If the president considers it useful to strengthen the relations between France and the PLO, that is his right. Let the minister of foreign affairs negotiate with Arafat, or the prime minister. But not the president of the republic….” My words, however respectful and cordial, reflect my disenchantment. Nor do I have any illusions: Our friendship is at stake. One of his close aides suggests I come to Paris to speak to Mitterrand, as friend to friend. I ask: “And if I succeed in convincing the president, will he cancel the invitation?” The answer: “No, it’s too late. Arafat is coming.” I stay in New York.

I write these lines toward the end of 1995. Meanwhile the Rabin-Arafat handshake has altered the image and role of the Palestinian
leader. This citizen of Gaza, president of the Palestinian National Authority, is now considered a moderate by public opinion. For the government of Shimon Peres he was the only valid interlocutor. The terrorist of yesterday has become Israel’s ally. Fine. I support with all my heart their policy of reconciliation and their aspirations to peace. Nevertheless, I still think that Arafat’s visit to the Élysée was a mistake. The head of the PLO, with his bloodstained past, with his charter that stipulates the annihilation of Israel, should not be received by the head of state. I was told to note the difference in certain details of protocol: three motorcycles instead of seven, no red carpet, reception by a deputy rather than by the minister of foreign affairs or the head of protocol. Nonsense. This time it was a matter of image, of symbols, and details were of no importance.

Arafat has scarcely left Paris when I receive a call from the Élysée. Mitterrand wants to see me. Urgently. I drop everything and go to Paris. I come to the appointment tense and frustrated. He wishes to explain his actions to me: “Please understand me. I am not an Israeli, I am not a Zionist; I am responsible for French policy, which, as such, must take the Arab world into account….” He tells me of his meeting with Arafat, who evidently not only knows his lessons well but knows how to present his case to best effect. He tells Mitterrand of his brother’s death; he was buried like a thief somewhere in Egypt. What about Arafat the terrorist? He is renouncing terrorism. And the infamous charter of the PLO? Dead. “Null and void.” Mitterrand tells me that it was in his office that this phrase was proposed, studied, and adopted.

What Mitterrand did not know at the time (did he find out later?) was that while Arafat was showing him a peaceful if not pacifist face, Faruq Khadumi, his assistant, was chatting in the antechamber with several high French officials and told them, in an astonishing outburst of candor: “The old man is talking nonsense; the Palestinians refuse all compromise. We do not want a part of Palestine; we demand
all
of Palestine.”

Mitterrand continues to think—and no one has the right to doubt it—that he was acting for the good of Israel. Hurt by the attacks from Jewish extremists, he keeps repeating: “One day people will know who is the real friend of Israel.” He does care about what he considers his privileged relation with the people of Israel. He keeps coming back to it. Wasn’t he the first president of France to make a
state visit to Jerusalem? Did he not speak out for a Palestinian state before the Knesset? Why are people reproaching him for that now? He informs me in strict confidence of certain actions he has undertaken on behalf of the Jewish state since 1981. And at the time of the terrorist attack at Goldenberg’s restaurant, hadn’t he gone immediately to the scene of the tragedy? It seems there had been some excited young people who greeted him with cries of “Murderer!” This incident pains him as much as it does me. How can anyone subscribe to the notion that he is not or is no longer Israel’s friend? From his point of view, he invited Arafat for the good of Israel. Though I try to refute his argument I feel I have no right to attack his motive: I do believe he wanted to do the right thing and that he is psychologically and morally incapable of wishing to harm Israel.

But … what about Arafat and his past? He trusts him. Not totally, but enough to believe in his sincerity. Did his attitude toward him change a little later? After the fall of Nicolae Ceauşescu, wasn’t it he who expressed astonishment, speaking of the last spectacular Communist congress organized by the Romanian dictator: “And to think that Arafat was treated there as a sort of guest of honor….” He wanted me to explain that to him. I answered that he was in a better position to explain.

As for his explanations of Arafat’s visit to Paris, he didn’t convince me, but neither did I judge him. You cannot judge a man on one isolated act. What counts is the totality of the person. From that perspective—we’re still long before the Bousquet affair—I continued to declare that Mitterrand had remained a friend and faithful ally of Israel and the Jewish people. I cannot forget his participation in the demonstration that followed the desecration of the Jewish cemetery at Carpentras, and his second trip to Israel, and his decision—a symbolic gesture—to designate July 16 a day of national commemoration of the rounding up of Parisian Jews in the Vélodrome d’Hiver. Nor can I forget his many statements against racism and anti-Semitism.

My friendship with him has earned me criticism and recriminations from Jewish extremists. I have been asked many questions about it, and some of them were painful to hear. I find them unfounded, regrettable.