“The French government, which entered the war to defend an unjustly attacked people, cannot help but feel sympathy for your cause, whose victory is linked to the victory of the Allies, and I am happy to confirm this to you here.” This is a paragraph from a letter from French Foreign Minister Jules Cambon to the Zionist Nahum Sokolow, dated June 4, 1917.
The letter – above – published by researcher Yohannan Manor in the French magazine “Cern Info” confirms that, contrary to what is commonly believed, France preceded Britain by promising the Jews to help establish a homeland for them in Palestine.
The letter included an explanation of the project that France intends to help the Zionists with, as it stated in its introduction: “You have explained to me the project to which you are devoting your efforts, which aims to develop Israeli colonialism in Palestine. You believe that it is justice and in order to compensate the Jews, they should be helped, protected, and their right to these matters recognized.” The land from which the people of Israel were expelled many centuries ago.
Researcher Manor considers that, with this position, France is the first European country to take an official position in favor of the Zionist project, and perhaps through this position it sought to gain the advantage of being the first to support the Jews, especially at the expense of Britain.
Although the researcher states that France has other special considerations behind this position, it wants the Zionist movement to put pressure on the Jews of Russia so that the latter continues the war alongside the Allied countries.
About 5 months after this French promise, the British Balfour Declaration would come in a letter sent by the then Foreign Secretary, Lord Arthur James Balfour, on November 2, 1917, to the representative of Zionism in Britain, Lord Walter Rothschild, in which it said: “Her Majesty’s Government looks with enthusiasm at the establishment of this state.” “Palestine is a national homeland for the Jewish people, and every effort will be made to facilitate the achievement of this goal.”
The researcher believes that the British promise was accompanied by a conservative condition, unlike the French promise, which was not conditional, even though the British shared with the French in seeking to exploit the ability of the Zionists to mobilize Russia and America to limit German superiority.
Exchanging Palestine for Greater Syria
In addition to the above, France’s encouragement of the Jews to occupy Palestine was not the result of 2017, but rather long before that. During his campaign against Egypt in 1798, the King of France, Napoleon Bonaparte, called on the Jews to immigrate to France, pledging to help settle them there.
A statement issued by Napoleon at the time said: “To the legitimate heirs of Palestine, O Israelis, O unique people whom the forces of tyranny could not rob of their lineage and national existence, even if they only robbed them of the land of their ancestors, O legitimate heirs of Palestine, the French nation calls upon you to preserve your inheritance with its guarantee and support against… “All intruders.”
But Napoleon’s failure in his campaign and the subsequent signing of the “Sykes-Picot” agreement to divide the legacy of the Ottoman Empire made France abandon its plans in Palestine and cede it to Britain in exchange for control over Greater Syria.
A study by researcher Catherine Nicolet, entitled “The End of French Religious Protection over Jerusalem,” confirms that France preceded Britain in taking an interest and even positioning itself in Palestine. The French presence in Palestine continued for centuries before the British Mandate for Palestine, in accordance with an agreement with the Ottoman Empire that granted France a kind of guardianship over Christian churches and monasteries. The “Latins” of the Ottoman Empire in Jerusalem and places where there are Christians.
According to the study, France fought a diplomatic battle, or something similar to a cold war, with England in order to control all of Palestine since the weakness of the Ottoman Empire began, but France in the end lost that battle, thus losing its religious guardianship over Christian places in Palestine when it entered into the requirements of the Sykes Agreement. Picot came into effect, as the colonial division of the region stipulated that all of Palestine would belong to Britain, while France would be stationed in Greater Syria and areas of southern Türkiye.
False promises to the Arabs
Pierre-Andre Taghiev says in a study entitled “Anti-Israelism and Hatred of Jews: The French Exception” published in February 1917 that the Balfour Declaration, which is a 67-word statement published in the Times newspaper through which Britain laid the foundation for building Israel, contradicts the promises of… A precedent made by Britain and France to the Arabs was not fulfilled as it should be.
Sharif Hussein, Emir of Mecca, was promised the establishment of a major Arab state in the Middle East in exchange for rebellion against the Ottoman Empire, which controlled the region.
However, after Britain and France were able to dismantle the Ottoman Empire, they forgot their promises to the Arabs, but rather divided their countries, and encouraged mass immigration of Jews in implementation of the Cambon and Balfour Declarations to help establish a national homeland for the Jews on the land of Palestine.
A BBC investigation entitled “The Balfour Declaration: The 67 Words That Changed the History of the Middle East” confirms that after the defeat of the Ottoman Empire in World War I, the Balfour Declaration became a common position for the Allied countries and was even adopted by the League of Nations in July 1922, with attribution Its implementation by the United Kingdom, in which Palestine was part of its share in the cake of the Arab world that it shared with France.
San Remo, not Sykes-Picot
An article in the French newspaper Le Monde by researcher Jean-Pierre Filliot entitled “A hundred years ago, France and Great Britain shared the Middle East region” confirms that in April 1920, during a conference in the resort of San Remo in Italy, France and Great Britain divided the Middle East region, And not 4 years earlier, as many people believe – wrongly – in whose minds this sharing was linked to the Sykes-Picot Agreements concluded secretly in 1916 between the negotiators. The Englishman Sykes and the Frenchman Picot.
The Sykes-Picot Agreement required Britain to occupy large areas of Iraq, including Baghdad and Basra, and France to occupy the Syrian-Lebanese coast and areas of present-day southeastern Turkey, where there is a large Armenian population. As for the land of Palestine, the agreement required joint control over it in what resembled an international administration.
But it seems that the collapse of the Ottoman Empire made it easier for the colonial powers to invade Palestine, and Britain’s superiority in power made it have the lion’s share in the Middle East at the expense of France, so Palestine was its share, which was documented by the San Marino Agreement in 1920.
The United States did not fail to support Britain and France in their conspiracy against the Ottoman Empire and their division of the Middle East. In 1917, US President Woodrow Wilson announced the United States’ commitment to standing alongside Great Britain and France.
After their victory in World War I, the two colonial powers were able to establish an international body called the League of Nations, which would later turn into the United Nations. However, researcher Philo believes that the League of Nations, instead of working to support the rights of peoples, worked to perpetuate and achieve the imperialist goals of Paris and London in the Middle East. .
The Ottomans defended Palestine
Jewish researcher Yaron Harel confirms in an article entitled “Zionism and Exile” that before World War I, the Zionists were few and the majority of Jews did not dream of an independent Jewish state, but in the last two decades of the nineteenth century the Zionist movement began to grow, demanding the establishment of an independent homeland for the Jews.
For this purpose, negotiations took place starting in 1982 between the leaders of the Zionist movement and the Ottoman Empire about the possibility of allowing the organization of Jewish immigration to Palestine, but the Ottoman authorities categorically rejected the matter and continued to stand firmly in the face of repeated Zionist attempts to settle in Palestine.
The researcher adds that this rejection made the leaders of the Zionist movement, such as Zeev Jabotinsky, stand strongly with the parties opposed to the Ottoman Empire during World War I.
As soon as World War I came to an end, with the resulting defeat and dismantling of the Ottoman Empire and Britain’s occupation of Palestine, the Zionists, in coordination with the new colonial powers, began implementing their plans to establish a homeland for the Jews in Palestine.
France’s role in supporting Jewish gangs
A study entitled “Secret Journeys from France to Palestine” published by the newspaper “Memoir de la Choix” in September 2008 confirms that although the French Jewish community was one of the least Jewish communities inflowing to Palestine, the Zionist movement was strongly active in France on the political levels. And material assistance to the bodies and institutions that worked to establish a homeland for the Jews in Palestine.
In this context, the Zionist movement transformed what was known as the French Jewish Army, which was established in January 1942 to confront the Germans, into two organizations working for the benefit of Zionism, one of which was official and recognized as the Association of Jewish Veterans, and the other was secret and placed itself in the service of the Haganah movement fighting the Palestinians.
Several youth organizations were also formed in France to organize a large-scale secret migration of Jews to Palestine, such as the “Six-Party Secret Rescue Organization” and the Zionist Youth Movement, but the most important organization was the French Network of the Workers’ International, which was founded by Marc Garblom, the leader of the Zionist movement in France, and was among its members. Ministers and former ministers.
These various bodies were able to mobilize significant support for Zionism in France, both at the official and popular levels.
According to the writer, the two most famous Zionist gangs (the Irgun and the Haganah) were headquartered in France, which confirms the official collusion of the French authorities with the Jewish gangs.
The researcher states that France allowed the purchase and transfer of weapons from France to these gangs in Palestine. It also hosted camps to train hundreds of Jewish youth in preparation for their involvement in the Zionist gangs. It also provided its members with free training courses in the fields of maritime navigation and aviation.
In 1946, Paris granted asylum to former Israeli Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion and members of the Haganah gang after Britain expelled them from Palestine.
France’s role in empowering the Jewish state
France voted at the United Nations in 1947 in favor of the resolution to establish Israel, and later contributed strongly to the empowerment of the emerging Hebrew state.
The French researcher specializing in Middle East affairs, Alain Gresh, stated in a study published on the “Orian 21” website that France was Israel’s staunchest ally throughout the 1950s, providing its army with advanced equipment and Mirage aircraft, and helping it acquire nuclear military technology.
Military cooperation between the two sides reached its peak in 1956, when the two countries participated alongside Britain in the tripartite aggression against Egypt after the nationalization of the Suez Canal.
In addition to military cooperation, France contributed to the construction of Israeli infrastructure. In 1958, it undertook the construction of the Beersheba-Eilat road and the development of Haifa Port.
There was a cooling in the relations between the two parties during the era of Charles de Gaulle, but – according to scholars – it does not mean a retreat from the initial support for the Jewish state in Palestine, but rather it is due to the special Gaullist approach that seeks to distance France and even Europe from walking under the American mantle. De Gaulle imagined that Israel would Because of France’s influence on it, it should have followed its orbit, but it chose the American umbrella, which generated some resentment toward it from de Gaulle and those who followed in his footsteps.
Despite this apathy and what de Gaulle announced after the 1967 war to stop exporting French weapons to the Middle East, including Israel, scholars confirm that French-Israeli military cooperation continued in secret. In 1969, France provided Israel with 12 boats, and in 1972 it delivered spare parts for Mirage aircraft. .
In recent decades, French-Israeli relations have returned to their intimacy in secret and in public, especially during the era of former President Nicolas Sarkozy and his successor, François Hollande, and to a large extent during the era of current President Emmanuel Macron, with some verbal altercations that Macron also continues to apologize for or correct.
