Paris: The speaker of the French Senate — the country’s second most senior figure under the constitution — said Thursday he was “astounded” by remarks attributed to Emmanuel Macron on Israel and accused the president of showing his “ignorance” of history.
Macron was quoted as saying in a cabinet meeting Tuesday that Israel “must not forget” it owed its existence to a United Nations resolution after its troops fired on UN peacekeepers in Lebanon.
The comment sparked a furious reaction from Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, adding to growing tensions between France and Israel, and also troubled Jewish community figures within France.
“It first of all shows an ignorance of the history of the birth of the State of Israel,” Gerard Larcher, the right-wing speaker of the upper house, told Europe 1 radio.
“Questioning the existence of Israel touches on fundamental questions for me,” he said.
“I was astounded that these remarks could be made,” he added. The creation of Israel “did not come as a notarial act merely validated by the UN,” he argued.
Larcher would take over the presidency if centrist Macron was incapacitated or suddenly resigned. He is a senior figure in the right-wing Republicans (LR) party to which Prime Minister Michel Barnier also belongs.
“Mr Netanyahu must not forget that his country was created by a decision of the UN,” Macron told the weekly French cabinet meeting, referring to the resolution adopted in November 1947 by the United Nations General Assembly on the plan to partition Palestine into a Jewish state and an Arab state.
“Therefore this is not the time to disregard the decisions of the UN,” he added, as concern grows over Israeli fire on UNIFIL peacekeepers in southern Lebanon.
His comments from the closed door meeting at the Elysee Palace were quoted by two participants who spoke to AFP and asked not to be named.
In a blistering attack that is highly unusual from an establishment figure in France, Larcher questioned if Macron had taken account of the 1917 British Balfour Declaration, which supported the creation of a Jewish homeland, and even the Holocaust and its consequences.
Netanyahu has hit back at Macron’s comments, saying the country’s founding was achieved by the 1948 Arab-Israeli war, not a UN ruling.
He also said that among those who fought for Israel in 1948 were French Jews who had been sent to death camps after being rounded up by the collaborationist Vichy regime, which governed a large part of France during the Nazi occupation in World War II.
In an interview with France’s Le Figaro daily published Thursday, Netanyahu accused Macron of a “distressing distortion of history” and “disrespect.”
French Senate speaker ‘astounded’ by Macron ‘ignorance’ on Israel
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French Senate speaker ‘astounded’ by Macron ‘ignorance’ on Israel
- Macron was quoted as saying in a cabinet meeting Tuesday that Israel “must not forget” it owed its existence to a United Nations resolution after its troops fired on UN peacekeepers in Lebanon
Gordon Brown ‘regrets’ Iraq War support, new biography says
- Former UK PM claims he was ‘misled’ over evidence of WMDs
- Robin Cook, the foreign secretary who resigned in protest over calls for war, had a ‘clearer view’
LONDON: Former UK Prime Minister Gordon Brown regrets his failure to oppose Tony Blair’s push for war with Iraq, a new biography has said.
Brown told the author of “Gordon Brown: Power with Purpose,” James Macintyre, that Robin Cook, the former foreign secretary who opposed the war, had a “clearer view” than the rest of the government at the time.
Cook quit the Cabinet in 2003 after protesting against the war, claiming that the push to topple Saddam Hussein was based on faulty information over a claimed stockpile of weapons of mass destruction.
That information served as the fundamental basis for the US-led war but was later discredited following the invasion of Iraq.
Brown, chancellor at the time, publicly supported Blair’s push for war, but now says he was “misled.”
If Brown had joined Cook’s protest at the time, the campaign to avoid British involvement in the war may have succeeded, political observers have since said.
The former prime minister said: “Robin had been in front of us and Robin had a clearer view. He felt very strongly there were no weapons.
“And I did not have that evidence … I was being told that there were these weapons. But I was misled like everybody else.
“And I did ask lots of questions … and I didn’t get the correct answers,” he added.
“Gordon Brown: Power with Purpose,” will be published by Bloomsbury next month.
