by Elie Wiesel
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 t
he 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.
Around that time, Elizabeth Schemla, one of the best journalists in Paris, asks me on behalf of Le Nouvel Observateur if I still have confidence in Mitterrand. I reply unequivocally: “I have no doubt that for him as a man, the survival of Israel constitutes an imperative. I haven’t a moment’s doubt of his loyalty. When the chips are down, François Mitterrand is a friend of the Jewish people and of Israel.”
And so we continue to see each other. The question remains: Did he manipulate me? Did he use our friendship as an alibi vis-à-vis the Jewish community, as he made use of it when he sent me, after the coup d’état in Moscow, to take a message of support to Gorbachev? That is what people say. I don’t believe it.
August 1991: Marion, Elisha, and I are spending the last two weeks of the month at the house of friends on the Riviera. I’m having breakfast when I learn of Mikhail Gorbachev’s arrest. It is Monday morning. Has perestroika come to an end? Can history, as proclaimed by Marxism-Leninism, be reversed? Are we going to witness a return to Brezhnevism, perhaps Stalinism? Nervous, I listen to the news, switching from station to station. The rumors are alarming: The life of the Soviet head of state is supposed to be in danger; Boris Yeltsin’s as well. The Western capitals are getting worried. Is there to be a politico-military insurrection? How is one to know how it will end? The fact is that when Moscow moves, the whole world trembles.
That afternoon my New York office calls. Jack Lang is trying to reach me, urgently. The situation in the USSR is alarming; the danger is real. The process of democratization is in jeopardy. Though worried, the minister of culture is, as always, bubbling over with ideas. He wants me to come to Paris immediately to cochair with him an international committee to safeguard democracy in the Soviet Union. I agree. We quickly make up a list of personalities whose collaboration we deem necessary. Tomorrow we’ll announce it to the press. Then he proposes a second task to me, to take to Gorbachev and Yeltsin a message of support from Mitterrand. Why me? His “logical” explanation: “Gorbachev is a Nobel Prize winner, and so are you. Nothing could be more normal than one laureate coming to the aid of another.” No need to think about it; I accept.
Later on, Mitterrand’s political opponents claim that both initiatives were designed to make up for his blunder that first Monday evening on television, when he seemed to insinuate that the news from Moscow might be a fait accompli, going so far as to read from a letter he had just received from the chief conspirator, General Yanaiev. Who was manipulating whom? Mitterrand explains to me that from the first he had thought of following a twofold strategy: On the one hand he quoted the promises of the conspirators (without approving them); on the other, keeping in mind their victims, he entrusted me with a message of total support. Did this mean that at first he had believed that the rebels might win, however temporarily? He explains to me that in the beginning the situation had seemed unclear. “The French needed to be reassured,” Mitterrand tells me, while giving me instructions as to what I should say to Gorbachev in his name. He also says that “it was necessary to show that France was ready for all eventualities.”
I try to help him in a modest way. The press conference, at the Ministry of Culture, has attracted a great many journalists. Yves Montand, Jorge Semprun, and Jack Lang all make political statements. There is much indignation and determination. In a few sentences I explain my own position: “Let us not respond with silence to the man who broke the silence in the Soviet Union….”
I hurry back to the Côte d’Azur to pack a few things. Elisha and Marion are not convinced that my trip to Moscow is reasonable or necessary. But one does not refuse such a mission. Gorbachev deserves to be encouraged by Mitterrand, and Mitterrand deserves that I accept the role of his emissary. My son likes to argue, and he knows how to convince, but this time he does not insist.
As she prepares my bag, Marion asks me questions about the practical aspects of the mission. A government airplane is coming to pick me up tomorrow morning. “Got your passport?” “Yes I have.” “Your Soviet visa?” I had forgotten about that. “Do you think they’ll let you in without a visa?” By God, she’s right. I rush to the telephone and call Jack Lang, who calls the Élysée, which calls the Soviet Embassy, which remains silent. It seems that the ambassador, Yuri Dubinin, prefers to keep a low profile until things become more clear. As do his colleagues. Hours go by before a consular official can be tracked down. He asks me whether I have submitted a visa request to the consulate. The question is absurd; he knows the answer. In that case, no visa. Fortunately there is such a thing as the fax. What about photos? We urgently look for a photographer, find one. But the official at the Soviet Embassy informs me that only Moscow can deliver the visa. And that it will take some time. How long? A few days at least. At the Élysée they’re getting nervous, and I am told to leave without a visa. What? Go without a visa? The refugee in me protests: never, hear, never! Even carrying a supernormal visa I quake as I go through passport control. Do you see me landing in Moscow (Moscow!) without the miraculous stamp of an obscure consular clerk? And what about the Gulag? A product of Solzhenitsyn’s imagination? At the Élysée they reassure me: In a government plane there is nothing to be afraid of; nothing can happen to me. I am no hero, and my heart tells me not to yield, not to expose myself to stupid risks. But I’m ashamed to admit my cowardice, and so I fly off to Moscow without a visa.
It turns out that I shall not be traveling alone. Jean Lecanuet and Michel Vauzelle will accompany me. Their situation is more comfortable than mine; their visas wait for them on arrival. The former represents the Senate, the latter the National Assembly. But I am the one charged with transmitting the French president’s message—that is, if I’m not turned back or thrown into prison.
Upon landing I finally accept the evidence that my fears were unfounded. In spite of the late hour an impressive welcoming committee has come to greet us. The French ambassador brings us up-to-date on events: The putsch has failed; Gorbachev will be back tomorrow. We spend the rest of the night at the embassy residence. There is comfort, courtesy, friendliness. In spite of the unsched
uled nature of our visit everything seems minutely prepared, as if we had been expected after all. Tomorrow, with a little luck and persuasion, we shall get a chance to fulfill our mission.
An embassy staff member has already contacted the Yeltsin team and a high Kremlin official. Thus they are aware, at the highest level, of our visit and its objective.
Another member of the staff takes care of the formalities, which are as simple as they could be. In fact there are none. I don’t dare mention that I have no visa; but in fact no one has asked me. I don’t even remember anyone opening my passport.
Next morning we’re taken to the “White House,” the Russian Parliament, where, we’re told, Yeltsin will receive us with full honors. In the capital, which we cross at high speed, everything looks normal. With the exception of the district we are about to visit, it all looks peaceful, sleepy, quiet. But where then is the revolutionary atmosphere the media keep talking about? Paris in 1968 was stormier. Here and there some women are standing in line in front of a department store. Taxis are circulating on the main avenues. It is business as usual, a morning like any other. The city does not seem to be living through a “historic” crisis and ordeal or experiencing anything exceptional.
The only place where one perceives unrest is around the Parliament. There are scores of idle soldiers, a multitude of young people. You might think you were in the Latin Quarter with Daniel Cohn-Bendit and the “sixty-eighters.” People stand around in groups; everyone is debating, remaking the world, reinventing humankind.
