On Israel, the vitriolic premonitions of Raymond Aron

PIERRE PRIER

It was easier a few decades ago to criticize Tel Aviv's policy in France than it is today. The analyzes of Raymond Aron, columnist for L'Express and Le Figaro, incisive and devoid of any sentimentality regarding his Jewishness, contrast with the current pro-Israeli tropism of the dominant media.

Raymond Aron is in fashion. The liberal thinker, the academic coupled with an influential editorialist through his editorials in Le Figaro then in L'Express, from the 1950s to the 1980s, was summoned on the occasion of the fortieth anniversary of his disappearance by right-wing media. the search for intellectual references that they lack in current production: “a master for understanding today’s challenges”, “an intellectual horizon”, “an atypical liberal”.

Curiously, the most incisive positions of his journalistic work, namely those devoted to Israel and Palestine, are absent from the injunctions to “reread Raymond Aron”. They nonetheless remain burning news.

We understand this discomfort if we reread them, indeed. Some of these ideas, expressed in a right-wing press by a right-wing man of Jewish origin, would cause him to be classified in 2024 as “anti-Zionist” (or worse) by the media and TV “philosophers” who are content to paraphrase the Israeli narrative.

It was a real reflection that began on November 27, 1967, following General de Gaulle's famous press conference denouncing, after Israel's lightning victory and the occupation of the Palestinian territories: "the Jews (...) who had remained what they had always been, that is to say an elite people, sure of themselves and dominating. Every word of this “aberrant” statement shocks Raymond Aron. By accusing the eternal “Jews” and not the State of Israel, de Gaulle rehabilitates, he writes, a very French anti-Semitism: “This style, these adjectives, we all know them, they belong to Drumont, to Maurras, not not to Hitler and his people.”

QUESTIONS ABOUT THE CONCEPT OF “JEWISH PEOPLE”

But Aron, like a true philosopher, could not stop there: “And now, since we have to discuss, let’s discuss,” he wrote in Le Figaro. He then embarked on a socio-historical study, backed by a worried self-analysis which has not aged. What relationship does its origins have with the State of Israel? Do they require unconditional support? And what does it mean to be Jewish? These questions, sometimes without definitive answers, are found in a work which brings together his articles from Le Figaro1 then, later, in his Mémoires2 published the year of his death, in 1983, and finally in a recently published book which includes, all his editorials from L'Express3. The quotes in this article are taken from these three books.

And first of all, what are these Jewish “people”, as the President of the Republic says, begins by asking Raymond Aron. It does not exist as common sense understands, he replies, since “those we call Jews are not biologically, for the most part, the descendants of the Semitic tribes” of the Bible. “I do not think that we can affirm the objective existence of the “Jewish people” like that of the French people. The Jewish people exist by and for those who want them to exist, some for metahistorical reasons, others for political reasons. On a more personal level, Aron comes closer, without completely adhering to it, to the famous theory of his comrade from the École Normale Supérieure, Jean-Paul Sartre, who believed that we were only Jewish in the eyes of others. Identity is not a thing in itself, he believes, with a touch of provocation:

A sociologist, I obviously do not reject the distinctions inscribed by centuries of history in the consciousness of men and groups. I feel less distant from an anti-Semitic Frenchman than from a Moroccan Jew who speaks no language other than Arabic...

But it is to immediately add: “From the day a sovereign decrees that the dispersed Jews form a “confident and dominating” people, I have no choice.” This hollow identity certainly does not oblige him to support a policy. Aron denounces “the supporters of French Algeria or those nostalgic for the Suez expedition who continue their war against the Arabs through Israel”. He also said he was bothered by the pro-Israeli demonstrations which took place in France in June 1967: "I liked neither the bands of young people who marched up the Champs-Élysées shouting: 'Israel will win', nor the crowds in front of the "Israeli Embassy". In his Memoirs, he goes further by reaffirming his opposition to dual allegiance:

Today's Jews cannot avoid their problem: defining themselves as Israeli or French; Jews and French, yes. French and Israelis, no – which does not prevent them from having a particular predilection for Israel.

He feels this “dilection” emotionally. He who in 1948 considered the creation of the State of Israel as an “episode of the British withdrawal” which “did not arouse in him the slightest emotion”, he who “never was a Zionist, first and foremost above all because I do not consider myself Jewish", would feel "hurt to the depths of the soul" by the destruction of Israel. However, he confesses: “In this sense, a Jew will never achieve perfect objectivity when it comes to Israel.” Basically, he continues to question himself. His introspection does not deprive him of a harsh criticism of Israeli policy, since Aron feels no affinity with Israeli governments: “I do not agree today any more than yesterday to unconditionally support the policies of a few men” .

THE REFUSAL OF “UNCONDITIONAL” SUPPORT

This policy goes so far as to repel him. He recounts how he lost his temper, during a seminar, against a participant who claimed: “The reason of the strongest is always the best”. The worthy professor explodes: “Against my habit, I preached morality with passion, with anger. This formula… a Jew should be ashamed to take it as his own.” But in general, the philosopher-journalist remains attached to a cold analysis of the realities of the moment. Raymond Aron does not forget that Israel is also a pawn in the geopolitics of the Cold War: “If there is an “imperialist camp” [facing the USSR], how can we deny that Israel is part of it? » Then: “In the poker of world diplomacy, how can we deny it? Israel, willy-nilly, is an American card.”

He pushes the principle of intellectual “ethics” far. If he judges that in 1967, Israel was forced to attack, it may be good, for the good of regional peace, for it to lose a few battles: “I judged the Syrian-Egyptian attack of 1973 to be normal” , he wrote, even adding: “I am delighted with the successes achieved by the Egyptians during the first days”, because they would allow President Anour El-Sadat to make peace.

But Aron still remains skeptical of the 1978 agreement between Menachem Begin and Sadat at Camp David, a simple “procedure” that he “supports without illusion” because it misses the main thing: it does not take into account the problem of “the settlements established in the West Bank. In 1967 (joining, this time, the premonitions of General de Gaulle, in the same conference), he described the alternative facing Israel: "Either evacuate the conquered territories... or else become what their enemies have been for years accuse them of being, the last colonizers, the last wave of Western imperialism.” The impasse is total, according to him: “Both terms seem almost equally unacceptable” for Tel Aviv.

This fundamental pessimism is expressed in his articles written for L'Express in the last years of his life. In 1982, he praised the “symbolic” scope and “precise diplomacy” of François Mitterrand, who asked the Israeli parliament for a state for the Palestinians, in exchange for their recognition of Israel. While remaining lucid: “Mitterrand will not convince Begin, neither will Reagan.” According to him, he still wrote in 1982, Israel will never agree to recognize the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) as the sole representative of the Palestinians. Ten years later, the Oslo Accords will finally experience the failure that we know, and Israel will facilitate the rise of Hamas, with the aim of weakening the PLO.

The invasion of Lebanon by Israel in 1982, the departure of Yasser Arafat and his fighters protected by the French army still gave Raymond Aron the opportunity to play the prophet: even if the PLO became "exclusively civilian (...) , other groups will take up the weapon of terrorism (…). The idea of a Palestinian state will not disappear, whatever the fate of the PLO.”

In September, he commented on the massacres in the Palestinian camps of Sabra and Chatila by Lebanese Phalangists, protected by the Israeli army:

Israel cannot reject its responsibility for the massacres of Palestinians (…). During the thirty-three hours of the killing, IDF officers could not ignore what was happening in the camps.

And Aron's predictions, in December of the same year, resonate singularly today. At the time, the term apartheid was still reserved for South Africa. The philosopher evokes another word and another era:

By the end of the century, there will be as many Arabs as Jews within the country's military borders. The Jews will bear arms, not the Arabs. The Greek cities knew this duality of citizens and metics. Should we believe in the success of the reconstitution of a city of this type in the 20th century?

Yes, you need to reread Raymond Aron.