To President Charles de Gaulle

...A few days before our Declaration of Independence, there arose the question whether we should define the State's borders...

...Zion" is one of our holiest and most precious places in Jerusalem, the City of David, but "Zionist" is the name of members of the movement that sought to return to "Zion" so that we could once again become a normal, independent people rooted in its homeland—like most peoples, if not all of them...

...But this hatred that emerged at the end of the 19th century appears again and again in this or that country...

...Twice our independence was destroyed in our homeland...

...The area of the land of Israel in our hands can absorb many more Jews than the number of those likely to come, and therefore the borders we have are sufficient and, please God, the Arabs should sign a peace treaty with us on the basis of the status quo...

...I felt it my duty—if only out of gratitude for your friendship and help for Israel, and for the personal friendship you showed me this year in our recent meeting [at Konrad Adenauer's funeral]—to explain to you our true position on international issues...

...Iwould like to remind you, dear General, of our conversation during my visit in June 1960 in the garden of the Elysee Palace...

...For the foundation of our existence after two destructions brought upon us by the Babylonians and the Romans, and the hatred with which the Christian peoples engulfed us for 1.600 years, was our spiritual link with the Book of Books...

...a warlike Israel, desirous of expansion...

...there would not have been the Sinai Campaign, nor the Six Day War, if the Arabs had accepted the UN decision...

...I told my colleagues: If the Arabs had accepted the borders set out by the UN Assembly on November 29...

...accepted the UN resolution, there would be no border question...

...You spoke of the creation of the "Zionist" homeland between the two World Wars: "Elite people, self-assured and domineering" replacing a heartfelt desire ("next year in Jerusalem") with a burning and conquering ambition...

...But in so far as we will be obliged to defend ourselves, I do not want the soldiers of other nations to die in our defense, but that our sons should defend our people...

...And I know there never was a people in this land—called always in Hebrew (after Cana'an) the Land of Israel?that was so entirely identified with it all of its life, although there were many conquerors (Egyptians, Assyrians, Babylonians, Persians, Greeks, Romans, Arabs, Seljuks, Crusaders, Mamelukes, Ottoman and British...

...I hope that friendly relations between Israel and France—as part of the friendly relations between all peoples—will continue with your assistance and the help of every people and person faithful to the ideals of the Book of Books...

...We are a small people, most of which does not live in its land, and who knows whether most of it will ever return...

...If they wish to cease being Jews, that is their business...

...The second fact is that the Christian world and the League of Nations, composed almost entirely of Christian peoples, recognized the historic link between the People of Israel and the Land of Israel and endorsed the Balfour Declaration...

...We Jews see ourselves equal to others...

...In the declaration that was given by Balfour and later endorsed by the French government, we were promised reconstitution of our national homeland, which has always remained our homeland...

...Jerusalem was razed by the triumphant Romans, and its name was wiped out for some time...

...We have two main aims: peace with our neighbors, and a great Jewish immigration...

...I replied: "The economic, political and cultural situation of American Jews is good, but all the same they have a profound relationship with the State of Israel...

...We did not rob or take away one inch of land from those who worked it, but we made this desert blossom...

...What I would ask of our friends is that they should not withhold from us the help necessary to keep our deterrent force capable of stopping our neighbors from attacking us...

...1947, not one of us would have complained and cast doubts—although to my mind most of the lines were not just, especially the removal of Jerusalem from the State boundaries and putting it under an international entity, which was not done anywhere else in the world...

...But they do not speak on our behalf, just as Petain did not speak in the name of the French people in its great sorrow, but rather Charles de Gaulle, although he was almost alone and ostracized...

...I know of no other people that was exiled from its land, dispersed among the nations of the world, and so hated, persecuted, expelled and slaughtered (only in your days and mine six million Jews were destroyed by the Nazis...

...But you ask me today...

...I am not ashamed of the name "Zionist," but we were promised by England (with French consent) a national, not a "Zionist" homeland...

...If only Egypt had kept its undertakings under the ceasefire agreements, and the Security Council resolutions on freedom of shipping in the Suez Canal and especially the Straits of Eilath (or Aqaba)—and the rulers of Egypt and Syria had not declared day after day that their purpose was the annihilation of Israel—it would never have occurred to us to deviate from the borders set out by the cease-fire agreements...

...This took place before Paris, London or Moscow even existed...

...Yet it did not vanish from history, did not despair nor assimilate (though many did), but yearned incessantly to return to its land, believed in its Messianic deliverance for years—and, indeed, returned in our time and renewed its independence...

...Now my dear General, I come to the amazing expressions in your speech—harsh, hurtful and insulting expressions, that are founded on incorrect or inexact information in your hands...

...As to the "elite" people you mentioned in your speech, the Jewish people was the first people in the world that recognized the one and only God, and thereby it became a peculiar people, a chosen people...

...When the partisan warfare intensified in the towns (the attacking Arabs were mostly not local residents but groups organized in the neighboring countries of Syria, Lebanon, Egypt and Iraq, and in the last few days of the British mandatory rule, by the Arab Legion as well, though it still belonged to the British Army), on all occasions the Arabs were requested by their Jewish neighbors and by the Haganah to stay put...

...Not one of us ever wished to conquer other territories...

...We regard ourselves as a people with all the rights accruing to a free and independent people, and we dare to believe that this is our due and not charity...

...I know that the government of the Fourth Republic and you, my dear General, have kept the French Embassy, like other European countries, as well as the U.S...

...We said, and I think most of us agreed: If the Arabs, like us...

...If the great powers would influence the Arab peoples to keep the peace in the Middle East—and they can do so, because the Arab nations require arms from the great powers and much time will elapse until they can produce these weapons on their own...

...But the Arab states never wished to lift a finger to help the refugees who fled to their lands when the English were still ruling Palestine...

...But for 15 years I held responsible positions in the Zionist movement and the Eretz-Israel community, and for 15 years I was Premier and Defense Minister in the State of Israel, and I know how profound is our ambition and intense our desire for peace—peace with our neighbors, and peace among the nations...

...We made superhuman efforts to integrate them and managed to do that within 10 years by organizing an austerity regime...

...After the French Revolution the Jews were accorded equal rights...

...And, in fact, that began two days after the UN Assembly decision with an attack on our commercial center in Jerusalem, and the British Army gave us nothing to defend ourselves with...

...The Jewish refugees from Arab countries lost all their belongings, which are still today in the hands of the Arabs...

...It was from the Bible that we drew the power to survive in a hostile world, and to retain our faith that we would return to our homeland and peace would reign on earth...

...We are a people like all other, with the rights and obligations pertaining to every other nation...

...I realize there are exceptions among us whose slogans and cliches are alien to the overwhelming majority of the Jewish people and its sacred tradition...

...If we could expand our borders and liberate Jerusalem in the war that the Arab peoples were launching against us, we would liberate Jerusalem and Western Galilee...

...I answered: "If you had asked me that question 25 years ago...

...Only 400,000 Arabs left...

...Many of them settled in the abandoned towns and quarters: Jaffa, Haifa, Tiberias, Beisan, Safad, and in abandoned villages...

...We would not have had to stand up to the invaders at a ratio of 40-1...

...Despite the Arab attacks that began on the morrow of the UN partition decision, when hundreds of Jews were murdered, not one Jew fled the country...

...I am fully aware that for centuries the Christian world considered that the Jewish people did not exist and I am aware that there are Jews who still think so...

...The Arabs began to leave two days after the UN partition resolution on November 29, 1947...

...they would become part of the State...

...We consider ourselves equal in everything, and duty-bound in all, no less and no more...

...We have pity for such Jews, but we are not angry at them...

...But all the meetings with ambassadors took place in Jerusalem...

...As a man who was Prime Minister during the Fifth Republic, I know that the friendly relations that obtained between our countries ever since the renaissance of Israel also held during the days of the Fifth Republic, and I did not expect a friendship more faithful or sincere than I found with you...

...Theodor Herzl, came to this great, illuminating vision through the Dreyfus Affair and the terrible revelations of anti-Semitism that ensued therefrom...

...This country was never the one and only homeland to any other people but the Jews...

...There was no one in our midst who proposed to conquer additional territories before the outbreak of war...

...Two lawyers in the provisional government claimed that the law obliged it...

...The number of Jewish refugees who were forced to leave their property and capital in Arab lands far exceeded the number of Arabs who fled...

...To President Charles de Gaulle By David Ben-Gurion In ancient times we were the first people in the world to hold to the faith of one God and we suffered thereby...

...Also present were Premier Debre and my friend, Shimon Peres...

...That is one of the great episodes of the French people that will never be forgotten...

...If our call for peace had been heeded, there would have been neither war nor dispute between us and the Arabs...

...When talking to Arab leaders as far back as 1934...

...I'll tell you...

...I claimed that no such law existed, that the American people when it declared its independence did not define its borders, and this was the main thing in my view...

...Many Arabs went to Arab countries, the wealthy to Lebanon and Syria...

...lack of humility...

...my premises were: They have vast stretches of land, of which the Land of Israel is no more than half of one per cent, while the Arab population on both sides of the Jordan comprised 1.5 per cent of the Arab peoples...

...Then you asked: "What is the relationship between the State of Israel and American Jewry...

...We believe that the Jew deserves what is the due of every man, and the Jewish people deserves what is due to every nation, small or large...

...I worked as a hired laborer 59 years ago in a place that was then empty and desolate, where with difficulty a few dozen Bedouin survived by hunting...

...After the State of Israel came into being on May 14, 1948, not one Arab was expelled and only a few left for America...

...But the Arabs announced they would fight this resolution and destroy the state we were to bring into being in three more days, and then opened war on us even before the declaration of statehood—and the UN did not protest, and did not oblige them to accept the resolution...

...The Romans accused us of being idle because we did not work one day of the week...

...Although we were forcibly separated from it by cruel foreign conquerors, we never ceased for one day during 2,000 years to pray and yearn for our return to this land...

...I have heard slanderous things against my people from a great Jew whom I value for his greatness, though I do not accept his doctrine—Karl Marx...

...Under such conditions we were not obliged to accept the UN resolution which, as it were, applied to one side...

...I would have said that the northern border is the Litani River and the eastern the Jordan—and I conducted negotiations on this with Arab leaders...

...We did not have homes for them, nor food, nor work...

...Once the Jewish State came into being, the gates were opened to Jewish immigrants...

...And I am unaware of a single protest from the United Nations, or one of its members, after the government of Jordan in 1948 conquered the Old City of Jerusalem and expelled the Jews therefrom and destroyed its synagogues and blocked our access to the holy places—all in contravention of the cease-fire agreements...

...It is clear, according to our faith, that the Almighty did not choose Israel, but Israel chose the Almighty—and that is an historic fact known to every Christian and Moslem in the world...

...I am aware that there is no other case in human history of a people returning to its land after 1.800 years...

...You wish for good and friendly relations with the Arab States...

...Even after the Sinai Campaign and the Six Day War, I can assure you that it was not because of our wish to expand Israeli territory that the two wars took place...

...The excerpts of former Premier Ben-Gurion's letter presented below are adapted from portions of the original Hebrew text published by the Israeli newspapers Ha'aretz, Ma'ariv and the English-language Jerusalem Post...

...And in no country where we lived, until the French Revolution, did we or the native people recognize that that was our own country...

...Naturally, we take pride that it was our law that said for the first time: "Love thy neighbor as thyself...

...Only in 1922 did Winston Churchill, then Colonial Secretary, remove Transjordan from the Land of Israel that was to become "A National Home" for the Jewish people...

...But the man who 70 years ago had a vision of the Jewish State and entranced most of his people with it, Dr...

...When I appeared in Jerusalem in 1936 before the Royal Commission, I said the Bible is our mandate...

...We will never forget the moral heroism of men like Colonel Picard, men of statehood and conscience like Clemenceau, Zola, Jaures and others who stubbornly and heroically fought for justice, year after year, until they won through...

...The State of Israel that came into being on May 14, 1948, bears no responsibility for the Arab mass flight, and has even taken back 40,000 refugees as part of the family reunification plan...

...Palestine included all the western part of the Land of Israel and all the east of the Jordan, for this was the Jewish Land during the time of Joshua Bin-Nun...

...that the prophets of Israel were among the first in human history to witness its coming...

...The place on which now stands the largest city in Israel, Tel Aviv, was during my first years here a wilderness of sand dunes—without a tree, without any greenery, without any living thing, although nearby ran a small river that today irrigates even the kibbutz I live in, over 30 miles south of Beersheba...

...I have always known that we must strictly observe Arab rights...

...I must beg your pardon for being so lengthy...

...we wished only for peace...

...Our ties with Jerusalem after all, preceded those of any other people in the world or any other faith or religion...

...All those called refugees left during the mandate...

...We have never had "a burning conquering ambition," but a burning faith in the vision of peace of our prophets: "Nation will not bear sword against nation, and neither shall they learn war any more" (Isaiah 2,4: Micha 4,3...

...But our forefathers who were exiled to Babylon 2,500 years ago sat beside the Rivers of Babylon and mourned the Memory of Zion (Psalms) and took an oath: "If I forget thee O Jerusalem, may my right hand forget its cunning "—and were faithful to this oath until the present day...

...The Greeks said we were "a godless people," because they did not find statues of gods in our towns...

...But by the orders of the Mufti in Egypt, almost all of them departed...

...the dream of those wishing to exploit the Eilath Straits blockade, and so forth...

...this is a unique fact, but one that operated in every generation, for there was no generation when the Jews did not try (although not all of them succeeded) to return to their homeland...

...and Russia, in Tel Aviv...

...am convinced that Israel will never break the peace...

...Dated December 6, Ben-Gurion's 7,000-word letter answered charges leveled against the Jews and Israel by the French President in the opening remarks of his controversial press conference held a week earlier...

...Peace is either two-way or fraudulent...

...During four years 700,000 Jews came here, including 500,000 from Arab countries: Iraq, Yemen, Morocco, Libya, Egypt, Tunisia, Syria and Lebanon...

...If the UN did not exist, and the Arabs could act as they please, we were free as well...

...Not by force, not only by money, and definitely not by conquest, but by pioneering creativity we converted a poor and arid land into a fertile one...

...You, my dear general, noted in your words with charm and emotion the "heartfelt wish they [the Jews] expressed for 2,000 years: 'Next year in Jerusalem.' " We never expressed this wish with "a burning and conquering ambition...

...today it has a kibbutz of 500 adults and hundreds of children, and it is one of the more magnificent farm villages in the Jordan Valley, called Kinneret...

...We accepted the borders joyfully, though mixed with sorrow...

...But those who do live in their land do not do so because they conquered, plundered, or pillaged something from others, but because we found our land when it was abandoned—not entirely empty, but desolate on the whole—and we made this wilderness flourish by the sweat of our brow, by our stubborn and pioneering labor...

...Tell me, I will not repeat it to anyone else...

...I myself worked in new Jewish villages, formerly empty wasteland...

...But our people does not consider itself superior to others...

...Arab leaders have learned to exploit the refugees as a weapon against the people of Israel...

...Before I actually discuss facts and trends, I will note something that is still not accepted because of many historic and religious reasons throughout the world?yet this consciousness has dominated all we have done and will do...

...I do not need to tell you what many Christians said of us after Christianity became the dominant faith in the Roman Empire, and the Jews refused to adhere to this religion that flourished in the Land of Israel out of the Jewish people...

...We have never harmed any Christian or Moslem places of worship in our area, and we demand no special credit for that...

...Even though the Arab rulers continue to threaten us with destruction, as beforehand, I would not advise any nation to break off ties with the Arab states...

...I do not see this in opposition to continued friendship with Israel...

...We have the records of the Peel Commission, which in 1936 wrote: "It is clear to us that by the words 'Establishment of a National Home in Palestine' His Majesty's government recognized that in the course of time a Jewish State was likely to be established, but it was not in their power to say when it would happen...

...You asked me: "What are your dreams for the real borders of Israel...

...I came here in 1906 when the country was part of the Ottoman Empire, and I never had the slightest doubt that we could settle millions of Jews on both sides of the Jordan without dislodging one Arab, because less than 10 per cent of the country was settled...

...I was opposed to this...

...We are not a "domineering" people...

...I know that my people, no less than others, is devoutly loyal to the vision of world peace...

...We built settlements, villages and towns on the abandoned areas where no living thing was to be found...

...It was out of a human obligation and a sense of honor for others' beliefs...