By Gerard Leval
Emmanuel Macron, the young and brainy president of France, has taken Israel to task for continuing the war in Gaza. He has sanctimoniously called on Israel to stop fighting the Hamas terrorists who have been waging war against Israel since the terrorist group took over Gaza in a coup in 2006.
Ever since that coup, Hamas has made no secret that its highest priority is not the good and welfare of the citizens over which it rules, but rather the destruction of the Jewish state of Israel.
Most recently, it authorized and directed the brutal slaughter of 1,200 Israeli civilians.
Nonetheless, Macron has called Israel’s actions in waging war against Hamas to be “scandalous” and he has repeatedly proposed to recognize a Palestinian state — an astounding recompense for Hamas’ violence.
For an intelligent and purportedly astute individual, President Macron seems shockingly ignorant of history and, interestingly, of his own French history. I am not so ignorant.
Let me remind President Macron that for three quarters of a century France and Germany were at each other’s throats.
My family’s history serves as a reminder. My great-grandmother, who was born and lived in Strasbourg in eastern France, came under German attacks three times during her long life and was forced into exile each time.
This was not an accident; it was the product of the intent of Germany to conquer and control France.
In 1870, the Prussian chancellor, Otto von Bismarck, provoked the French emperor, Napoleon III, into declaring war on Prussia.
The war was a disaster for France, with the emperor taken prisoner, and France forced to surrender, relinquish its two eastern provinces and pay the Prussians a huge indemnity.
Just 44 years after this first conquest of France, Germany found another excuse in a dispute in the faraway Balkans to attempt to finish the work it had begun in 1870, namely definitively defeating France. In August 1914, German armies swept across northeastern France in a second attempt to suppress France.
For four bloody years, France and Germany threw everything they had at each other.
Nearly one and one-half million French soldiers lost their lives in the trenches and battles of World War I. The war ended with an armistice, which was followed by a treaty that reversed the effects of the 1870 war, but assuredly did not resolve the underlying hatred between the two nations.
In the years following the end of World War I, anger against France continued to fester within the German nation. Within less than two decades after the end of the war, German armies yet again marched into France. This time they completely overwhelmed the French army and eventually occupied all of France.
It took four years for Germany to be defeated, but fortunately this time the defeat was total, with Germany surrendering unconditionally. The German military machine was completely dismantled, and German militarism was unqualifiedly discredited.
Obviously, France didn’t do it alone. American, British and Canadian forces fought the Germans on the western front, and Russian forces did so on the eastern front. Together they inflicted massive destruction, including on the German civilian population, so as to extirpate the hatred that had existed since the 19th century.
German militarism was torn out by the root in order to eliminate the profound nationalistic forces that had infected Germany. It is that action that made possible the longest period of peace in Western Europe in recorded history.
This recent history should serve as a powerful lesson to current European political leaders and, especially, to the French president.
In order to end an age-old and festering conflict, one of the parties has to unambiguously prevail and end the aspirations of the conquering neighbor. However, today’s European leaders fail to recognize this, as most recently demonstrated by Emmanuel Macron himself.
The conflict in the Middle East is one more of those relentless conflicts, in this case where Islamists have been attempting to destroy the Jewish presence in the area through violence for over 100 years.
It has attracted a great deal of attention in Europe. But frequently that attention is precisely of the wrong kind. Among those who have bestowed some of the most inappropriate attention to this conflict is the French leader.
At a time when the Israelis must do precisely to the Hamas enemy what the Allies accomplished with their destruction of the German military machine, Emmanuel Macron has seen fit to insist that Israel stop its efforts.
Where Israel seeks to dismantle Hamas’ infrastructure, Macron urges restraint. When Israel stops the inflow of supplies which Hamas openly seizes for its military purposes, Macron calls for an end to the blockade.
When Israel seeks to retrieve its citizens who are being held hostage, Macron doesn’t seem concerned about the fate of the hostages.
Yet, if anyone should appreciate the importance of inflicting total defeat on a generational enemy, it is France’s president. Without the complete annihilation of the German military machine in 1945, France would undoubtedly still be engaged in a protracted struggle with Germany for control of the European continent.
Ultimately, only full victory followed by unconditional surrender could bring about an end to a nearly 100-year conflict.
Those who would try to tie Israel’s hands, whether by withholding assistance, by endlessly urging a cease-fire, by falsely accusing Israel of crimes or by promoting the prosecution of Israeli leaders by reason of their war against Hamas, are not promoting peace.
Rather, they are prolonging an already much too long conflict. They are preventing the ultimate means of ending this generation’s hundred-year war, the war against the Jews of Israel.
Mr. Macron should carefully reread French history before trying to teach lessons to Israel.
Gerard Leval is a partner in the Washington, D.C., office of a national law firm.
