Yael German, Ambassador of Israel: “I like the ideals carried by the French Revolution”


While some presidential candidates are taking part in the Crif (Representative Council of Jewish Institutions in France) dinner this Thursday, Israel’s new ambassador to Paris is giving us her first interview on relations with France, anti-Semitism, the difficulties of the government coalition…

For the past two weeks, its windows have overlooked one of the most beautiful avenues in Paris where the Gestapo once had its headquarters. But at 74 it is not the past that worries Yael German, recently appointed ambassador to France by Yaïr Lapid, Minister of Foreign Affairs and key man in the coalition in power since June in Israel. A claimed feminist, who became an activist as life shook her in a country constantly at war, she is a fighter with easy familiarity, recovered from cancer and a stroke, four times vaccinated against Covid who receives us .

Paris Match. Your Excellency, you are arriving in France, where no one knows you. Who are you ?
Yael German. I am a sabra, born in Israel, in Haifa, to a Hungarian father and a Polish mother, both immigrants in the early 1930s. At 20, after a degree in history and a master’s degree in political science, I got married and at 21 I was a mother… It was twenty years later, on the death of my eldest son, who was accidentally killed during military training, that I decided to enlist. My first fight, I led it with the army, and not against it, to spare others our tragedy. Then I entered politics, joining the liberal party of Professor Amnon Rubinstein. The first time I ran in an internal election, I had a rich and famous man against me. I had to convince myself that I was no less than him to win. Five years later, when I ran for mayor of Herzliya, a coastal city north of Tel Aviv, seven men coveted the post. My candidacy made them smile: no woman had conquered a municipality in Israel since 1956… The first polls credited me with 2%, and we won 67% of the votes in the second round. I remained mayor of Herzliya for fourteen years, until 2012, when Yaïr Lapid approached me to join his movement, Yesh Atid. In the following legislative elections, we won 19 seats in Parliament, enough for us to be asked to enter government. Three weeks later, I was Minister of Health. I was knowledgeable in many fields, those of education, labor and social affairs, but not in this one. With a committee of experts, for a year, we inventoried the problems of our health system. As this work began to bear fruit, Benyamin Netanyahu, the Prime Minister, pulled us out of the coalition. Joining the opposition was the most frustrating experience of my life. The laws I proposed were systematically refused, because the political fight prevailed over reason.

Some members of the French Jewish community complain that you don’t speak French well enough. How do you answer them?
They are right, it is very important, moreover I take lessons every day. In the meantime, I’m trying very hard to speak it. It’s not easy and I still make a lot of mistakes. But the important thing is to be understood, and I have this desire.

It was after discovering “Le Père Goriot” by Balzac that I made a promise to my father never to place him in a retirement home.

What do you know of France?
I like the ideals carried by the French Revolution. Its motto, liberty, equality, fraternity, resonates in me: all the great battles that I led were in the name of these three fundamental principles. My favorite composer is Camille Saint-Saëns, and he’s French! I have read your authors, Victor Hugo in particular. It was after discovering “Le Père Goriot” by Balzac that I made a promise to my father never to place him in a retirement home. When he turned 85, I said to him, “Dad, now is the time for you to come to my house.” And that’s where he died ten years later, surrounded by my family, by life, when otherwise he probably wouldn’t have lasted six months.

Through the debates of the French presidential campaign, don’t you have the feeling of arriving in a country that is being extremized?
Let me judge…

Do you consider anti-Semitism a French scourge?
The murders of Ilan Halimi, Sarah Halimi, the Hyper Cacher and Bataclan attacks, the attack on the Jewish school Ozar-Atorah in Toulouse, all of this is indeed a lot. It is alarming to see such horrors occur in such a developed country. What concerns me is this indiscriminate confusion between anti-Semitism and anti-Zionism. Today, people who don’t like Jews don’t like Israel and those who don’t like Israel don’t like Jews.

Where are the Franco-Israeli relations, broken for four months following the Pegasus scandal, the name of this spyware marketed by a private Israeli company and traces of which were found by our intelligence services in the laptops of officials? French ?
I think I can say that since the meeting in Paris last November between Yaïr Lapid, our Minister for Foreign Affairs, and President Emmanuel Macron, the crisis is behind us.

And where is the investigation promised by the Israeli government?
This file is in the hands of our Ministry of Defense, not that of Foreign Affairs. We await the results.

We must welcome the fact that, for the first time, Arabs sit in an Israeli government

Yaïr Lapid, to whom you are close, is in favor of a two-state solution in Israel. Are you too?
Sure. But Yaïr and I know that the conditions are not yet in place to get there in the short term. The government is holding on to foundations that remain fragile and it will not tackle all the issues. However, I would like to remind you that, even if the international community may not have understood its full importance, its implementation is a small revolution for our country. To achieve this, for Israel to remain a strong democracy, we had to fight, take to the streets and build this almost impossible alliance between left, right and an Arab party. But we succeeded.

Can this coalition that bridges conservative Arabs and religious Jewish ultranationalists have a common vision?
Cemented by this democratic ideal alone, it is fragile, and certain sensitive or disagreement subjects cannot be tackled for the moment. However, we must welcome the fact that, for the first time, Arabs are sitting in an Israeli government. This had never happened, even in the time of Yitzhak Rabin, the most illustrious of our democrats!

Golan, E1, Azarot, Givat HaMatos and, more recently, this Palestinian family violently expelled from Sheikh Jarrah, in East Jerusalem… In these Palestinian territories, the government is relaunching colonization which was thought to be the prerogative of Netanyahu. What do you think ?
I believe that we will eventually find a solution to this problem, but I am not sure that the Palestinian politicians, disunited and who feed on the conflict, are ready for it. In 2000, 2001 and 2009, in the time of Olmert, despite our military superiority, they were offered almost everything, up to 97% of the territories, and they never seized the outstretched hands. When Israel withdrew from the Gaza Strip in 2005, we left our homes there, our infrastructure, and what did they do? They burned our flag and instead of investing in life they invested in missiles and tunnels to attack us.

I believe the time for the two state solution will come because there is no choice but to live together

Isn’t freezing colonization the prerequisite for achieving a two-state solution?
I believe that time will come because there is no choice but to live together. But it’s too early. This does not mean that we are not making progress. Look at the Abraham Accords, these peace treaties between Israel, the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain… Naftali Bennett, our Prime Minister, is coming back, who would have imagined it? Nor is there any mention of the recent agreement between Jordan and Israel, supported by the United Arab Emirates: soon the Jordanians will produce solar energy for Israel, and in return we will deliver desalinated water to them. More than 50 billion shekels, the largest sum ever dedicated to helping Israeli Arab society develop, has been released. And when Yair Lapid talks about economic peace in Gaza, he is also talking about that. These are small steps, but these small steps lead us on the path at the end of which we will find peace.

You criticized in a column the report of the NGO Amnesty International which accuses Israel of practicing a policy of apartheid towards the Palestinians.
Unlike Germany, England and the United States who denounced it, I am disappointed that France has still not taken a position. Because not only is this report full of prejudices, but above all it denies the right of the Jewish people to have a state, which strikes me deeply. Israel was born out of the absolute necessity for Jews to have a refuge to ensure that the Holocaust could never be repeated, which is not incompatible with being a secular democracy.

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