When Israel and France Broke Up
When Israel launched a pre-emptive strike on June 5, France condemned it — even as Israel’s nearly immediate aerial victory was won largely with French-made aircraft.
A few months later de Gaulle bluntly told reporters that France had “freed itself … from the very special and very close ties” with Israel, nastily adding that Jews were “an elite people, sure of itself, and dominating.”
This was not a sentimental stance: de Gaulle had made a strategic decision to bolster France’s stature in the vast Arab world, which in 1967 meant largely abandoning Israel. France proceeded to make the arms embargo on Israel permanent, sought oil deals with the Arab states and adopted increasingly anti-Israel rhetoric.