Skip To Content
JEWISH. INDEPENDENT. NONPROFIT.
Back to Opinion

This Relationship Can Be Saved

Daniel Shek, a career diplomat who is the Israeli ambassador to France, stood before a highbrow audience assembled in New York’s elegant French Consulate on October 28 and diagnosed the complicated relationship that now defines his professional life. We don’t need historians or political scientists to describe the dynamic between Israel and Europe, he said. “This relationship goes way beyond rational analysis,” he offered. “We need a psychiatrist.”

And with that, the audience, surprisingly, laughed.

Given Europe’s problematic past with its Jews, and more recent, heated disputes over politics, human rights and security in the volatile Middle East, the humorous observation and the gentle laughter that greeted it was sign enough of a warming trend. So was the very fact that the consuls general of both nations hosted this event. Technically, it was in honor of Israel’s 60th birthday, and France’s presidency of the European Union. But you could tell that it was really to show how these sometime-adversaries are making nice.

As moderator of the discussion between the erudite Shek and his equally accomplished counterpart from the French Foreign Ministry, Pierre Levy, I was struck by the extent to which political and diplomatic disagreements no longer drive the entire narrative. They still exist, to be sure, but trade, tourism and a growing cultural exchange are breaking down the historic antipathies.

In America, we are often told that the French are no friends of Israel, and that antisemitism is rampant. But such generalizations mask a more complicated reality. Shek described reading about the six current films recommended by Paris’s top critics and discovering that half were Israeli. It may be that political opinion lags behind popular tastes, and that Americans, too, need to rethink their relationships.

Republish This Story

Please read before republishing

We’re happy to make this story available to republish for free, unless it originated with JTA, Haaretz or another publication (as indicated on the article) and as long as you follow our guidelines. You must credit the Forward, retain our pixel and preserve our canonical link in Google search.  See our full guidelines for more information, and this guide for detail about canonical URLs.

To republish, copy the HTML by clicking on the yellow button to the right; it includes our tracking pixel, all paragraph styles and hyperlinks, the author byline and credit to the Forward. It does not include images; to avoid copyright violations, you must add them manually, following our guidelines. Please email us at [email protected], subject line “republish,” with any questions or to let us know what stories you’re picking up.

We don't support Internet Explorer

Please use Chrome, Safari, Firefox, or Edge to view this site.