France's position toward the Jewish state

De Juniel and the proposal of reclamation of Euphrates
Wiseman writes in chapter thirty-fourth of his notes: "Among the most important duties of the head (himself), maintaining good relations with numerous countries in the League of Nations. France is on top of these countries. Besides France is neighbor of Britain, it is the guardian of Syria as well. In the next level there is Italy, hence, most of my time spends in Paris and Rome.
I met all prime ministers in Paris, from Poincaré to Reno and Leon Blum whom we made a great assistance to him. Since Sokolof was in charge of negotiations on the continent (Europe), Blum informed him informally about the current issues. Then Sokolof’s activities rose through one of the leaders of the Zionist organization of France. Monsieur Aristide Brian showed us sympathy, but his position was unclear for us, and he said: Palestine will turn into a terrible state soon. He was in a great ecstasy of that orange every year we gave him on the occasion of Christmas gift, which he had never had an orange like it in his life. Brian was a good-hearted man, and he had liberal tendencies. He was attracted to the Zionist movement, but his practical sympathy did not exceed over than the skin of an orange that was in front of him. He was incapable of understanding the capabilities of our movement in inside. Most of French men of Dorsa House did not matter to these moves, whether they opposed with us in depths of their hearts or maybe because of being jealous, because they saw our work in Palestine of this view. I said before that French people considered Palestinian as the greater southern part of the region - as the Arabs did, so when Palestine became in mandate of the Great Britain, they were upset. French people always considered themselves as the Europe’s face in the East Mediterranean and supportive of Christians in this direction. In Palestine the English language was almost unknown even after the Allenby language developed, and it is often forgotten that we were the ones who raised this language in Great Britain with the Balfour Declaration. French looked at our movement in sight of a Catholic one, and all these matters in Palestine were considered as an affront to their traditions.
I believe that among French men the one who draws the most attention is monsieur De Juniel. He was counterpart of Field Marshal Plummer in Palestine and former editor of important and influential press of Almatan in Paris. He was hostile with any idea of Zionism and everything related to it, in a way that we could not achieve their newspaper even in one line to introduce our point of view. When I met him he was not reluctant to uncover his thoughts. The story of my meeting with him in Beirut is that a French friend of mine introduced me to De Juniel. He decided to use this opportunity to settle his account with us. I gave him a chance to reveal whatever he wants. Then I said: you cannot speak about Zionism and Palestine unless you have already read the first one and meet the second one which is located at the borders. If you do that your opinion will certainly change.
He agreed and made a two-day visit to Palestine. He was the guest of the High Commissioner for two days, and I met him for the second time. There were many differences between him and Plummer. French De Juniel was brave and dandy, and the English aristocrats Plummer was serious in Victorian style. Juniel visited Palestinian and then for the third time I met him, and I realized that he has changed his idea. His situation reminded me of Felix Warburg. He had been in such a change as well.
After Juvenile changed his thoughts, he did not stop his previous criticism, but he also blamed the Zionists that why did not they act in Syria as they were doing in Palestine.
I was shocked by his offer and told him that Palestine is a great chance for us because we work there under the tutelage’s situations, and we do not need to move to Syria in where we have no place there. Moreover, the Arabs look at us as foreigners who have went there uninvited, or they consider us as an expansion seeking wave that will catch the entire Middle East, but juniel insisted and said that the Jews are the only ones that could build Syria.
Then he added: Of course, I do not mean that you work in southern Syria, because once you get to Tyre and Sidon, you will want to modify the borders, but I have a great plan that consists of the building of the Euphrates. Yes, here is hundreds far away from Palestine. Then, he took out a map immediately and showed me how Euphrates passes from the vast regions and sparsely populated desert.
Then he said with excitement: here we can water thousands of miles square, and we can put a mass nation on this area. He spoke in such fields as far as saying that: French aviators who have flown over the Euphrates, have seen footprint of the old channels through which water flew to Tadmor, which was once a brilliant civilization. He then said: the same thing that was done in the old days can be done at the present time. He continued to talk with special eloquence and rhetoric of the French in explanation of this development and construction, but I replied all his statements in this sentence: Ambassador! You know that for us the question of Palestine’s waters is important, and we must rely on the waters of the Jordan. The plans that you speak of is amazing, but we cannot accept them because it is deceptive.
He went the other way and tried to convince me historically, so he said: Doctor Wiseman! This is mentioned in the journey of Nehemiah that the Jews built Tadmor.
During another visit with Juniel in Paris, he raised the issue again and tried to convince Léon Blum that his opinion is correct, but all these talks were in the lowest importance and value of national aspect in our opinion”.
Wiseman immediately starts to talk about another point and continues his speech:
"Strange incident has remained in my mind that is concerned with my visit to France and the attempts to garner public opinion on our side. The event took place in 1933 C., when Hitler began his invasion and groups of (Jewish) began their movement toward Palestine. On this date, I received a telegram from Miss Louise Weiss, the famous French journalist, who had invited me to speak about Zionism and Palestine at the Sorbonne. She had stressed that this speech will be under extensive control of a high political authority, and a great crowd will be present to hear it. I doubt it for one reason, and that was this point: it was impossible for me not to talk about the situation in Germany in my speech and perhaps my emotions and feelings would have overcome me. It was during the time in which many of our people were taken hostage by Hitler, so I was afraid that my speech would increase the persecution on my people and then I would have committed a crime. On the other hand, I saw that it is a precious opportunity for the general public to know the truth. I thought about it more and I consulted with my friends and I finally accepted the invitation.
Attendees of the lecture were chaired as it was described by Miss Weiss, and Monsieur Martin, former finance minister, was in charge of heading the meeting. I was told that the audience includes characters from the Embassy of Great Britain, friends of Kai Dorsa, representatives of the Rothschild family, the son of Captain Dreyfus, the chief of rabbis of France and others.
I tried to speak about the situation in Germany and the responsibility of the civilized world for the victims of the politics of this country in a calm tone. I spoke about the found refuge in Palestine. Of course Palestine was more than just a shelter, because for young people it was like that they have come to their homeland. German Jewish children were so intermingled with Jewish Palestinian children that it was difficult to distinguish them from each other. Then i talked about Palestine and said that the land despite being small has great facilities that can provide our need.
It was clear that the audience was listening to me perfectly. I was surprised at the end of speech because I heard the chairman of the meeting said that the speech should be repeated the next day in the same place because certainly a group of people will want to re-hear this speech, and we must give an opportunity to those who did not enter in the first night because of being crowded. Boss stated that he is certain that monsieur Herio will be happy to take the responsibility of being President of this community. I had no choice but to accept it. Hence once again I gave this speech. This time, the crowd was more than the previous night, but Herio that should have chaired the meeting, was not present, so Miss Weiss started it. In the middle of my speech, Herio suddenly arrived and I did not show even a little concern about me, because I stopped when he came in, and perhaps he did not see me. He went to the podium and cried for twenty minutes about things that had nothing to do with Zionism and Palestine and the Jews. During this time, he spoke of the glories of France and its brilliant civilization but his talks did not exceed the limit of some brief remarks in this area. As he started his speech abruptly, he ended it in the same way. The audience was surprised by this farce act. Then, Miss Weiss took the podium and calmly asked me to continue my speech. Since then, I have never met Herio and I am confident that he knows nothing about the nature of the meeting.