France: Compliment

Cows don't sing, whales don't fly, and Charles de Gaulle doesn't take back anything he's said in all his 77 years. Except this time, maybe. Evidently alarmed by the angry charges of anti-Semitism that followed his attack on Israel at last month's press conference, De Gaulle wrote a three-page justification of his remarks to former Israeli Premier David Ben-Gurion. He had really meant it as a compliment, said le grand Charles, when he described the Jews as "an elite, sure of themselves and domineering." De Gaulle likes people who fit that description.

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