Michel Yakovleff, Lieutenant General. By Pug – Jewish Tribune

Tonight, I must finally face something that I don’t want to face. I have to talk about a subject that just starting to think about hurts me, really hurts. I wish I never had to face this but denial, over several years already, can get me nowhere. So, I might as well talk about it, as simply and candidly as possible, because I don’t know what else to do.Â

To set the context, I must talk in a little more detail about my past and my year of national service. After a Higher Military Preparation (PMS) in July 1999 at the Air Force Reserve Officers School “Commander Max Guedj” in Evreux, I was admitted as a Reserve Officer Student (EOR) in June 2000. It was the very last promotion of EORs in the Air Force. At the end of the Flag Presentation ceremony, we stayed in place for a second ceremony. The flag of EORAA 00.306 “Commander Max Guedj” was ceremoniously rolled up and handed over to Air Brigade General Sylvestre de Sacy who at the time commanded the SHAA, Historical Service of the Army of the air.Â

Having become an Midshipman, because I am bilingual in English, I was then assigned as Aide-de-Camp to the Corps General who commanded the Joint Operational Planning Staff, on BA 110 in Creil. My general not having yet arrived, during my first week in Creil, I was placed in the NATO service of EMIAPO. From the first day, when I went to the Mess for lunch, a very friendly senior officer, with a very friendly and open look, very encouraging and eager to help me find my place, took me, as it were, under his wing. He was a Lieutenant-Colonel of Cavalry, tall, lean, impeccable in every detail of his uniform, with a lot of humor and a natural authority which impressed as much on me as on his colleagues. During the trip on foot to the Mess, this Lieutenant-Colonel told me that he had done his military service as an Midshipman, like me, and had then taken the Saint-Cyr competitive examination to become a career officer. He encouraged me not to let myself be walked on because of my membership in the contingent and offered me his support in times of need.Â

He was brilliant, of rare intelligence, of marvelous elocution, knowing how to handle humor, as well as the verb, as well as historical erudition with rare efficiency. While being a very approachable man, very friendly, very encouraging. The kind of officer who pulls you up through his example and encouragement. He spoke English better than me and, in France, that is rare. His mother was New Zealand. One of his brothers was an officer in the New Zealand army. Passionate about history, he was able to apply history to what he analyzed and saw in his job as a planning officer and he shared it widely. He greatly encouraged me to study history, and listening to him, the story was absolutely fascinating and eye-opening. As aide-de-camp to a general, I made several trips abroad in which this Lieutenant-Colonel, then Colonel, took part. In Germany, in Belgium, in Holland, in Italy, with NATO, in Tunisia, in Qatar and in particular in Kosovo where I noticed that he liked to go and speak with ordinary soldiers to get the temperature on the ground. The icing on the cake, for me, he was Protestant, a Bible reader.

He ended up organizing a “Staff Ride”, that is to say a Staff exercise where a Staff will study a battle to learn lessons from it. He chose the Normandy landings and chose me as his organizational assistant. Thanks to him, I accompanied EMIAPO to the beaches of Normandy and several officers, including himself, competed in intelligence to analyze how the Normandy landings were planned and executed. After the end of my military service, a sign of the esteem he had for me, when I was only a young cadet in the somewhat clumsy and awkward contingent, I was invited to his taking command, when he became commander of the 1st Foreign Cavalry Regiment, then in Orange.

I had, and still have, a deep respect, a profound admiration and a certain affection for one of the most brilliant, the most sympathetic, the most humane, the most exemplary men and officers that I have ever known. I stayed in touch with him for a few years, before we lost touch. He was always amazed at the impact he had on me and thanked me warmly for my respect towards him. He subsequently became a general officer and ended his career as Lieutenant General, Vice Chief of Staff of SHAPE, NATO’s major command in Europe.

C’est le Général de Corps d’Armée Michel Yakovleff. 

He has, unfortunately, become famous in the media for his fierce opposition to Israel. With, I am forced to recognize, words, facial expressions, intonations which reveal a deep contempt for not only Israeli methods but also the legitimacy of Israel.

And I don’t understand. Literally. I don’t understand the logical sequence, the reasoned structure which makes him take these positions, these intonations, and which makes him display so much fundamental contempt for Israel.

I can’t bring myself to easily call him anti-Semitic. He knows too much history, he has too much intellectual capacity, he is too human, he is too brilliant, he is too admirable in every way for me to simply call him an anti-Semite. Or else, I have to come to terms with the idea that no form of human quality, no form of intelligence, no form of scholarship and very high level analytical skills protects humans against this moral and intellectual cancer of anti-Semitism. And in the case of “my” General Yakovleff, I cannot do it. All I can say is that I don’t understand. I don’t know how he arrives at this vehement attitude and these convictions of disgust (those are his words) towards Israel. I tried, a few years ago, to reconnect with him, before seeing him show so much contempt (I find it hard to say hatred!) for Israel. Without success.Â

My heart is truly sad and there are tears in my eyes as I write this text. Along with my father and my brothers, General Yakovleff is certainly the man I have most admired in my life. My colleagues at work even pointed out to me that when we walk the hundred meters towards the company restaurant, I walk with my hands clasped behind my back, a “tic” that I picked up when I walked alongside General Yakovleff who walked like that in Creil.

I was 24 when I met him. I am now 50. I am probably at the age where we realize that the models we may have had when we were developing ourselves as a man are fallible, have limits, make mistakes, sometimes even very serious ones. And in the process of building a man, we must reach this stage and pass this test of freeing ourselves from examples that we thought were sure, firm, unshakeable. You must accept and accept that your much-admired father is only a man, that your much-loved brothers are only men, that a military mentor is only a man with their faults, their failures, their inconsistencies, their faults. All, without exception.

I was warned, however: “for all have sinned and come short of the glory of God,” says Paul in the Epistle to the Romans. And for several years, I have been proclaiming that the legal equality of Western societies is inspired by this principle that humans are all at the same lamentable level in the face of God.

But I certainly also had to understand, as directly as possible, the first of the 613 mitzvot and the first of what we call the Ten Commandments: “You shall have no other gods before me”. I admit this evening, I had preserved, somewhere in my skull, a pedestal on which I had placed General Yakovleff. I never believed or thought that idolatry could take this form. But what we put on a pedestal is necessarily an idol.

Without hatred, without vehemence and without withdrawing anything from the gratitude, respect and esteem that I had, in the past, for the man and the officer, this pedestal is now destroyed and the idol is face down on the ground. Â Â

It had to be said and written. It’s painful. But it’s done.

© Pug

Nations for Israel

Nicknamed Pug, Timothée Larribau co-founded “Nations for Israel” in 2014, an initiative of non-Jews to defend Israel against anti-Zionist hatred and participate in the fight against anti-Semitism. He publishes numerous articles on the internet and sometimes speaks in conferences or in the media to defend Israel and the Jewish people.

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About Nations for Israel

Created in July 2014 during the anti-Semitic media offensive against Israel on the occasion of Operation Protective Edge, our page was called “Those Goys Who Defend Israel,” whose name we still assume. Since then, we have been trying to awaken the Goys, that is to say the “Nations”, as Judaism calls the other peoples of the world, from the anti-Semitic cancer which has led to so much hatred and devastation in history, through a simple and open study of the facts, both historical and current, on the legitimacy of Israel in the conflict which pits the Jewish State against Arab nationalism inherited from the fascist theories of the 1920s and supported by Nazism then Communism against truth, democracy and freedom. Boys, nations of the world who support Israel, join us and show that we are capable of more love towards the Jews than we have been capable of hatred!