Where is World Jewry?
I don't know how many of my readers came of age in the 1960's and 1970's. I spent most of the 1970's - particularly my four years at Bir Zeit on the Hudson in the latter part of the decade - attending demonstrations like the one pictured above (which is from the 1960's). I had a yarmulka that said "I am my brother's keepah." I wore a rusting silver bracelet of sorts (which quickly turned green) with the name of Anatoly (now Natan) Sharansky or Yosef Mendelevich on it. And I learned brilliant chants like these:
"Who do we want?"
"Kosygin" (Alexi Kosygin - then the Russian Prime Minister).
"How do we want him?"
"Dead."
And "2, 4, 6, 8, Israel is a Jewish state. 3, 5, 7, 9, there's no such thing as Palestine."
Evelyn Gordon wonders why this generation isn't reacting today like my (and I think her) generation reacted to the peril of Soviet Jewry. Why World Jewry isn't marching like the people in the picture above (and in the Rabbis' protest in front of the White House in 1943) did. Where is everyone?
But as Prof. Shlomo Avineri pointed out this month, even more troubling is the silence of world Jewry on this issue – a stark contrast to its activism over, say, Soviet Jews.
“Through demonstrations outside Soviet embassies, embarrassing questions about freedom of emigration at all news conferences of Soviet leaders in the West, and in dozens of other ways,” Avineri noted, Jewish activists turned the Soviets’ refusal to let Jews emigrate into a burden on the regime. But they haven’t done the same with Iran, even though there’s “no reason why demonstrations should not be held outside Iranian embassies in any place in the world, why Iranian ambassadors should not be accompanied at every appearance or trip by demonstrators carrying placards with ‘Holocaust deniers – out!’”
Partly, this may be due to a widespread sentiment that words matter less than deeds – which explains why Jewish groups have been active in trying to persuade Western governments to take stronger steps against Iran’s nuclear program. Yet ignoring Ahmadinejad’s calls for genocide is a grave mistake, for two reasons.
First, history amply proves that when tyrants declare their intention to slaughter the Jews, they often mean exactly what they say. Hitler, who made his intentions crystal clear in Mein Kampf 14 years before World War II began, is only the most famous example. Nor is this unique to Jews: Most genocides begin with incitement; that’s precisely why incitement to genocide is a prosecutable international crime that has already produced several convictions, especially in connection with the 1994 Rwanda genocide.
But beyond that, Jews worldwide should be concerned with the desensitization effect: By consistently advocating genocide without eliciting any serious condemnatory response, Ahmadinejad is gradually turning “kill the Jews” into acceptable public discourse.
Read it all. And then ask yourself what you've done this week, this month or this year to save the Jewish people.
By the way, the pictures (and I have a couple more downloaded) come from the Jacob Birnbaum Foundation. Jacob Birnbaum was the founder of the Student Struggle for Soviet Jewry, which was one of the leading protest groups on behalf of Soviet Jewry in the US. (I would have got that trivia question wrong - I thought it was Glenn Richter). You can find these pictures and more
here.
Labels: Adolph Hitler, Iranian nuclear threat, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, Mein Kampf, Soviet Jewry
WaPo leaves out Kissinger's gas chambers comment
Remember
Henry Kissinger's comments about US ambivalence about Russian Jews being thrown in the gas chambers (God forbid)? Well, look how the Washington Post
reported the story.
But the newspaper did not report that the tapes also featured Secretary of State Henry Kissinger telling Nixon, after a March 1, 1973 meeting with Meir, that “the emigration of Jews from the Soviet Union is not an objective of American foreign policy.” Meir had pleaded for Washington to pressure Moscow to let Jews emigrate. “And if they put Jews into gas chambers in the Soviet Union,” Kissinger continued, “it is not an American concern. Maybe a humanitarian concern.”
“I know,” Nixon responded. “We can’t blow up the world because of it.” Earlier, The New York Times (“In Tapes, Nixon Rails About Jews and Blacks ”, December 10) had found Kissinger’s comment newsworthy.
Kissinger is Jewish and he escaped as a child with his family from Germany in the 1930s. The Post, like The Times, reported Nixon’s derogatory comments about Irish, Italians and blacks as well as Jews. But not the startling Kissinger-Nixon exchange about hypothetical Jewish genocide in the Soviet Union.
Payback for being the Washington Post's source about Nixon and Kissinger praying together during the final days of Nixon's Presidency? Perhaps.
Labels: anti-Semitism, Henry Kissinger, Richard Nixon, Soviet Jewry, Yom Kippur War
Unforgiveable
Henry Kissinger has an
explanation - but no apologies - for his words about sending Russian Jews to the gas chambers.
“The quotations ascribed to me in the transcript of the conversation with President Nixon must be viewed in the context of the time,” Kissinger wrote to JTA.
He and Nixon pursued the issue of Soviet Jewish emigration as a humanitarian matter separate from foreign policy issues in order to avoid questions of sovereignty and because normal diplomatic channels were closed, Kissinger wrote.
“By this method and the persistent private representation at the highest level we managed to raise emigration from 700 per year to close to 40,000 in 1972,” Kissinger wrote. “We disagreed with the Jackson Amendment, which made Jewish emigration a foreign policy issue. We feared that the Amendment would reduce emigration, which is exactly what happened. Jewish emigration never reached the level of 40,000 again until the Soviet Union collapsed. The conversation between Nixon and me must be seen in the context of that dispute and of our distinction between a foreign policy and a humanitarian approach.”
With the benefit of nearly 40 years of hindsight, was Kissinger right?
In fact, emigration from the Soviet Union was about 32,000 in 1972, when what became known as the Jackson-Vanik Amendment -- named for Jackson and Rep. Charlie Vanik (D-Ohio) -- was introduced, and rose to 35,000 in 1973 and then dropped to 20,000 in 1974. Those were all years that the amendment was being debated in Congress, and a sign, veterans of Soviet Jewry activism say, that the mere threat of the amendment helped spur emigration.
It is true that the amendment's passage in 1974 at first inhibited emigration, but it spiked again in 1979 to 51,000 as the Soviets sought to bargain for its repeal. In the dying years of the Soviet Union, from 1989 to 1991, the Gorbachev government released upward of 450,000 Jews.
More broadly, Jackson-Vanik formed the basis for the late-20th century politics of making human rights a sine qua non of statecraft. That resulted not only in the mass emigration of Soviet Jews 15 years after its passage, but also in contemporary efforts to end internal massacres in countries such as Sudan.
Kissinger, however, was dedicated to realpolitik -- the art of securing the grand deal, even at the expense of the moral and ethical considerations of the moment -- and his disdain for human rights activists knew few bounds.
Gal Beckerman, a historian of the Soviet Jewry movement, told Tablet on Tuesday that this even led Kissinger to suppress a letter that might have helped salvage a deal with the Soviets to release Jews under the Jackson-Vanik stipulations.
Similar considerations led Kissinger to press Nixon during the 1973 Yom Kippur War to delay delivering arms to Israel by a few weeks. Their conversations at the time show Kissinger arguing that Anwar Sadat, Egypt’s president, needed an unadulterated victory to make peace concessions. Nixon argued -- correctly, as it turned out -- that Sadat was already able to claim a victory, and that it was more important to stanch an ally’s casualties in a war that would claim 3,000 Israeli lives.
Read the whole thing. I'm not persuaded by the defenses of Kissinger. What he said is beyond the pale.
Labels: Henry Kissinger, Richard Nixon, Soviet Jewry
Guess who distinguished between Jews and Zionists
As a teenager, I can recall vividly how hurt I was by the way Richard Nixon talked about Jews in the transcripts from his White House taping system. I had argued with my parents in the summer of 1972 that a vote for George McGovern was a vote to sell Israel down the creek, and therefore I argued that they (I couldn't vote yet) should vote for Nixon. My parents - both lifelong Democrats - hated "Tricky Dicky" and could not bring themselves to vote for him no matter who ran against him. In fact, when the Watergate scandal broke, my parents put a bumper sticker on our car saying "I'm from Massachusetts, don't blame me." (The only states Nixon did not carry in the 1972 elections were Massachusetts and the District of Columbia).
Nixon's anti-Semitic remarks never made sense to me in light of the unquestioned fact that he (a little later than we would have liked but at least he eventually did) initiated an airlift to Israel during the Yom Kippur War that arguably saved the Jewish state from annihilation. Now, an important new transcript from Nixon's White House taping system has been released, and it helps explain why that airlift took place:
Nixon hated Jews but loved Zionists.
While previous recordings have detailed Nixon’s animosity toward Jews, including those who served in his administration like Henry A. Kissinger, his national security adviser, these tapes suggest an added layer of complexity to Nixon’s feeling. He and his aides seem to make a distinction between Israeli Jews, whom Nixon admired, and American Jews.
In a conversation Feb. 13, 1973, with Charles W. Colson, a senior adviser who had just told Nixon that he had always had “a little prejudice,” Nixon said he was not prejudiced but continued: “I’ve just recognized that, you know, all people have certain traits.”
“The Jews have certain traits,” he said.
...
A moment later, Nixon returned to Jews: “The Jews are just a very aggressive and abrasive and obnoxious personality.”
...
These tapes, made in February and March 1973, reflect a critical period in Nixon’s presidency — the final months before it was “devoured by Watergate,” said Timothy Naftali, the executive director of the Nixon Library.
Mr. Naftali said that there were now only 400 hours of tapes left to released, and that those would cover the final months before the tape system was shut down in July 1973 after Alexander Butterfield, who was a deputy assistant to Nixon, confirmed its existence to the Watergate committee.
Mr. Naftali said he intended to have those tapes — actually, given changing technologies since Nixon’s time, CDs, and available for listening online at the library’s Web site — released by 2012.
An indication of Nixon’s complex relationship with Jews came the afternoon Golda Meir, the Israeli prime minister, came to visit on March 1, 1973. The tapes capture Meir offering warm and effusive thanks to Nixon for the way he had treated her and Israel.
But moments after she left, Nixon and Mr. Kissinger were brutally dismissive in response to requests that the United States press the Soviet Union to permit Jews to emigrate and escape persecution there.
“The emigration of Jews from the Soviet Union is not an objective of American foreign policy,” Mr. Kissinger said. “And if they put Jews into gas chambers in the Soviet Union, it is not an American concern. Maybe a humanitarian concern.”
“I know,” Nixon responded. “We can’t blow up the world because of it.”
I don't know about the rest of you, but I'm more shocked by Kissinger's words than by Nixon's. During the period that Kissinger was Secretary of State, I frequently stayed with an Aunt and Uncle of his for the Sabbath (I read the Torah in their community for the synagogue - it was too far to walk from home), and they always spoke of him as being a committed Jew. Committed to what?
Well, perhaps my memories are
wrong on this one.
Six months later, during the Yom Kippur War, Nixon rejected Kissinger's advice to delay an arms airlift to Israel as a means of setting the stage for an Egypt confident enough to pursue peace; Nixon, among other reasons, cited Israel's urgent need.
Kissinger would have jeopardized Israel's existence too. If he weren't German, I could speculate that he was a forebear to George Soros.
Meanwhile, 40 years later, Jews are looking for an apology from Kissinger.
The American Gathering of Holocaust Survivors and their Descendants called for an apology from Kissinger, who is still consulted by Democratic and Republican administrations and by Congress on matters of state.
"Henry Kissinger's comments are morally grotesque and represent a disgraceful perversion of American values," said a statement. "He owes an apology to all victims of the Nazi Holocaust."
Actually, he owes an even bigger apology to Soviet Jews. But I wouldn't allow him to make it, nor would I accept it. Let him rot in hell with the punishment he deserves.
Later in the transcript, Nixon makes a comment about Jews having inferiority complexes. Jeffrey Goldberg (you really could have waited until after Shabbos) says that Nixon was right about one Jew having an inferiority complex:
Henry Kissinger.
In any event, Nixon wasn't the pure unadulterated evil my parents thought he was, but he was pretty close. Fortunately, he had a soft spot for Israel.
Labels: anti-Semitism, Henry Kissinger, Richard Nixon, Soviet Jewry, Yom Kippur War
I don't know how many of my readers came of age in the 1960's and 1970's. I spent most of the 1970's - particularly my four years at Bir Zeit on the Hudson in the latter part of the decade - attending demonstrations like the one pictured above (which is from the 1960's). I had a yarmulka that said "I am my brother's keepah." I wore a rusting silver bracelet of sorts (which quickly turned green) with the name of Anatoly (now Natan) Sharansky or Yosef Mendelevich on it. And I learned brilliant chants like these:
Evelyn Gordon wonders why this generation isn't reacting today like my (and I think her) generation reacted to the peril of Soviet Jewry. Why World Jewry isn't marching like the people in the picture above (and in the Rabbis' protest in front of the White House in 1943) did. Where is everyone? 
