A nation has a right - even and obligation - to transmit particularistic values
If H.G. Wells was right that human history is a race between education and catastrophe, then I am prudently running with the pessimists. Consider the poor return on the investment we Jews have made in perpetuating the memory of the Holocaust - museums, memorials, anti-genocide curricula and entire libraries weighted down by personal testimonies - only to discover that the forces of ignorance, or evil, prevail after all.
Each Holocaust Remembrance Day brings fresh disappointments: This year, former Sephardi chief rabbi (no less) Mordechai Eliahu put the blame for the destruction of European Jewry on the Reform movement for making God angry. Previously, another former Sephardi chief rabbi, Ovadia Yosef, explained that the murdered were "the reincarnation of earlier souls who sinned and caused others to sin and did all sorts of forbidden acts." They returned to be killed in atonement for their sins.
Such being the thinking of benighted "spiritual authorities," is it any wonder that a majority of Israeli youth (66 percent of high school students) prefer to focus on the universal rather than the "narrow Jewish" message of the Holocaust?
Should we be taken aback that one in four Israeli Arabs believes the Holocaust never happened? That a German bishop on a visit to Yad Vashem (of all places) could compare Ramallah 2007 to the Warsaw Ghetto? That more than a quarter of British young people "don't know" if the Holocaust is a myth; and that 31% of them would rename Holocaust Memorial Day the more generic "Genocide Day"?
Let them. Long ago, I came to the conclusion that Israelis should discontinue preaching "our" Holocaust to the outside world and stop schlepping every foreign dignitary who lands at Ben-Gurion Airport to Yad Vashem. That we should not much care how non-Zionist Jews, whether ultra-Orthodox or ultra-assimilated, spin their lessons of the Shoah.
SINCE 1945 the Jewish world has gone through a series of stages in grappling with memorializing the Holocaust. Historian Peter Novick, in The Holocaust and Collective Memory (a problematic book, yet well worth reading), examines how the Holocaust narrative became part of the collective Jewish consciousness.
In the wake of World War II, Holocaust memory was marginalized, compartmentalized; for Israelis there was a country to build; for US Jews there was a ladder of upward mobility to climb. Novick writes: "Between the end of the war and the 1960s, as anyone who has lived through those years can testify, the Holocaust made scarcely any appearance in American public discourse, and hardly more in Jewish public discourse - especially discourse directed to gentiles."
By the late 1960s and early 1970s (when violent Black and Puerto Rican anti-Semitism in the inner cities was at its peak), the memory of the Holocaust was redefined as a basis for a new Jewish identity: We had been victims once, but now "never again." This form of identity, I know from my own experience, evolved into ethnic pride, Jewish nationalism, pro-Israelism (in the wake of the 1967 Six Day War), and served as a catalyst for the Soviet Jewry movement.
Somehow by 1993, when Hollywood's Steven Spielberg came out with Schindler's List and the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum opened its doors (with the federal government covering most of the operating expenses), the Holocaust had been transformed from a unique collective Jewish memory into a shared phenomenon of pop culture.
Today we're at the point where popular culture remembers the Holocaust as a manifestation of "man's inhumanity to man," while reactionaries (and the badly informed) dispute whether it ever really happened.
Novick argues that Holocaust remembrance is too complex for a single "bumper sticker" message to emerge. He's basically right. He's also correct that no one can impose a single "lesson" to be derived from the Holocaust on all Jews, much less all humanity.
On the other hand, as a society, Zionist Israel (at least) needs to establish parameters for understanding and perpetuating Shoah remembrance.Specifically, we don't want to see a repeat of the way Holocaust imagery was exploited by ultra-right-wing opponents of the Gaza disengagement, any more than we want young Israelis to comprehend the Shoah through post-Zionist lenses.
EVERY POLITICAL culture has a right - indeed an obligation - to politically socialize its youth.Thus if education is to defeat catastrophe, the beleaguered Israeli educational system needs to find a way to make sacred again that which has been profaned. We must abandon teaching the universalistic message of the Shoah - not because it doesn't have one, but because non-Israelis can be counted upon to promulgate it. No one but we Zionist Israelis can be counted upon to remember the Shoah as a unique tragedy of Jewish statelessness.
In the face of medieval-thinking rabbis, Iranian Holocaust-deniers and an indifferent, relativist world, I wouldn't shy away from a sort of Shoah "catechism," so that, at a minimum, Zionist-educated youth (secular, religious, left- and right-wing) know how to understand, and how to remember, what happened to the Jewish people between 1933 and 1945.
For instance, had I the ear of Education Minister Yuli Tamir, I'd suggest she encourage Israeli teachers to instruct our youth about events in Poland this very month 70 years ago. And to remind our youth that May 1937 was two years and four months before the Nazi invasion of Poland.
Thus they'd learn that on May 9, the Polish Medical Association resolved that Jews would no longer be eligible for membership. The Polish Lawyers Association decided to create a quota limiting the number of Jewish attorneys to 10% of its membership. And Fascist parties were marching through Warsaw in support of an "Anti-Jewish Month."
I'd want our young people to know that on May 13 the worst pogrom experienced by Jews in years burst out in Brest-Litovsk (today in Belarus). Perhaps they would also be taught that, as a result of Holocaust desensitization, the very word "pogrom" has lost its meaning: "an organized, often officially encouraged massacre" against the Jews.
The police of Brest-Litovsk - whose population was more than 50% Jewish - provided back-up as peasants raped, robbed and looted. What set off the violence was a report that a Jewish butcher, discovered illegally slaughtering meat, had stabbed a Polish policeman.
I DON'T KNOW if there was a Reform temple in Brest-Litovsk, or if the pogrom's victims had been reincarnated, but this I do know: The events of May 1937 were part of a long series of anti-Semitic outbreaks ignited in the wake of Poland's emergence as an independent state after World War I.
The country had come into being in 1918, with 19 million ethnic Poles despising the fact that they had been saddled with three million Jews. And so it was that by 1920, the Polish Army under Jozef Pilsudski (who himself was said not to be an anti-Semite) stormed through the Jewish communities of the Ukraine, slaughtering 30,000 Jews.
How many Israeli students know that in 1922 Polish Jews had to stay off the streets during democratic elections so their mere existence didn't enrage their Polish neighbors? Or, getting back to 1937, that Jewish college students were obliged to sit on segregated classroom benches (many preferred to stand as a form of protest)?
And how many Israeli students know that by 1937 a "cold pogrom" had systematically eliminated Jews from Polish economic life? That during the period between the two world wars, Poles made Jewish life utterly miserable? That the Polish oligarchy, gentry, Church and politicians shared a mutual interest in blaming Poland's economic depression and political difficulties on the Jews?
Who today recalls that Polish industries in which Jews were prominent (tobacco, shoemaking, liquor, matches, salt) were nationalized and Jewish workers summarily dismissed? One example: Of 2,800 shoemaking establishments, 2,060 were closed.Thus, prior to the Shoah, there had been an almost complete collapse of Jewish economic life. Before a single Nazi boot set foot in Poland, 80% of Jewish children in Vilna already had TB or anemia.
A Zionist education also requires the following knowledge: Even as Poland officially implored Britain to open the gates of Palestine so it could be rid of its accursed Jews, the Catholic primate of Poland, August Cardinal Hlond, was instructing his flock to boycott Jewish businesses.
THIS, THEN, was Poland in the "good times" before the Nazis came. Similar narratives played out elsewhere in Eastern Europe. One calamity washes away the memory of another.
It's bad enough that so much of post-World War I European Jewish history - the pogroms, the starvation, the institutionalized racism - has been forgotten, overshadowed by Hitler's war of annihilation that came afterwards. But the ultimate obscenity is that we should live to see the memory of the Holocaust itself perverted, desensitized and robbed of its Jewish character and Zionist message.
In the race between Zionist education and the catastrophic loss of the Holocaust's message for Jews, it seems to me that Israel's educational establishment needs to develop a core curriculum, acceptable across the political spectrum, from Hashomer Hatza'ir to Bnei Akiva, from Meretz to the National Union. Let each Zionist worldview bring its own nuances, so long as this fundamental and, yes, particularistic message is transmitted: that our statelessness set the stage for the Shoah, and only a secure Israel can increase the prospect of Jewish continuity in history.
The rest is commentary
Thursday, May 03, 2007
Brest-Litovsk and all that
I am an Israel briefer and analyst, a political scientist, and a speaker on Jewish civilization. I'm also a rewrite guy & fact-checker, who can make your writing clear and compelling & help you contextualize.
Thursday, April 19, 2007
Prayer books and resurrection
Banished to a desert island
which 'siddur' would you
want to take with you?
Our sages instructed: When you address the Holy One, let your words be few.
That's certainly been my approach, though I've piously managed to accumulate scores of siddurim, or prayer books. My latest acquisition - a gift from my London-based parents-in-law - is the recently released Authorised Daily Prayer Book, popularly known as the "new Singer's."
You'll find a siddur, along with the Pentateuch, in every Jewishly-literate home across the denominational divide. But while the Hebrew words of the Torah are firmly codified, the siddur thrives in a multitude of variations. Lately, I've been ruminating on their relative merits and theological approaches.
My most prized siddur, recently rebound, is my late mother's Ha-Siddur Ha-Shalem by Philip Birnbaum (1904-1988) issued by Hebrew Publishing. It's the quintessential American Orthodox siddur, first published in 1949. Birnbaum wanted the Hebrew text of his siddur to be of uniform typeface, abhorring the helter-skelter boldface paragraphing found in Old World siddurim.
His translation sought to express reverence, as Birnbaum explained, without appearing archaic. By including the prayer for the State of Israel, "the Birnbaum" reflected American Orthodoxy's newly discovered identification with the Zionist enterprise.
A good yardstick for gauging a siddur's theology is to examine how it handles the resurrection prayer in the thrice-daily Amida (18 Benedictions). Here's how Birnbaum does it: "Thou art faithful to revive the dead. Blessed art Thou, O Lord, who revivest the dead." No fudging the literalist definition of the original Hebrew.
SIDDURIM DIFFER liturgically, while maintaining a core of standard prayers. The style differences - what's included, and in what order - is called nusah. (Just to confound matters, nusah can also refer to the different melodies employed in the service depending on a congregation's cultural roots.)
The prayer "style" I'm most comfortable with is nusah Ashkenaz, in which the prayers are comparatively concise, following the practice favored by Jews whose roots are traceable to Czechoslovakia, Poland, Belorussia and Lithuania. The Birnbaum siddur follows this tradition.
My father, a hassid from Central Europe, favors nusah Sephard, which is comparable (but not identical) to the Sephardi minhag, or "binding custom," favored by Middle Eastern Jews. But the Yiddish commentary in his siddur quickly establishes that while my father may daven Sephardi, he's not of the Orient.
The point is, there are dozens of style variations in how prayer books are organized - Italian, Yemenite, Spanish and Portuguese, Western European, Central and East European, and so on - just as there are a wide range of melodic variations. While Jewish prayer eschews personal improvisation and is ideally conducted in a quorum, don't let anyone tell you there is only one "correct" approach to Jewish worship.
INFLUENCED by the Talmud, the first prayer book was compiled by Amram Gaon (circa 846-864); his Seder Rav Amram Gaon is the basis of all subsequent siddurim. Other sages followed with modifications, adding layers of rules to guide worshipers on how the three daily services should be ordered and conducted.
As best as I can discover, the siddur was first mass-distributed only in 1865; though an Italian siddur printed by Soncino dates back to 1486. The siddur began appearing in the vernacular as early as 1538. The first - unauthorized - English translation, by Gamaliel ben Pedahzur (a pseudonym), appeared in London in 1738. A different English translation came out in the US in 1837. Incidentally, many of the siddurim in print today are knock-off editions of originals which have lost their copyright.
Search Amazon.com for "siddur" and you'll get 1,200 hits.
GETTING BACK to my collection: There's the Hirsch Siddur, with commentary by Rabbi Samson Raphael Hirsch (born 1808) and published by the German-Jewish Feldheim house in 1972. Hirsch was unyielding in his opposition to Reform Judaism, and this is made plain in his commentary on the Amida's references to resurrection: "There can hardly be another thought that can so inspire man firmly to resolve to live a life so vigorous, unwavering, fearless, and unswervingly dutiful than the belief in [resurrection]…"
Then there's the Authorized Daily Prayer Book by Dr. J.H. Hertz, published by Soncino in 1941, a classic in British modern Orthodox erudition.
Let me digress to explain that, for me, "modern" Orthodoxy does not connote laxity in adherence to Halacha, but rather openness to constructive influences from the larger cultural milieu. This worldview permeates Hertz's Pentateuch even more than his siddur.
Hertz's siddur gives helpful margin citations indicating the textual origins of the prayers; not surprisingly, most come from the Bible.
Here's how he translates the Amida's resurrection prayer: "Yea, faithful art thou to revive the dead. Blessed art thou, O Lord, who revivest the dead."
Comments Hertz: "This emphatic statement concerning the resurrection was directed especially against the worldlings who disputed the deathlessness of the soul, its return to God, and its continued separate existence after its reunion with the Divine source of being."
For reasons best known to my British friends, Hertz's siddur never took off, and United Synagogue congregations stuck with the Authorised Daily Prayer Book translated by Rev. Simeon Singer (1890). His work includes the cherished "He-who" supplication: "He who giveth salvation unto Kings and dominion unto princes, whose kingdom is an everlasting kingdom, - may he bless Our Sovereign Lady, Queen Elizabeth… and all the Royal family…."
Like the Birnbaum, the post-1948 Singer also provided the Prayer for the State of Israel.
THE 1984 PUBLICATION of the Artscroll Mesorah Siddur, edited by Nosson Scherman, heralded an ultra-Orthodox ascendancy in America.
Frankly, I have a love-hate relationship with Artscroll. I adore the clarity of the radically improved Hebrew font and typography; I appreciate that the siddur is a godsend for thousands who have returned to tradition but may feel like deer caught in the headlights of an oncoming Orthodox service, not knowing when to rise, when to genuflect, when to take three paces back, or which way to shake a lulav. Artscroll tells them all that.
I'm not a fan of the English font because the script is difficult to read. But my biggest criticism is of the translation and commentary, which is fundamentalist to the core - for example, the use of "Hashem" for the Tetragrammaton instead of "O Lord," or the decision to use Ashkenazi transliteration (aleph-beis).
Here's how Artscroll handles the Amida resurrection prayer: "And You are faithful to resuscitate the dead. Blessed are You, Hashem, Who resuscitates the dead."
I also don't appreciate the absence of a prayer for Israel (special imprints excepted). And it troubles me that many folks will come to the conclusion that Artscroll's approach to prayer is the "authentic" one, and innovation a sin.
I HAVEN'T broken in the "new Singer" yet, but I already value its Artscroll-like Hebrew typeface, fine paper and uncluttered layout. The new translation and commentary is by Chief Rabbi Sir Jonathan Sacks and includes a section on understanding prayer, in which he addresses the perennial question: "Is prayer answered?" concluding: Yes, it is never in vain.
Singer traditionalists will be glad to know that while "giveth" is gone; the "He-who" prayer survives.
And Sacks largely sticks with the old Singer's traditionalist translation of the resurrection prayer: "Faithful are You to revive the dead. Blessed are You, Lord, who revives the dead."
THE GAPING holes in my collection are the absence of siddurim from the Reconstructionist, Yemenite and Chabad rites. But I do have siddurim from the Conservative and Reform movements. For instance, the Conservative Sabbath and Festival Prayer Book edited by Morris Silverman with Robert Gordis (1927/1946), now outdated - no prayer for Israel - had much to recommend it.
In keeping with the ethos of classical Conservative Judaism, the editors write: "There will naturally be instances… where reinterpretation is impossible and the traditional formulation cannot be made to serve the modern outlook…. Thus, the emphasis in the Prayer Book upon the messiah need not mean for us the belief in a personal redeemer, but it serves superbly as the poetic and infinitely moving symbol of the messianic age."
In other words, this is not the siddur for those of you inclined to Chabad's messianic mantra, Yechi adonenu, rabbenu vemorenu, melech ha-mashiah le'olam va'ed at the conclusion of your morning prayers.
I kind of like what Silverman does with resurrection. He translates the Amida prayer: "Faithful art Thou to grant eternal life to the departed. Blessed are Thou… who callest the dead to everlasting life."
I have another Conservative prayer book, Siddur Sim Shalom, edited by Jules Harlow (1985). I like that it provides various liturgical options; is egalitarian - so that worshipers thank God for making them in "Thine image" rather than, for instance, "a man." I also never liked thanking God that he didn't make me a gentile, and much prefer the Conservative approach captured in Sim Shalom: "who made me an Israelite."
They've also deleted all the stuff about Temple sacrifices (which I skip, anyway). But there's no way this could have become my "regular" siddur largely because the page flow just isn't intuitive and the alternate services options just get in the way once you pick a direction.
My Reform collection is sparse. I have Gates of Prayer: The New Union Prayer Book (1975), which captures the movement well into its Zionist phase. Commendably, there are special prayers for Yom Ha'atzma'ut and for Holocaust Remembrance Day, though it has far too many service options. But the interface of the Hebrew and English (on the same page) is seamless. There is also a welcome emphasis on spiritualism and meditation; think of it as "structured improvisation."
When it comes to resurrection, my Reform siddur radically transforms the blessing to: "O Lord of life and death, source of salvation… blessed is the Lord, the source of Life."
As it happens, the Reform movement is scheduled to issue Mishkan T'filah: A New Reform Siddur later this year.
WERE I banished to a desert island and able to take, say, just two siddurim, I'd bring the prayer book I use every morning, V'ani Tefilati, issued by the Masorti movement in Israel (Hebrew only). It's egalitarian where you want it to be, but basically it's a straightforward, classical siddur for folks who known their way around the liturgy, are Zionist in orientation and appreciate the clean (ragged) layout.
The other siddur I'd take is the ubiquitous (throughout Israel) national-religious standard bearer Rinat Yisrael (Hebrew only), edited by Shlomo Tal (1976). There are rudimentary instructions, a good, readable font, citations (like the Hertz) for many prayers, and that much-appreciated clean layout.
Funnily enough, none of these siddurim contain one of my favorite prayers, attributed to Protestant theologian Reinhold Niebuhr. It's adored at Alcoholics Anonymous sessions (and equally appropriate, incidentally, for those who've made aliya).
"God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change;
Courage to change the things I can;
And wisdom to know the difference."
Amen.
which 'siddur' would you
want to take with you?
Our sages instructed: When you address the Holy One, let your words be few.
That's certainly been my approach, though I've piously managed to accumulate scores of siddurim, or prayer books. My latest acquisition - a gift from my London-based parents-in-law - is the recently released Authorised Daily Prayer Book, popularly known as the "new Singer's."
You'll find a siddur, along with the Pentateuch, in every Jewishly-literate home across the denominational divide. But while the Hebrew words of the Torah are firmly codified, the siddur thrives in a multitude of variations. Lately, I've been ruminating on their relative merits and theological approaches.
My most prized siddur, recently rebound, is my late mother's Ha-Siddur Ha-Shalem by Philip Birnbaum (1904-1988) issued by Hebrew Publishing. It's the quintessential American Orthodox siddur, first published in 1949. Birnbaum wanted the Hebrew text of his siddur to be of uniform typeface, abhorring the helter-skelter boldface paragraphing found in Old World siddurim.
His translation sought to express reverence, as Birnbaum explained, without appearing archaic. By including the prayer for the State of Israel, "the Birnbaum" reflected American Orthodoxy's newly discovered identification with the Zionist enterprise.
A good yardstick for gauging a siddur's theology is to examine how it handles the resurrection prayer in the thrice-daily Amida (18 Benedictions). Here's how Birnbaum does it: "Thou art faithful to revive the dead. Blessed art Thou, O Lord, who revivest the dead." No fudging the literalist definition of the original Hebrew.
SIDDURIM DIFFER liturgically, while maintaining a core of standard prayers. The style differences - what's included, and in what order - is called nusah. (Just to confound matters, nusah can also refer to the different melodies employed in the service depending on a congregation's cultural roots.)
The prayer "style" I'm most comfortable with is nusah Ashkenaz, in which the prayers are comparatively concise, following the practice favored by Jews whose roots are traceable to Czechoslovakia, Poland, Belorussia and Lithuania. The Birnbaum siddur follows this tradition.
My father, a hassid from Central Europe, favors nusah Sephard, which is comparable (but not identical) to the Sephardi minhag, or "binding custom," favored by Middle Eastern Jews. But the Yiddish commentary in his siddur quickly establishes that while my father may daven Sephardi, he's not of the Orient.
The point is, there are dozens of style variations in how prayer books are organized - Italian, Yemenite, Spanish and Portuguese, Western European, Central and East European, and so on - just as there are a wide range of melodic variations. While Jewish prayer eschews personal improvisation and is ideally conducted in a quorum, don't let anyone tell you there is only one "correct" approach to Jewish worship.
INFLUENCED by the Talmud, the first prayer book was compiled by Amram Gaon (circa 846-864); his Seder Rav Amram Gaon is the basis of all subsequent siddurim. Other sages followed with modifications, adding layers of rules to guide worshipers on how the three daily services should be ordered and conducted.
As best as I can discover, the siddur was first mass-distributed only in 1865; though an Italian siddur printed by Soncino dates back to 1486. The siddur began appearing in the vernacular as early as 1538. The first - unauthorized - English translation, by Gamaliel ben Pedahzur (a pseudonym), appeared in London in 1738. A different English translation came out in the US in 1837. Incidentally, many of the siddurim in print today are knock-off editions of originals which have lost their copyright.
Search Amazon.com for "siddur" and you'll get 1,200 hits.
GETTING BACK to my collection: There's the Hirsch Siddur, with commentary by Rabbi Samson Raphael Hirsch (born 1808) and published by the German-Jewish Feldheim house in 1972. Hirsch was unyielding in his opposition to Reform Judaism, and this is made plain in his commentary on the Amida's references to resurrection: "There can hardly be another thought that can so inspire man firmly to resolve to live a life so vigorous, unwavering, fearless, and unswervingly dutiful than the belief in [resurrection]…"
Then there's the Authorized Daily Prayer Book by Dr. J.H. Hertz, published by Soncino in 1941, a classic in British modern Orthodox erudition.
Let me digress to explain that, for me, "modern" Orthodoxy does not connote laxity in adherence to Halacha, but rather openness to constructive influences from the larger cultural milieu. This worldview permeates Hertz's Pentateuch even more than his siddur.
Hertz's siddur gives helpful margin citations indicating the textual origins of the prayers; not surprisingly, most come from the Bible.
Here's how he translates the Amida's resurrection prayer: "Yea, faithful art thou to revive the dead. Blessed art thou, O Lord, who revivest the dead."
Comments Hertz: "This emphatic statement concerning the resurrection was directed especially against the worldlings who disputed the deathlessness of the soul, its return to God, and its continued separate existence after its reunion with the Divine source of being."
For reasons best known to my British friends, Hertz's siddur never took off, and United Synagogue congregations stuck with the Authorised Daily Prayer Book translated by Rev. Simeon Singer (1890). His work includes the cherished "He-who" supplication: "He who giveth salvation unto Kings and dominion unto princes, whose kingdom is an everlasting kingdom, - may he bless Our Sovereign Lady, Queen Elizabeth… and all the Royal family…."
Like the Birnbaum, the post-1948 Singer also provided the Prayer for the State of Israel.
THE 1984 PUBLICATION of the Artscroll Mesorah Siddur, edited by Nosson Scherman, heralded an ultra-Orthodox ascendancy in America.
Frankly, I have a love-hate relationship with Artscroll. I adore the clarity of the radically improved Hebrew font and typography; I appreciate that the siddur is a godsend for thousands who have returned to tradition but may feel like deer caught in the headlights of an oncoming Orthodox service, not knowing when to rise, when to genuflect, when to take three paces back, or which way to shake a lulav. Artscroll tells them all that.
I'm not a fan of the English font because the script is difficult to read. But my biggest criticism is of the translation and commentary, which is fundamentalist to the core - for example, the use of "Hashem" for the Tetragrammaton instead of "O Lord," or the decision to use Ashkenazi transliteration (aleph-beis).
Here's how Artscroll handles the Amida resurrection prayer: "And You are faithful to resuscitate the dead. Blessed are You, Hashem, Who resuscitates the dead."
I also don't appreciate the absence of a prayer for Israel (special imprints excepted). And it troubles me that many folks will come to the conclusion that Artscroll's approach to prayer is the "authentic" one, and innovation a sin.
I HAVEN'T broken in the "new Singer" yet, but I already value its Artscroll-like Hebrew typeface, fine paper and uncluttered layout. The new translation and commentary is by Chief Rabbi Sir Jonathan Sacks and includes a section on understanding prayer, in which he addresses the perennial question: "Is prayer answered?" concluding: Yes, it is never in vain.
Singer traditionalists will be glad to know that while "giveth" is gone; the "He-who" prayer survives.
And Sacks largely sticks with the old Singer's traditionalist translation of the resurrection prayer: "Faithful are You to revive the dead. Blessed are You, Lord, who revives the dead."
THE GAPING holes in my collection are the absence of siddurim from the Reconstructionist, Yemenite and Chabad rites. But I do have siddurim from the Conservative and Reform movements. For instance, the Conservative Sabbath and Festival Prayer Book edited by Morris Silverman with Robert Gordis (1927/1946), now outdated - no prayer for Israel - had much to recommend it.
In keeping with the ethos of classical Conservative Judaism, the editors write: "There will naturally be instances… where reinterpretation is impossible and the traditional formulation cannot be made to serve the modern outlook…. Thus, the emphasis in the Prayer Book upon the messiah need not mean for us the belief in a personal redeemer, but it serves superbly as the poetic and infinitely moving symbol of the messianic age."
In other words, this is not the siddur for those of you inclined to Chabad's messianic mantra, Yechi adonenu, rabbenu vemorenu, melech ha-mashiah le'olam va'ed at the conclusion of your morning prayers.
I kind of like what Silverman does with resurrection. He translates the Amida prayer: "Faithful art Thou to grant eternal life to the departed. Blessed are Thou… who callest the dead to everlasting life."
I have another Conservative prayer book, Siddur Sim Shalom, edited by Jules Harlow (1985). I like that it provides various liturgical options; is egalitarian - so that worshipers thank God for making them in "Thine image" rather than, for instance, "a man." I also never liked thanking God that he didn't make me a gentile, and much prefer the Conservative approach captured in Sim Shalom: "who made me an Israelite."
They've also deleted all the stuff about Temple sacrifices (which I skip, anyway). But there's no way this could have become my "regular" siddur largely because the page flow just isn't intuitive and the alternate services options just get in the way once you pick a direction.
My Reform collection is sparse. I have Gates of Prayer: The New Union Prayer Book (1975), which captures the movement well into its Zionist phase. Commendably, there are special prayers for Yom Ha'atzma'ut and for Holocaust Remembrance Day, though it has far too many service options. But the interface of the Hebrew and English (on the same page) is seamless. There is also a welcome emphasis on spiritualism and meditation; think of it as "structured improvisation."
When it comes to resurrection, my Reform siddur radically transforms the blessing to: "O Lord of life and death, source of salvation… blessed is the Lord, the source of Life."
As it happens, the Reform movement is scheduled to issue Mishkan T'filah: A New Reform Siddur later this year.
WERE I banished to a desert island and able to take, say, just two siddurim, I'd bring the prayer book I use every morning, V'ani Tefilati, issued by the Masorti movement in Israel (Hebrew only). It's egalitarian where you want it to be, but basically it's a straightforward, classical siddur for folks who known their way around the liturgy, are Zionist in orientation and appreciate the clean (ragged) layout.
The other siddur I'd take is the ubiquitous (throughout Israel) national-religious standard bearer Rinat Yisrael (Hebrew only), edited by Shlomo Tal (1976). There are rudimentary instructions, a good, readable font, citations (like the Hertz) for many prayers, and that much-appreciated clean layout.
Funnily enough, none of these siddurim contain one of my favorite prayers, attributed to Protestant theologian Reinhold Niebuhr. It's adored at Alcoholics Anonymous sessions (and equally appropriate, incidentally, for those who've made aliya).
"God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change;
Courage to change the things I can;
And wisdom to know the difference."
Amen.
I am an Israel briefer and analyst, a political scientist, and a speaker on Jewish civilization. I'm also a rewrite guy & fact-checker, who can make your writing clear and compelling & help you contextualize.
Wednesday, March 21, 2007
Taking Ghana for granted?
Israel still has no ambassador
in the capital of one of Africa's
most influential countries
The Zionist fascination with Africa began even before the birth of modern Israel. In his 1902 novel Altneuland (Old-New Land), Theodor Herzl wrote: "There is still one other question arising out of the disaster of the nations which remains unsolved to this day, and whose profound tragedy only a Jew can comprehend. This is the African question... I am not ashamed to say, though I may expose myself to ridicule in saying so, that once I have witnessed the redemption of the Jews, my people, I wish also to assist in the redemption of the Africans."
Herzl didn't live to see it, but in 1957 Ghana, then known as the Gold Coast, became the first African state to gain independence from British colonial rule; it also became the first African country to grant diplomatic recognition to the Jewish state.
Herzl's dream of "redeeming" Africa came closer to fruition soon after, when Israel began sharing what it itself was learning about development with African countries, including Ghana.
This month, Ghana celebrated 50 years of independence and Jerusalem marked 50 years since the opening of Israel¹s first embassy in Africa.
JERUSALEM'S relations with Accra have been characterized by a mixture of idealism and pragmatism even as they¹ve encapsulated the complexities encountered by Israeli foreign policy in the developing world. Israel¹s goal has been and remains to reach beyond our immediate, antagonistic neighbors in search of friendships and alliances in sub-Saharan Africa and Asia. Meanwhile, the Arab bloc has endeavored then and now to checkmate our every advance, isolate us from the developing world and the family of nations, their ultimate goal being to extinguish the Zionist enterprise.
I should explain my own interest in this west-coast African country. I first became acquainted with Ghana while in graduate school, through friendships with Ghanaian students at New York University. Before I knew it, I had stumbled upon a vibrant Ghanaian diaspora in New York physicians, scholars, ex-government officials each one fascinating, bright and full of warmth. My friend Norbert, for instance, made it a point to visit my mother during her many hospitalizations as a sign of respect for her age and a token of our friendship. He seldom so much as spoke with his own mother for years on end because her village had no telephone.
So, as we mark 50 years in the Ghana-Israel relationship, I thought it worthwhile to reflect on where our two nations have been, where we are, and what we can realistically expect from each other.
FIRST TO where we¹ve been: It was foreign minister Golda Meir who, in 1957, sent Ehud Avriel to become Israel¹s first ambassador to Ghana, transforming our consulate in Accra into an embassy. Golda herself attended Ghana¹s first anniversary celebrations in 1958, later reminiscing: "I didn¹t have any illusions whatsoever about the fact that [Israel¹s] role [in providing aid to Africa] would inevitably be small, but I was fired by the prospect of going to a part of the world to which we were so new and which was so new to us."
Golda met with Ghana's first president, the pan-African hero Kwame Nkrumah. Taking in the statues and coins bearing his likeness, she concluded that the ³charming² Nkrumah had transformed himself into a "demigod." In her autobiography, Golda wrote that it was impossible not to admire Nkrumah yet she found him less than candid and, in practice, unrealistic:
"He talked about the problems of Africa as though all that mattered was formal independence, and he seemed far less interested in discussing the development of Africa¹s resources, or even how he could raise the standard of life for his people. He talked on one level, and I talked on another. He talked about the glories of freedom, and I talked about education, public health, and the need for Africa to produce its own teachers, technicians and doctors."
Abba Eban, then our ambassador in the US, met Nkrumah in Washington in 1959, and found him "modest." Some years later, Eban wrote in his memoirs, he arrived in Accra and asked where he should go for his first appointment.
"I was informed that my driver would take me down Nkrumah Avenue, past Nkrumah University, and that on reaching Nkrumah Square, he would take me to my appointment with the nation¹s leader, whose title was The Redeemer. From this," Eban concluded, "I learned that modesty was a quality that could easily be overcome by a protracted taste of power."
DESPITE THIS political-cultural divide, Israel and Ghana enjoyed friendly relations. Jerusalem established dozens of development programs in a wide range of areas, and Israelis came to play a prominent role in Ghanaian construction and engineering projects. They helped Ghana set up its Black Star steamship company and trained its police force, air force pilots, doctors, dentists and veterinarians.
The relationship was by no means a one-way street, however. Ghana was the vanguard African nation. And Israel¹s connection with Accra was Jerusalem's gateway to diplomatic relations with 27 states in post-colonial Africa. By 1964, Israel was providing development assistance to dozens of countries on the continent.
For Israel, the African relationship was also psychologically important. The Jewish state wanted an outlet for its idealism call it "Light unto the Nations Syndrome." Helping Africa allowed us to realize our altruistic aspirations. And with premier David Ben-Gurion focused on Israel's security and survival, the Foreign Ministry had substantial leeway in crafting an ambitious (even idealistic) African policy for Israel.
And yet, along every step of the way, Nkrumah was being challenged by Egypt's Gamal Abdel Nasser, father of pan-Arabism, whose political backing Nkrumah needed for his own pan-African aspirations, to explain Ghana's relationship with Israel. Arab countries used their leverage within African forums to push relentlessly for the "right" of Palestinian war refugees to return to their homes on the Israeli side of the 1949 Armistice Lines.
It¹s worth recalling that the nonaligned bloc theoretically, countries that would not ally themselves with either Moscow or Washington had been established at the 1956 Bandung Conference in Indonesia, just before Ghanaian independence. That¹s where Ghana's soon-to-be-president, Nkrumah, met and exchanged ideas with Third World luminaries including Nasser, Nehru, Ho Chi Minh and Zhou Enlai.
SOON AFTER independence, Nkrumah moved Ghana toward becoming a one-party socialist state. His leadership became ever more autocratic, his failed pan-African pretensions forcing the country to spend money it didn¹t have. A country which had become independent amid such high hopes sank into a morass of corruption and wastefulness.
Meanwhile, the more Ghana became "non-aligned," the more it tilted toward the Arabs. The January 1961 Casablanca Conference marked, in the words of University of Haifa political scientist Zach Levey, "the end of the special relationship between Israel and Ghana." Nkrumah signed a resolution promoted by Nasser "singling out Israel as the pillar of imperialism in Africa."
Still, at ambassador Avriel's urging, Israel¹s development aid to Ghana continued essentially until 1973 when, in the wake of the Yom Kippur War, Accra joined the rest of black Africa in cravenly bending to Arab desires by breaking ties with Israel.
The rupture was not only a political blow for Israel; it was an emotional one as well. Jerusalem's model for reaching beyond the Arabs using development aid in Africa had been shattered.
GHANA did not fare well on the course Nkrumah set. His regime was overthrown in 1966; another coup followed in 1972, yet another in 1979. Finally, in 1981, army lieutenant Jerry Rawlings seized control and created a stable populist regime. It tried to bring sanity to Ghana¹s socioeconomic affairs, though Rawlings was criticized for his regime's brutality toward political opponents.
To Rawlings's everlasting credit, in 2000 he facilitated a peaceful transition of power and the election of John Kufuor as president. Kufuor was reelected in 2004, in what outside observers attested was a fair campaign.
Sadly, though, given nearly 50 years of chronic political and economic instability, Ghana has suffered a demoralizing brain drain. Far too many of its best and brightest (using their Commonwealth connection) fled to Britain or the United States.
Still, Ghana's fortunes today are, relative to the rest of Africa, on the ascendant, as are the prospects of its 22 million people. Sixty-three percent are Christian; 16% Muslim and 21% traditional (though there is an overlap between those adhering to traditional African beliefs and Pentecostal/charismatic Christians).
Less than 3% of the Ghanaian population is HIV-positive compared with, say, 20% in Zimbabwe, 18% in South Africa, and 7% in Uganda. The country is rich in gold and cocoa; its per-capita income is $2,600, though much of the population lives on less than a dollar a day.
Subsistence agriculture engages 60% of its people; the World Bank puts the Ghanaian poverty level at 37%. And Ghana borrows heavily to stay afloat (38% of GDP is devoted to public debt). The country receives a staggering amount of international aid, but the consensus seems to be that it¹s actually doing good.
IN 1994, Israel and Ghana signed a renewal-of-relations agreement, and in 1996, Ghana reopened its mission in Tel Aviv. So where do Israel-Ghanaian relations stand today?
Ghanaian GBC Radio recently reported that Yossi Gal, the senior deputy director-general for political affairs at the Foreign Ministry, and other Israeli officials were in Accra on March 6 to attend the country's 50th anniversary celebrations.
It turns out that Israel's foreign policy decision-makers are keenly interested in nurturing closer ties with Ghana (and the rest of sub-Saharan Africa). But it strikes me that they have not been able to garner the attention of the political echelon. How else to explain that Israel couldn't muster a cabinet minister to attend the Accra festivities?
Today, Israel has diplomatic ties with 39 of the 47 countries in sub-Saharan Africa. African officials are regular visitors to Israel, and Nigerian Christians make frequent pilgrimages to the Holy Land.
Overall, Israelis returning from the continent report, with pride, that Israel's image is remarkably good.
Regrettably, however, despite the continent's importance to Israel, we have only nine embassies for all of Africa, making do with roving ambassadors. Thus Israel's ambassador to Ghana, Noam Katz, is actually stationed in Abuja, Nigeria. And despite Israel's appreciation of Ghana¹s weight in our Africa policy, its role as an island of democracy and its path of economic development, there is no Israeli embassy in Accra.
In 2006, trade between Ghana and Israel was relatively modest. Israel imported $6.5 million and exported $13.9 million worth of goods and services. Yet these numbers belie Ghana's true worth to Israel.
WHEN ISRAELIS look at today¹s Ghana, they see a country that is a major, responsible player in the international political arena, a leading contributor to UN peacekeeping efforts worldwide. Ghanaians staff the highest echelons of power in any number of international organizations (Kofi Annan, for instance, recently returned to Ghana after his tenure as UN secretary-general).
Ghana is also an important player in the Economic Community of West African States, as well as sitting on the International Atomic Energy Commission, where it recently voted with the West against Iran. It is currently one of 10 non-permanent members of the UN Security Council, where it has been voting for sanctions against Teheran. And President John Kufuor chairs the 53-member African Union, successor to the Organization of African Unity.
All this may help explain why those who craft Israel's foreign policy want despite an agenda necessarily dominated by the Arab-Israel conflict to give a higher profile to Jerusalem¹s relationship with Africa in general, and Ghana in particular.
Israelis familiar with the issue say that current development aid to Africa is mostly free of any desire for a political quid pro quo. They say our involvement in Africa allows Jerusalem to spotlight the "good Israeli" and tap Judaism's tradition of tikkun olam or "mending the world." Israel's support for Africa goes beyond "doing the right thing." Helping where we can allows our national psyche to feel like we¹re a real country, like we have an existence outside the Arab-Israel conflict.
And while it's unlikely that the scope of our aid to Africa will ever replicate 1950s-60s levels, Israel today administers a variety of training and development projects for Africa, directed by the Foreign Ministry's Center for International Cooperation (Mashav), that do the Jewish state proud.
For example, Israelis have been instrumental in building a trauma center in Ghana¹s second-largest city, Kumasi. Israel¹s private sector is heavily involved in Ghanaian agriculture, dairy farming and fisheries. Solel Boneh and Rolider are renowned names in the Ghanaian construction sector.
TO THE extent that we expect any return from the Ghanaians, Israelis familiar with the country¹s involvement in Africa tell me that Jerusalem would like Accra¹s help in regaining its official observer status at the African Union. (The current list of 47 non-African observers includes such countries as Finland and Iceland.) Since Israel is actually the only country bordering Africa (in Sinai) and has a long history of positive involvement with the continent, it strikes me that Jerusalem does deserve an observer slot. This is a message that Israel has repeatedly, and so far unsuccessfully, sent to Ghana.
What would we do if we got our observer status back? While Israel doesn¹t seem to want a say in African affairs, it views the African Union as a venue for facilitating a dialogue with Africa.
I ASKED some Ghanaians I met what their country expected from its relationship with Israel. Topping the agenda, they said, is for Israel to station an ambassador in Accra. They had thought this would happen when relations were reestablished. In a recent speech, Ghana¹s ambassador to Israel, Nana Owusu-Nsiah, called on Israel to send a resident ambassador to Accra, "for more meaningful bilateral cooperation."
At the very least, the Ghanaians told me, they'd like to see an Israeli consulate in their nation¹s capital. If an Israeli wants to visit Ghana, the applicant needs to spend about an hour filling out forms at Ghana¹s embassy in Ramat Gan. But if a Ghanaian in Accra wants to visit Israel, he needs to travel to Abuja, Nigeria easily a day¹s journey to the nearest Israeli consulate.
Ghanaians would also like to see Israel make it easier for them to work here legally. They asked why the Israeli government won¹t reach a deal with their government to allow, say, 400-500 Ghanaians to work here for a three-year period. Their talents could easily be put to use in our hotel industry and in practical nursing of the elderly. After three years the Ghanaian workers would go home, with badly needed hard currency, and a new batch would replace them.
If you want better relations, the Ghanaians said, why not show some reciprocity?
A number of high-level Ghanaian officials and delegations have been to Israel in recent months, but almost no ranking Israelis have traveled to Ghana. It boggles the mind that when a country like Ghana asks for greater engagement, Israel's political echelon responds with indifference.
Ghanaians I spoke with also expressed frustration that too few Israeli businesspeople were taking advantage of opportunities in Ghana. Granted, they said, Ghana's bureaucracy can be off-putting. On the other hand, numerous incentives, guarantees and tax abatements make doing business in Ghana worthwhile. Ghanaians would welcome private-sector collaboration in any number of spheres, especially electricity, water purification and water distribution.
ISRAEL FINDS itself in a striking position: A country with huge influence in international affairs has repeatedly asked for our government to fulfill its commitment and station an ambassador in its capital, but for reasons beyond my ken, Israel is dragging its heels.
Not that we need more reasons to cozy up to Ghana, but here's another: Ghana plays a unique role for an important segment of the African American community including members of the Congressional Black Caucus. Many black Americans trace their ancestors¹ forced exile out of Africa and into slavery to the Gold Coast. For its part, Ghana maintains a diaspora affairs minister to nurture its special relationship with the black diaspora. Closer ties between Accra and Jerusalem couldn't hurt the efforts of the pro-Israel community in Washington to solidify African American support for Israel.
THESE DAYS Africa still needs to be redeemed not so much in the Herzlian sense, but from poverty, disease and despair. Of course, Israel has its own staggering societal and security problems, and there are those who¹d say that Israel itself is in need of redemption.
Yet myopic and insular policies are unlikely to bring us the deliverance we seek. The more we reach out beyond the confines of the Arab-Israel conflict, the greater the chances of fulfilling our Zionist aspirations of normalcy, and our Jewish aspirations of being an light unto the nations.
in the capital of one of Africa's
most influential countries
The Zionist fascination with Africa began even before the birth of modern Israel. In his 1902 novel Altneuland (Old-New Land), Theodor Herzl wrote: "There is still one other question arising out of the disaster of the nations which remains unsolved to this day, and whose profound tragedy only a Jew can comprehend. This is the African question... I am not ashamed to say, though I may expose myself to ridicule in saying so, that once I have witnessed the redemption of the Jews, my people, I wish also to assist in the redemption of the Africans."
Herzl didn't live to see it, but in 1957 Ghana, then known as the Gold Coast, became the first African state to gain independence from British colonial rule; it also became the first African country to grant diplomatic recognition to the Jewish state.
Herzl's dream of "redeeming" Africa came closer to fruition soon after, when Israel began sharing what it itself was learning about development with African countries, including Ghana.
This month, Ghana celebrated 50 years of independence and Jerusalem marked 50 years since the opening of Israel¹s first embassy in Africa.
JERUSALEM'S relations with Accra have been characterized by a mixture of idealism and pragmatism even as they¹ve encapsulated the complexities encountered by Israeli foreign policy in the developing world. Israel¹s goal has been and remains to reach beyond our immediate, antagonistic neighbors in search of friendships and alliances in sub-Saharan Africa and Asia. Meanwhile, the Arab bloc has endeavored then and now to checkmate our every advance, isolate us from the developing world and the family of nations, their ultimate goal being to extinguish the Zionist enterprise.
I should explain my own interest in this west-coast African country. I first became acquainted with Ghana while in graduate school, through friendships with Ghanaian students at New York University. Before I knew it, I had stumbled upon a vibrant Ghanaian diaspora in New York physicians, scholars, ex-government officials each one fascinating, bright and full of warmth. My friend Norbert, for instance, made it a point to visit my mother during her many hospitalizations as a sign of respect for her age and a token of our friendship. He seldom so much as spoke with his own mother for years on end because her village had no telephone.
So, as we mark 50 years in the Ghana-Israel relationship, I thought it worthwhile to reflect on where our two nations have been, where we are, and what we can realistically expect from each other.
FIRST TO where we¹ve been: It was foreign minister Golda Meir who, in 1957, sent Ehud Avriel to become Israel¹s first ambassador to Ghana, transforming our consulate in Accra into an embassy. Golda herself attended Ghana¹s first anniversary celebrations in 1958, later reminiscing: "I didn¹t have any illusions whatsoever about the fact that [Israel¹s] role [in providing aid to Africa] would inevitably be small, but I was fired by the prospect of going to a part of the world to which we were so new and which was so new to us."
Golda met with Ghana's first president, the pan-African hero Kwame Nkrumah. Taking in the statues and coins bearing his likeness, she concluded that the ³charming² Nkrumah had transformed himself into a "demigod." In her autobiography, Golda wrote that it was impossible not to admire Nkrumah yet she found him less than candid and, in practice, unrealistic:
"He talked about the problems of Africa as though all that mattered was formal independence, and he seemed far less interested in discussing the development of Africa¹s resources, or even how he could raise the standard of life for his people. He talked on one level, and I talked on another. He talked about the glories of freedom, and I talked about education, public health, and the need for Africa to produce its own teachers, technicians and doctors."
Abba Eban, then our ambassador in the US, met Nkrumah in Washington in 1959, and found him "modest." Some years later, Eban wrote in his memoirs, he arrived in Accra and asked where he should go for his first appointment.
"I was informed that my driver would take me down Nkrumah Avenue, past Nkrumah University, and that on reaching Nkrumah Square, he would take me to my appointment with the nation¹s leader, whose title was The Redeemer. From this," Eban concluded, "I learned that modesty was a quality that could easily be overcome by a protracted taste of power."
DESPITE THIS political-cultural divide, Israel and Ghana enjoyed friendly relations. Jerusalem established dozens of development programs in a wide range of areas, and Israelis came to play a prominent role in Ghanaian construction and engineering projects. They helped Ghana set up its Black Star steamship company and trained its police force, air force pilots, doctors, dentists and veterinarians.
The relationship was by no means a one-way street, however. Ghana was the vanguard African nation. And Israel¹s connection with Accra was Jerusalem's gateway to diplomatic relations with 27 states in post-colonial Africa. By 1964, Israel was providing development assistance to dozens of countries on the continent.
For Israel, the African relationship was also psychologically important. The Jewish state wanted an outlet for its idealism call it "Light unto the Nations Syndrome." Helping Africa allowed us to realize our altruistic aspirations. And with premier David Ben-Gurion focused on Israel's security and survival, the Foreign Ministry had substantial leeway in crafting an ambitious (even idealistic) African policy for Israel.
And yet, along every step of the way, Nkrumah was being challenged by Egypt's Gamal Abdel Nasser, father of pan-Arabism, whose political backing Nkrumah needed for his own pan-African aspirations, to explain Ghana's relationship with Israel. Arab countries used their leverage within African forums to push relentlessly for the "right" of Palestinian war refugees to return to their homes on the Israeli side of the 1949 Armistice Lines.
It¹s worth recalling that the nonaligned bloc theoretically, countries that would not ally themselves with either Moscow or Washington had been established at the 1956 Bandung Conference in Indonesia, just before Ghanaian independence. That¹s where Ghana's soon-to-be-president, Nkrumah, met and exchanged ideas with Third World luminaries including Nasser, Nehru, Ho Chi Minh and Zhou Enlai.
SOON AFTER independence, Nkrumah moved Ghana toward becoming a one-party socialist state. His leadership became ever more autocratic, his failed pan-African pretensions forcing the country to spend money it didn¹t have. A country which had become independent amid such high hopes sank into a morass of corruption and wastefulness.
Meanwhile, the more Ghana became "non-aligned," the more it tilted toward the Arabs. The January 1961 Casablanca Conference marked, in the words of University of Haifa political scientist Zach Levey, "the end of the special relationship between Israel and Ghana." Nkrumah signed a resolution promoted by Nasser "singling out Israel as the pillar of imperialism in Africa."
Still, at ambassador Avriel's urging, Israel¹s development aid to Ghana continued essentially until 1973 when, in the wake of the Yom Kippur War, Accra joined the rest of black Africa in cravenly bending to Arab desires by breaking ties with Israel.
The rupture was not only a political blow for Israel; it was an emotional one as well. Jerusalem's model for reaching beyond the Arabs using development aid in Africa had been shattered.
GHANA did not fare well on the course Nkrumah set. His regime was overthrown in 1966; another coup followed in 1972, yet another in 1979. Finally, in 1981, army lieutenant Jerry Rawlings seized control and created a stable populist regime. It tried to bring sanity to Ghana¹s socioeconomic affairs, though Rawlings was criticized for his regime's brutality toward political opponents.
To Rawlings's everlasting credit, in 2000 he facilitated a peaceful transition of power and the election of John Kufuor as president. Kufuor was reelected in 2004, in what outside observers attested was a fair campaign.
Sadly, though, given nearly 50 years of chronic political and economic instability, Ghana has suffered a demoralizing brain drain. Far too many of its best and brightest (using their Commonwealth connection) fled to Britain or the United States.
Still, Ghana's fortunes today are, relative to the rest of Africa, on the ascendant, as are the prospects of its 22 million people. Sixty-three percent are Christian; 16% Muslim and 21% traditional (though there is an overlap between those adhering to traditional African beliefs and Pentecostal/charismatic Christians).
Less than 3% of the Ghanaian population is HIV-positive compared with, say, 20% in Zimbabwe, 18% in South Africa, and 7% in Uganda. The country is rich in gold and cocoa; its per-capita income is $2,600, though much of the population lives on less than a dollar a day.
Subsistence agriculture engages 60% of its people; the World Bank puts the Ghanaian poverty level at 37%. And Ghana borrows heavily to stay afloat (38% of GDP is devoted to public debt). The country receives a staggering amount of international aid, but the consensus seems to be that it¹s actually doing good.
IN 1994, Israel and Ghana signed a renewal-of-relations agreement, and in 1996, Ghana reopened its mission in Tel Aviv. So where do Israel-Ghanaian relations stand today?
Ghanaian GBC Radio recently reported that Yossi Gal, the senior deputy director-general for political affairs at the Foreign Ministry, and other Israeli officials were in Accra on March 6 to attend the country's 50th anniversary celebrations.
It turns out that Israel's foreign policy decision-makers are keenly interested in nurturing closer ties with Ghana (and the rest of sub-Saharan Africa). But it strikes me that they have not been able to garner the attention of the political echelon. How else to explain that Israel couldn't muster a cabinet minister to attend the Accra festivities?
Today, Israel has diplomatic ties with 39 of the 47 countries in sub-Saharan Africa. African officials are regular visitors to Israel, and Nigerian Christians make frequent pilgrimages to the Holy Land.
Overall, Israelis returning from the continent report, with pride, that Israel's image is remarkably good.
Regrettably, however, despite the continent's importance to Israel, we have only nine embassies for all of Africa, making do with roving ambassadors. Thus Israel's ambassador to Ghana, Noam Katz, is actually stationed in Abuja, Nigeria. And despite Israel's appreciation of Ghana¹s weight in our Africa policy, its role as an island of democracy and its path of economic development, there is no Israeli embassy in Accra.
In 2006, trade between Ghana and Israel was relatively modest. Israel imported $6.5 million and exported $13.9 million worth of goods and services. Yet these numbers belie Ghana's true worth to Israel.
WHEN ISRAELIS look at today¹s Ghana, they see a country that is a major, responsible player in the international political arena, a leading contributor to UN peacekeeping efforts worldwide. Ghanaians staff the highest echelons of power in any number of international organizations (Kofi Annan, for instance, recently returned to Ghana after his tenure as UN secretary-general).
Ghana is also an important player in the Economic Community of West African States, as well as sitting on the International Atomic Energy Commission, where it recently voted with the West against Iran. It is currently one of 10 non-permanent members of the UN Security Council, where it has been voting for sanctions against Teheran. And President John Kufuor chairs the 53-member African Union, successor to the Organization of African Unity.
All this may help explain why those who craft Israel's foreign policy want despite an agenda necessarily dominated by the Arab-Israel conflict to give a higher profile to Jerusalem¹s relationship with Africa in general, and Ghana in particular.
Israelis familiar with the issue say that current development aid to Africa is mostly free of any desire for a political quid pro quo. They say our involvement in Africa allows Jerusalem to spotlight the "good Israeli" and tap Judaism's tradition of tikkun olam or "mending the world." Israel's support for Africa goes beyond "doing the right thing." Helping where we can allows our national psyche to feel like we¹re a real country, like we have an existence outside the Arab-Israel conflict.
And while it's unlikely that the scope of our aid to Africa will ever replicate 1950s-60s levels, Israel today administers a variety of training and development projects for Africa, directed by the Foreign Ministry's Center for International Cooperation (Mashav), that do the Jewish state proud.
For example, Israelis have been instrumental in building a trauma center in Ghana¹s second-largest city, Kumasi. Israel¹s private sector is heavily involved in Ghanaian agriculture, dairy farming and fisheries. Solel Boneh and Rolider are renowned names in the Ghanaian construction sector.
TO THE extent that we expect any return from the Ghanaians, Israelis familiar with the country¹s involvement in Africa tell me that Jerusalem would like Accra¹s help in regaining its official observer status at the African Union. (The current list of 47 non-African observers includes such countries as Finland and Iceland.) Since Israel is actually the only country bordering Africa (in Sinai) and has a long history of positive involvement with the continent, it strikes me that Jerusalem does deserve an observer slot. This is a message that Israel has repeatedly, and so far unsuccessfully, sent to Ghana.
What would we do if we got our observer status back? While Israel doesn¹t seem to want a say in African affairs, it views the African Union as a venue for facilitating a dialogue with Africa.
I ASKED some Ghanaians I met what their country expected from its relationship with Israel. Topping the agenda, they said, is for Israel to station an ambassador in Accra. They had thought this would happen when relations were reestablished. In a recent speech, Ghana¹s ambassador to Israel, Nana Owusu-Nsiah, called on Israel to send a resident ambassador to Accra, "for more meaningful bilateral cooperation."
At the very least, the Ghanaians told me, they'd like to see an Israeli consulate in their nation¹s capital. If an Israeli wants to visit Ghana, the applicant needs to spend about an hour filling out forms at Ghana¹s embassy in Ramat Gan. But if a Ghanaian in Accra wants to visit Israel, he needs to travel to Abuja, Nigeria easily a day¹s journey to the nearest Israeli consulate.
Ghanaians would also like to see Israel make it easier for them to work here legally. They asked why the Israeli government won¹t reach a deal with their government to allow, say, 400-500 Ghanaians to work here for a three-year period. Their talents could easily be put to use in our hotel industry and in practical nursing of the elderly. After three years the Ghanaian workers would go home, with badly needed hard currency, and a new batch would replace them.
If you want better relations, the Ghanaians said, why not show some reciprocity?
A number of high-level Ghanaian officials and delegations have been to Israel in recent months, but almost no ranking Israelis have traveled to Ghana. It boggles the mind that when a country like Ghana asks for greater engagement, Israel's political echelon responds with indifference.
Ghanaians I spoke with also expressed frustration that too few Israeli businesspeople were taking advantage of opportunities in Ghana. Granted, they said, Ghana's bureaucracy can be off-putting. On the other hand, numerous incentives, guarantees and tax abatements make doing business in Ghana worthwhile. Ghanaians would welcome private-sector collaboration in any number of spheres, especially electricity, water purification and water distribution.
ISRAEL FINDS itself in a striking position: A country with huge influence in international affairs has repeatedly asked for our government to fulfill its commitment and station an ambassador in its capital, but for reasons beyond my ken, Israel is dragging its heels.
Not that we need more reasons to cozy up to Ghana, but here's another: Ghana plays a unique role for an important segment of the African American community including members of the Congressional Black Caucus. Many black Americans trace their ancestors¹ forced exile out of Africa and into slavery to the Gold Coast. For its part, Ghana maintains a diaspora affairs minister to nurture its special relationship with the black diaspora. Closer ties between Accra and Jerusalem couldn't hurt the efforts of the pro-Israel community in Washington to solidify African American support for Israel.
THESE DAYS Africa still needs to be redeemed not so much in the Herzlian sense, but from poverty, disease and despair. Of course, Israel has its own staggering societal and security problems, and there are those who¹d say that Israel itself is in need of redemption.
Yet myopic and insular policies are unlikely to bring us the deliverance we seek. The more we reach out beyond the confines of the Arab-Israel conflict, the greater the chances of fulfilling our Zionist aspirations of normalcy, and our Jewish aspirations of being an light unto the nations.
I am an Israel briefer and analyst, a political scientist, and a speaker on Jewish civilization. I'm also a rewrite guy & fact-checker, who can make your writing clear and compelling & help you contextualize.
Thursday, March 08, 2007
Breaking Begin
Peace Now was created to give the impression
that Israel's first non-Labor prime minister
didn't have the nation behind him
This Friday marks the 15th anniversary of the death of Menachem Begin. He died of a broken heart on March 9, 1992, vilified as a warmonger by the Left and cast off by right-wing purists after he traded the Sinai Peninsula in exchange for a peace treaty with Egypt in 1979. The purists also berated Begin for his 1978 Camp David offer of five years of limited self-government to the Palestinian Arabs in Judea, Samaria and Gaza, to be followed by final-status negotiations between Israel and a Jordanian-Palestinian negotiating team - a proposal the Arabs rejected.
Begin would have been my hero even if he had never become prime minister, never ordered the destruction of Iraq's nuclear reactor, in June 1981, and never negotiated Israel's first peace treaty with an Arab neighbor.
I admired him for commanding the Irgun during the revolt against the British; and for navigating a course midway between the moderation of the Hagana and the militancy of the Stern group. Perhaps most of all, I respected his reaction to David Ben-Gurion's unforgivable order that the Hagana attack the Irgun arms-ship Altalena: Begin prevented the tragedy from deteriorating into a Jewish civil war.
After 1948, with the system stacked against him, Begin became leader of the loyal opposition. A principled ideologue and fiery orator, he campaigned forcefully in 1952 against Israeli acceptance of financial reparations from Germany - and lost. He had every reason to challenge the legitimacy of a political system in which the allocation of virtually all resources was monopolized by Mapai, but he didn't.
Granted, Begin was no saint. He didn't encourage opposition to his leadership inside Herut. But he was an honest politician, lived modestly and preserved the philosophy of Ze'ev Jabotinsky.
MOST OF THE world had never heard of Menachem Begin until May 1977, when he was elected as Israel's first non-Labor premier. But from that day until he resigned in September 1983, his spirit broken by IDF losses in the war in Lebanon and the 1982 death of his wife and life-long companion Aliza - and ultimately, I would argue, by an unparalleled five-year campaign spearheaded by Peace Now and its allies abroad to force his government to embrace dangerously accommodationist policies toward the Arabs - Begin wasn't given a moment's respite.
Never before had an Israeli premier been so beleaguered, so vilified, so undermined by an alliance of left-wing domestic opponents, the Jewish Diaspora establishment, an implacable White House led by Jimmy Carter and a spiteful international media.
His foes found him "too Jewish," and his idea of trading "peace for peace" a non-starter. Thomas L. Friedman, who reported for The New York Times, first from Beirut and then from Jerusalem during the Begin years, later thus encapsulated the left-wing attitude toward Begin: "What made Begin… dangerous was that his fantasies about power were combined with a self-perception of being a victim… Begin always reminded me of Bernhard Goetz, the white Manhattanite who shot four black youths he thought were about to mug him on the New York subway… [Begin] was Bernhard Goetz with an F-15."
Even mortal threats to Israel had to be belittled because the Left was determined that Israel withdraw from Judea, Samaria and Gaza, captured 10 years earlier in the Six Day War. Failure to do so, leftists convinced themselves, would obliterate the possibility of a rapprochement with the Arabs. No matter how blood-curdling Arab deeds were, the Left discerned intimations of Palestinian moderation which needed to be encouraged by substantive Israeli concessions.
For Begin, this was anathema. First off, he believed Jewish claims to the West Bank and Gaza were rock-solid - far superior to those of Palestinian Arab nationalists. To a media that wouldn't give him the time of day he sought to make the legal, historical and strategic case for calling the territories Jewish. And, anyway, he didn't think sacrificing the West Bank and Gaza would bring peace; he was convinced that the Arabs had not accepted the idea of a sovereign Jewish state anywhere in the land.
WHAT REALLY unified and outraged his opponents - at home and abroad - was Begin's heart-felt embrace of the settlement enterprise. By the time he took office, some 24 communities had been established under Labor governments, according to Lords of the Land by Idith Zertal and Akiva Eldar (though Gershom Gorenberg, in The Accidental Empire, claims there were nearly 80). Whatever the specifics, the first settlements included Kfar Etzion, Alon Shvut, Ma'aleh Adumim, Kiryat Arba, Elazar and Ofra. In fact, the first yishuv to be re-established after the Six Day War was in Gush Etzion, just south of Jerusalem, in September 1967.
For strategic reasons, as well as to solidify Israel's claim to the capital, Labor governments were eager to build in and around metropolitan Jerusalem and over the Green Line. But Labor only reluctantly allowed Gush Emunim's Orthodox settlers, who were inspired by a combination of theology, messianic zeal and nationalism, to build "non-strategic" settlements.
On May 19, 1977, just after his election, Begin (accompanied by Ariel Sharon) drove to Elon Moreh (Kaddum) outside Nablus. Here is the scene as described by Gorenberg:
"Begin, with a ring of thin black hair and heavy glasses that magnified his eyes, looked exhausted. His two bodyguards could not hold off the crowd. People kissed him, embraced him. Yeshiva students danced around him. After a brief tour, he stood in the square between the mobile homes and took the velvet-covered scroll in one arm, putting the other around Ariel Sharon's shoulder. Four men took the corners of [the] prayer shawl and held it over his head; a band prepared to play.
"Before the ceremony, Begin made a statement to the crowd. 'Soon,' he said, 'there will be many more Elon Morehs.'"
Begin was not going to "tolerate" settlements; he was going to make building them government policy. And this the US administration could not tolerate because it went against bedrock US policy: Israel would trade land for peace, and if there was no West Bank to trade - somewhere down the line when the Arabs would presumably be willing to take it - there would be no possibility of peace.
Nor would the Israeli Left tolerate settling the biblical Jewish heartland. It had a very different vision of Israel - a Western-oriented consumer society on the Mediterranean; the fewer Arabs, the better; the less traditional, the more cosmopolitan, the better.
For the Left it was inconceivable - simply beyond belief - that the Arab-Israel struggle would go on ad infinitum. As humanists, they couldn't abide the notion of an Israel ruling over hostile Arabs or settling land claimed by them. And, anyway, how were all these settlements going to be paid for, and at whose expense?
WHAT FOLLOWED was a scenario of political manipulation aimed at forcing Begin to change his policies or, better yet, returning the government to Labor. It was to be a multi-pronged effort: The White House would signal that the US-Israel relationship was jeopardized by Begin's election. The American Jewish leadership would radically "disassociate" its support for Israel from Begin's West Bank policies. And inside Israel, a campaign of street demonstrations and newspaper ads would create the impression that Begin's ideas were outside the mainstream.
The foreign press portrayed Begin as a former terrorist. Time magazine helpfully instructed its readers to pronounce Begin's name by rhyming it with the Dickens character Fagin. Newsweek labeled Begin a zealot and a fundamentalist.
Carter's White House immediately issued a "Notice to the Press" to set the "historical record" straight. Based on what we now know about Carter, his initial response to Begin's election is telling. You have to remember that in 1977 the Palestinian leadership wasn't even pretending to compromise. The possibility of cutting a West Bank deal with Jordan was still out there. No one was pushing a Palestinian state, and only the Arabs and the extreme Left embraced the "right of return."
But the White House engaged in a psychological campaign against Begin. If he had the hutzpa to claim that the West Bank was disputed, the White House would remind the world that Israel itself was disputed. And so it recalled: "UN General Assembly Resolution 181… [which] provided for the recognition of a Jewish and an Arab state in Palestine, and UN GA Resolution 194… [which] endorsed the [Palestinian Arab] right to return to their homes or choose compensation for lost property…"
I'll leave a fuller description of the appalling treatment Begin received at the hands of Carter, the prestige media, and much of the American Jewish leadership for another time. Suffice it to say that the president routinely pressured US Jewish leaders (who anyway were hankering for the good old Labor days) to lobby Begin to change his West Bank policies. The insinuation was that if all they did was echo the Likud platform, the community might be open to regrettable charges of dual loyalty.
IT TOOK about two months, but in July 1977 the shock of Begin's victory galvanized a group of IDF reservists, many of whose leaders happened to be associated with Jerusalem's Van Leer Foundation, to issue an open letter to the new prime minister calling on him to pull Israel back to - what amounted to - the 1949 Armistice Lines.
No thanks to Jimmy Carter, just six months after Begin came to power, in November 1977, Egyptian president Anwar Sadat accepted Begin's invitation to address the Knesset.
Peace Now took the Sadat visit as a call to arms. By January 1978, the group was pressing Begin for a more conciliatory Israeli negotiating approach.
On March 11, 1978, Fatah terrorists infiltrating by sea from Lebanon carried out what became known as the coastal road massacre. They murdered 35 Israelis and wounded another 100. Begin ordered Operation Litani to go after PLO strongholds in Fatah-controlled southern Lebanon.
None of this weakened Peace Now's resolve. By April 1, 1978, it was able to muster a rally of some 20,000 supporters in Tel Aviv. From then on, demonstrations - outside his office, home, and along the highway to the airport - would be coordinated every time Begin went to Washington to see Carter.
Peace Now took an increasingly confrontational approach to the settlement enterprise. Activists blocked roads to communities; one group marched on the Jewish enclave in Hebron. Yuval Neriya, one of Peace Now's founders, explained: "Our idea was to show the prime minister that he did not have the nation behind him when he refused to negotiate [with Sadat and Carter] over Judea and Samaria to get peace."
Tzali Reshef, another movement founder, reiterated that Peace Now opposed retention of the West Bank and Gaza; opposed the confiscation of West Bank land (whether private or not); and opposed "on moral grounds"… "colonization [which] would lead to apartheid."
Israel's resources, Reshef argued, should be invested inside the Green Line, not on settlements.
Meanwhile, in the Diaspora, in April 1978, Peace Now had captured the imagination of 37 famous American Jews, who signed a letter supporting the Israeli activists. They wanted the world to know that they too opposed a Jewish presence in the West Bank and Gaza, and urged Begin to show greater "flexibility" in negotiating with Sadat. The New York Times was instrumental in playing up the letter, putting the story on page one.
Signatories included the No. 2 man in the Reform movement, Albert Vorspan (No. 1 was Rabbi Alexander Schindler, chairman of the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations); political sociologist Seymour Martin Lipset; Ira Silverman of the American Jewish Committee; Saul Bellow, the Nobel Prize laureate; literary editor Leon Wieseltier; Rabbi Joachim Prinz, a former chair of the Presidents Conference; and professor Leonard Fein of Brandeis.
A LENGTHY and difficult negotiating process - complicated by Palestinian intransigence - between Cairo, Jerusalem and Washington finally culminated in the March 1979 Israel-Egypt peace treaty.
The signing of the treaty took some of the steam out of Peace Now, though it did manage a few big rallies. Behind the scenes, however, it was very much in operation. For instance, by 1981 activists Yuli Tamir and David Zucker broke new ground by meeting with Yasser Arafat's liaison to the Israeli peace camp, Issam Sartawi, in Austria.
But Peace Now didn't really take off again - and become the powerhouse it is today, openly funded by a host of foundations and foreign governments - until the outbreak of the June 1982 Lebanon War.
Operation Peace for Galilee, as that war was first called, was not a war of necessity, whatever its arguable merits. Janet Aviad, who had been a Peace Now leader, told me:
"There was an atmosphere in Israel that one does not dissent, especially during a war. We had to break those taboos, and it was our responsibility to do it. It was a very hard decision. Peace Now didn't go out during the first days of the war. It took three weeks to get people to realize that there was no choice."
The Left thus broke the taboo against holding anti-government rallies during wartime.
The media embraced the Peace Now complaint against Begin full-throttle. Leading the pack was The New York Times, which reported growing "dissent" within the US Jewish community. Meanwhile, its magazine fomented the "dissent" with, for instance, a cover story by Amos Oz entitled "Has Israel Altered its Vision?"
Nevertheless, the government managed to hold firm against extraordinary pressures until it expelled Arafat from Lebanon in September 1982.
AND THEN all hell broke loose. Israel's ally, the Phalangist leader Bashir Gemayel, was assassinated on September 14, 1982, in a massive explosion at his Beirut headquarters. In bloody retribution, on September 16-17, his Christian Arab militia massacred many hundreds of Palestinian Arabs in the refugee camps of Sabra and Shatilla.
No Israeli soldiers were involved, nor were any even aware of what was going on. Peace Now, however, argued that the slaughter could not have happened absent IDF "sponsorship" - after all, Israel was in military control of the area.
Of course, this begged the question of why Israeli "military control" hadn't saved Gemayel from assassination in the first place.
But it was Peace Now's big moment. It organized a gigantic Saturday-night rally on September 25, 1982, in Tel Aviv, which drew over 250,000 anguished Israelis. Begin's Lebanon policies were in shambles.
Peace Now harassed Begin without letup. Protesters stood outside his windows with signs calling him a killer; others hoisted the tally of IDF soldiers killed in action. Then, on February 11, 1983, as Peace Now was holding yet another march through a hostile Jerusalem heading for the government compound near the Knesset, where Begin's dispirited cabinet was meeting to agonize over the Kahan Commission report, tragedy struck again.
As the rally was breaking up, a troubled man, a right-winger named Yona Avrushmi, lobbed a grenade; it killed 33-year-old Emil Grunzweig, a Van Leer Foundation staffer.
In denouncing the killing, Begin was grief-stricken: "God forbid that we should go the way of heinous violence," he mourned. "God forbid."Begin would hold on just seven months longer.
LOOKING BACK all these years later, neither Begin nor Peace Now got the Israel they wanted. In the very year Emil Grunzweig was killed, and despite all of Peace Now's marches, all the newspaper ads and all the foreign support, construction began on the northern Jerusalem neighborhood of Pisgat Ze'ev - over the Green Line. Renovation of the Jewish Quarter in Jerusalem's Old City was also completed.
Peace Now was never able to mainstream its contention that Israelis could live securely within the - more or less - 1949 armistice lines, or that the Palestinians had genuinely accepted the idea of Jewish sovereignty within a truncated Israel.
Begin, for his part, was never able to sell Israelis - especially the non-Orthodox majority - on the idea that the settlement enterprise was a practical answer to Israel's West Bank dilemma.
We'll never know how things would have played out had Begin's strategy of marginalizing the PLO's intransigent external leadership not been undermined.
What if Begin's idea for genuine Palestinian autonomy, tantamount to nation-building, had been widely embraced by Israel's Left and the international community? What if autonomy had been nurtured by the resources the US and EU subsequently channeled into the Palestinian Authority? Wouldn't West Bankers and Gazans have been better off? With a political infrastructure and a history of competent self-government, wouldn't Palestinian demands for statehood today be more viable?
Begin was never given a chance, so we'll never know.
that Israel's first non-Labor prime minister
didn't have the nation behind him
This Friday marks the 15th anniversary of the death of Menachem Begin. He died of a broken heart on March 9, 1992, vilified as a warmonger by the Left and cast off by right-wing purists after he traded the Sinai Peninsula in exchange for a peace treaty with Egypt in 1979. The purists also berated Begin for his 1978 Camp David offer of five years of limited self-government to the Palestinian Arabs in Judea, Samaria and Gaza, to be followed by final-status negotiations between Israel and a Jordanian-Palestinian negotiating team - a proposal the Arabs rejected.
Begin would have been my hero even if he had never become prime minister, never ordered the destruction of Iraq's nuclear reactor, in June 1981, and never negotiated Israel's first peace treaty with an Arab neighbor.
I admired him for commanding the Irgun during the revolt against the British; and for navigating a course midway between the moderation of the Hagana and the militancy of the Stern group. Perhaps most of all, I respected his reaction to David Ben-Gurion's unforgivable order that the Hagana attack the Irgun arms-ship Altalena: Begin prevented the tragedy from deteriorating into a Jewish civil war.
After 1948, with the system stacked against him, Begin became leader of the loyal opposition. A principled ideologue and fiery orator, he campaigned forcefully in 1952 against Israeli acceptance of financial reparations from Germany - and lost. He had every reason to challenge the legitimacy of a political system in which the allocation of virtually all resources was monopolized by Mapai, but he didn't.
Granted, Begin was no saint. He didn't encourage opposition to his leadership inside Herut. But he was an honest politician, lived modestly and preserved the philosophy of Ze'ev Jabotinsky.
MOST OF THE world had never heard of Menachem Begin until May 1977, when he was elected as Israel's first non-Labor premier. But from that day until he resigned in September 1983, his spirit broken by IDF losses in the war in Lebanon and the 1982 death of his wife and life-long companion Aliza - and ultimately, I would argue, by an unparalleled five-year campaign spearheaded by Peace Now and its allies abroad to force his government to embrace dangerously accommodationist policies toward the Arabs - Begin wasn't given a moment's respite.
Never before had an Israeli premier been so beleaguered, so vilified, so undermined by an alliance of left-wing domestic opponents, the Jewish Diaspora establishment, an implacable White House led by Jimmy Carter and a spiteful international media.
His foes found him "too Jewish," and his idea of trading "peace for peace" a non-starter. Thomas L. Friedman, who reported for The New York Times, first from Beirut and then from Jerusalem during the Begin years, later thus encapsulated the left-wing attitude toward Begin: "What made Begin… dangerous was that his fantasies about power were combined with a self-perception of being a victim… Begin always reminded me of Bernhard Goetz, the white Manhattanite who shot four black youths he thought were about to mug him on the New York subway… [Begin] was Bernhard Goetz with an F-15."
Even mortal threats to Israel had to be belittled because the Left was determined that Israel withdraw from Judea, Samaria and Gaza, captured 10 years earlier in the Six Day War. Failure to do so, leftists convinced themselves, would obliterate the possibility of a rapprochement with the Arabs. No matter how blood-curdling Arab deeds were, the Left discerned intimations of Palestinian moderation which needed to be encouraged by substantive Israeli concessions.
For Begin, this was anathema. First off, he believed Jewish claims to the West Bank and Gaza were rock-solid - far superior to those of Palestinian Arab nationalists. To a media that wouldn't give him the time of day he sought to make the legal, historical and strategic case for calling the territories Jewish. And, anyway, he didn't think sacrificing the West Bank and Gaza would bring peace; he was convinced that the Arabs had not accepted the idea of a sovereign Jewish state anywhere in the land.
WHAT REALLY unified and outraged his opponents - at home and abroad - was Begin's heart-felt embrace of the settlement enterprise. By the time he took office, some 24 communities had been established under Labor governments, according to Lords of the Land by Idith Zertal and Akiva Eldar (though Gershom Gorenberg, in The Accidental Empire, claims there were nearly 80). Whatever the specifics, the first settlements included Kfar Etzion, Alon Shvut, Ma'aleh Adumim, Kiryat Arba, Elazar and Ofra. In fact, the first yishuv to be re-established after the Six Day War was in Gush Etzion, just south of Jerusalem, in September 1967.
For strategic reasons, as well as to solidify Israel's claim to the capital, Labor governments were eager to build in and around metropolitan Jerusalem and over the Green Line. But Labor only reluctantly allowed Gush Emunim's Orthodox settlers, who were inspired by a combination of theology, messianic zeal and nationalism, to build "non-strategic" settlements.
On May 19, 1977, just after his election, Begin (accompanied by Ariel Sharon) drove to Elon Moreh (Kaddum) outside Nablus. Here is the scene as described by Gorenberg:
"Begin, with a ring of thin black hair and heavy glasses that magnified his eyes, looked exhausted. His two bodyguards could not hold off the crowd. People kissed him, embraced him. Yeshiva students danced around him. After a brief tour, he stood in the square between the mobile homes and took the velvet-covered scroll in one arm, putting the other around Ariel Sharon's shoulder. Four men took the corners of [the] prayer shawl and held it over his head; a band prepared to play.
"Before the ceremony, Begin made a statement to the crowd. 'Soon,' he said, 'there will be many more Elon Morehs.'"
Begin was not going to "tolerate" settlements; he was going to make building them government policy. And this the US administration could not tolerate because it went against bedrock US policy: Israel would trade land for peace, and if there was no West Bank to trade - somewhere down the line when the Arabs would presumably be willing to take it - there would be no possibility of peace.
Nor would the Israeli Left tolerate settling the biblical Jewish heartland. It had a very different vision of Israel - a Western-oriented consumer society on the Mediterranean; the fewer Arabs, the better; the less traditional, the more cosmopolitan, the better.
For the Left it was inconceivable - simply beyond belief - that the Arab-Israel struggle would go on ad infinitum. As humanists, they couldn't abide the notion of an Israel ruling over hostile Arabs or settling land claimed by them. And, anyway, how were all these settlements going to be paid for, and at whose expense?
WHAT FOLLOWED was a scenario of political manipulation aimed at forcing Begin to change his policies or, better yet, returning the government to Labor. It was to be a multi-pronged effort: The White House would signal that the US-Israel relationship was jeopardized by Begin's election. The American Jewish leadership would radically "disassociate" its support for Israel from Begin's West Bank policies. And inside Israel, a campaign of street demonstrations and newspaper ads would create the impression that Begin's ideas were outside the mainstream.
The foreign press portrayed Begin as a former terrorist. Time magazine helpfully instructed its readers to pronounce Begin's name by rhyming it with the Dickens character Fagin. Newsweek labeled Begin a zealot and a fundamentalist.
Carter's White House immediately issued a "Notice to the Press" to set the "historical record" straight. Based on what we now know about Carter, his initial response to Begin's election is telling. You have to remember that in 1977 the Palestinian leadership wasn't even pretending to compromise. The possibility of cutting a West Bank deal with Jordan was still out there. No one was pushing a Palestinian state, and only the Arabs and the extreme Left embraced the "right of return."
But the White House engaged in a psychological campaign against Begin. If he had the hutzpa to claim that the West Bank was disputed, the White House would remind the world that Israel itself was disputed. And so it recalled: "UN General Assembly Resolution 181… [which] provided for the recognition of a Jewish and an Arab state in Palestine, and UN GA Resolution 194… [which] endorsed the [Palestinian Arab] right to return to their homes or choose compensation for lost property…"
I'll leave a fuller description of the appalling treatment Begin received at the hands of Carter, the prestige media, and much of the American Jewish leadership for another time. Suffice it to say that the president routinely pressured US Jewish leaders (who anyway were hankering for the good old Labor days) to lobby Begin to change his West Bank policies. The insinuation was that if all they did was echo the Likud platform, the community might be open to regrettable charges of dual loyalty.
IT TOOK about two months, but in July 1977 the shock of Begin's victory galvanized a group of IDF reservists, many of whose leaders happened to be associated with Jerusalem's Van Leer Foundation, to issue an open letter to the new prime minister calling on him to pull Israel back to - what amounted to - the 1949 Armistice Lines.
No thanks to Jimmy Carter, just six months after Begin came to power, in November 1977, Egyptian president Anwar Sadat accepted Begin's invitation to address the Knesset.
Peace Now took the Sadat visit as a call to arms. By January 1978, the group was pressing Begin for a more conciliatory Israeli negotiating approach.
On March 11, 1978, Fatah terrorists infiltrating by sea from Lebanon carried out what became known as the coastal road massacre. They murdered 35 Israelis and wounded another 100. Begin ordered Operation Litani to go after PLO strongholds in Fatah-controlled southern Lebanon.
None of this weakened Peace Now's resolve. By April 1, 1978, it was able to muster a rally of some 20,000 supporters in Tel Aviv. From then on, demonstrations - outside his office, home, and along the highway to the airport - would be coordinated every time Begin went to Washington to see Carter.
Peace Now took an increasingly confrontational approach to the settlement enterprise. Activists blocked roads to communities; one group marched on the Jewish enclave in Hebron. Yuval Neriya, one of Peace Now's founders, explained: "Our idea was to show the prime minister that he did not have the nation behind him when he refused to negotiate [with Sadat and Carter] over Judea and Samaria to get peace."
Tzali Reshef, another movement founder, reiterated that Peace Now opposed retention of the West Bank and Gaza; opposed the confiscation of West Bank land (whether private or not); and opposed "on moral grounds"… "colonization [which] would lead to apartheid."
Israel's resources, Reshef argued, should be invested inside the Green Line, not on settlements.
Meanwhile, in the Diaspora, in April 1978, Peace Now had captured the imagination of 37 famous American Jews, who signed a letter supporting the Israeli activists. They wanted the world to know that they too opposed a Jewish presence in the West Bank and Gaza, and urged Begin to show greater "flexibility" in negotiating with Sadat. The New York Times was instrumental in playing up the letter, putting the story on page one.
Signatories included the No. 2 man in the Reform movement, Albert Vorspan (No. 1 was Rabbi Alexander Schindler, chairman of the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations); political sociologist Seymour Martin Lipset; Ira Silverman of the American Jewish Committee; Saul Bellow, the Nobel Prize laureate; literary editor Leon Wieseltier; Rabbi Joachim Prinz, a former chair of the Presidents Conference; and professor Leonard Fein of Brandeis.
A LENGTHY and difficult negotiating process - complicated by Palestinian intransigence - between Cairo, Jerusalem and Washington finally culminated in the March 1979 Israel-Egypt peace treaty.
The signing of the treaty took some of the steam out of Peace Now, though it did manage a few big rallies. Behind the scenes, however, it was very much in operation. For instance, by 1981 activists Yuli Tamir and David Zucker broke new ground by meeting with Yasser Arafat's liaison to the Israeli peace camp, Issam Sartawi, in Austria.
But Peace Now didn't really take off again - and become the powerhouse it is today, openly funded by a host of foundations and foreign governments - until the outbreak of the June 1982 Lebanon War.
Operation Peace for Galilee, as that war was first called, was not a war of necessity, whatever its arguable merits. Janet Aviad, who had been a Peace Now leader, told me:
"There was an atmosphere in Israel that one does not dissent, especially during a war. We had to break those taboos, and it was our responsibility to do it. It was a very hard decision. Peace Now didn't go out during the first days of the war. It took three weeks to get people to realize that there was no choice."
The Left thus broke the taboo against holding anti-government rallies during wartime.
The media embraced the Peace Now complaint against Begin full-throttle. Leading the pack was The New York Times, which reported growing "dissent" within the US Jewish community. Meanwhile, its magazine fomented the "dissent" with, for instance, a cover story by Amos Oz entitled "Has Israel Altered its Vision?"
Nevertheless, the government managed to hold firm against extraordinary pressures until it expelled Arafat from Lebanon in September 1982.
AND THEN all hell broke loose. Israel's ally, the Phalangist leader Bashir Gemayel, was assassinated on September 14, 1982, in a massive explosion at his Beirut headquarters. In bloody retribution, on September 16-17, his Christian Arab militia massacred many hundreds of Palestinian Arabs in the refugee camps of Sabra and Shatilla.
No Israeli soldiers were involved, nor were any even aware of what was going on. Peace Now, however, argued that the slaughter could not have happened absent IDF "sponsorship" - after all, Israel was in military control of the area.
Of course, this begged the question of why Israeli "military control" hadn't saved Gemayel from assassination in the first place.
But it was Peace Now's big moment. It organized a gigantic Saturday-night rally on September 25, 1982, in Tel Aviv, which drew over 250,000 anguished Israelis. Begin's Lebanon policies were in shambles.
Peace Now harassed Begin without letup. Protesters stood outside his windows with signs calling him a killer; others hoisted the tally of IDF soldiers killed in action. Then, on February 11, 1983, as Peace Now was holding yet another march through a hostile Jerusalem heading for the government compound near the Knesset, where Begin's dispirited cabinet was meeting to agonize over the Kahan Commission report, tragedy struck again.
As the rally was breaking up, a troubled man, a right-winger named Yona Avrushmi, lobbed a grenade; it killed 33-year-old Emil Grunzweig, a Van Leer Foundation staffer.
In denouncing the killing, Begin was grief-stricken: "God forbid that we should go the way of heinous violence," he mourned. "God forbid."Begin would hold on just seven months longer.
LOOKING BACK all these years later, neither Begin nor Peace Now got the Israel they wanted. In the very year Emil Grunzweig was killed, and despite all of Peace Now's marches, all the newspaper ads and all the foreign support, construction began on the northern Jerusalem neighborhood of Pisgat Ze'ev - over the Green Line. Renovation of the Jewish Quarter in Jerusalem's Old City was also completed.
Peace Now was never able to mainstream its contention that Israelis could live securely within the - more or less - 1949 armistice lines, or that the Palestinians had genuinely accepted the idea of Jewish sovereignty within a truncated Israel.
Begin, for his part, was never able to sell Israelis - especially the non-Orthodox majority - on the idea that the settlement enterprise was a practical answer to Israel's West Bank dilemma.
We'll never know how things would have played out had Begin's strategy of marginalizing the PLO's intransigent external leadership not been undermined.
What if Begin's idea for genuine Palestinian autonomy, tantamount to nation-building, had been widely embraced by Israel's Left and the international community? What if autonomy had been nurtured by the resources the US and EU subsequently channeled into the Palestinian Authority? Wouldn't West Bankers and Gazans have been better off? With a political infrastructure and a history of competent self-government, wouldn't Palestinian demands for statehood today be more viable?
Begin was never given a chance, so we'll never know.
I am an Israel briefer and analyst, a political scientist, and a speaker on Jewish civilization. I'm also a rewrite guy & fact-checker, who can make your writing clear and compelling & help you contextualize.
Wednesday, February 21, 2007
Bear knuckles - Russia, Israel & the Mideast
Why would Russia take part in a clash of civilizations when it can both sell nuclear technology to Iran and open a cultural center in TA?
Strange things are happening in Russia. Take a recent BBC report: The Russian military is investigating claims by a certain Pvt. Andrei Sychev that when he refused orders to work as a male prostitute in St. Petersburg, fellow soldiers hazing the new recruit so brutalized him that he developed gangrene in his legs and genitals, requiring amputation.
And pity the reporter who broke that story; since Vladimir Putin was formally elected as president in 2000, 13 journalists have been murdered - the latest, Anna Politkovskaya, gunned down in the lobby of her Moscow apartment building last year.
I used to be an avid Soviet watcher, but with the empire's collapse in December 1991 and the vanishing of the Soviet Jewry issue, I frankly lost interest. Absent the winner-take-all rivalry between liberty and tyranny, the travails of a buckled Russia didn't much interest me.
But what belatedly captured my attention, beyond the poor soldier with the gangrened private parts, was Putin's in-your-face February 10 speech at the Munich Security Conference before senior US and European leaders. Time magazine called it "a striking impersonation of Michael Corleone in The Godfather - the embodiment of implicit menace."
It was the tone as much as the substance that was so unnerving. Putin brazenly accused the US of making the world more dangerous than at any point since the Cold War: "We are witnessing an almost uncontained hyper-use of military force in international relations. One country, the United States, has overstepped its national borders in every way."
America's unilateralist policies, he complained, were prompting "a number of countries to acquire weapons of mass destruction."
Russia has been unhappy with the US for some time over its handling of Afghanistan, its inroads into former Soviet republics, and particularly the US invasion of Iraq.
Putin's generals are threatening to abrogate Cold War-era agreements banning intermediate-range nuclear missiles in retaliation for Washington's plans to deploy an anti-missile defense system in Poland and the Czech Republic, ostensibly to counter new threats from Iran.
SIXTEEN YEARS after the breakup of the Soviet Union Mother Russia is back, more powerful than at any time since the empire's demise.
Russia's foreign policy may be, as Winston Churchill's 1939 aphorism had it, a "riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma."
"But perhaps there is a key," Churchill continued: "That key is Russian national interest."
Start with the Slavic cultural mind-set: a heritage of imperialism, a habitual distrust for - yet envy of - the West, and a disposition toward authoritarianism. Geography also determines foreign policy; Russia has interests extending from Europe to Asia and onto the Middle East.
Moscow is not the "mischief-maker" it once was, Russia expert Marshall Goldman, professor emeritus at Harvard University, told me over the phone.
The Soviets used to facilitate terrorism and arm Israel's enemies. The good news, says Goldman, is that they're no longer promoting terrorism. The bad news is arms sales are brisk. The Russians recently delivered an anti-missile system to Iran worth $1.4 billion; last year Moscow sold Syria the Strelet anti-aircraft system. Russian-made (Syrian-supplied) Fagot and Kornet anti-tank missiles were reportedly used to devastating effect against the IDF by Hizbullah during the summer's Lebanon War.
Russia markets weapons to 61 countries. China and India are its biggest clients despite the not unreasonable expectation that they might be Moscow's rivals in future decades.
Putin's goal is to play the geopolitical game and keep Russia's arms industry humming. It keeps Russian workers employed and provides the necessary infrastructure for Putin's resurgent big-power ambitions.
MARK MEDISH, a top Russia-watcher at Washington's Carnegie Foundation, told me in an e-mail exchange that the old geo-strategic US-Soviet rivalry which once animated Russian behavior has lost its Cold-War intensity.
Gone are the client states and subversive activities. The ethos of Russian foreign policy today, says Medish, is "one of restored national pride, verging on over-assertiveness. Russia is still a relatively weak power and the Kremlin is traditionally good at playing the long strategic game with patience; the Russians know how to play black on the chessboard."
Israeli sources say Russia's main foreign policy goal is to keep the international community dependent on it. Moscow participates in every possible international forum - even holding observer status in the Organization of the Islamic Conference. An application for observer status in the Arab League is pending.
Goldman, who has met both Putin and George W. Bush, says the two men genuinely seem to trust one another. Even as Putin denounces Washington, he refers to Bush as a man he can do business with, echoing Margaret Thatcher's "We can do business together," referring to Mikhail Gorbachev.
Personal chemistry can, of course, prove deceptive. Harry S Truman thought he had Stalin all figured out: "I got very well acquainted with Joe Stalin, and I like old Joe! He is a decent fellow. But Joe is a prisoner of the Politburo."
Yeah, right.
Whether personality matters or not, today's Putin is a very different man from the one who took power some seven years ago, says Harvard's Goldman. Then energy prices were low and Russia's power was at a nadir. The price of oil hovered below $20 a barrel. Today it's around $60.
Russia is now the biggest producer of petroleum and natural gas. Oil brings Russia wealth; gas gives it leverage over a Europe dependent on a pipeline controlled by Putin, says Goldman.
Granted the economy has only recently begun to diversify, and it remains dependent on oil and gas revenues, but Moscow now has the third-largest reserve of hard currency in the world (close to $301 billion at the end of 2006). Not bad when you consider that eight years ago the country was bankrupt.
FOR ISRAEL, what matters most is how Russia exercises its burgeoning influence in our part of the world, and in particular vis-a-vis Iran's quest for nuclear weapons.
It's the Russians who are building the Iranian nuclear reactor at Bushehr; and they have plans to build six more similar facilities. Yet every expert I spoke with is convinced that Russia does not want to see a nuclear-armed Islamic Republic of Iran.
With all that, Moscow is prepared to allow negotiations with Teheran over its nuclear weapons program to drag on till the cows come home. That message also came through loud and clear in Herb Keinon's February 16 Post interview with Andrey Demidov, Russia's top diplomat in Tel Aviv.
But how can Russia facilitate Iran's nuclear program, stymie American-led efforts to impose sanctions against Teheran - and still be perceived as genuinely opposing a nuclear-armed Islamic Republic?
The answer demands a certain amount of Machiavellian thinking: The longer the crisis drags on, the greater is Russia's leverage.
Putin does want to stop Iran from building atom bombs. He recognizes the danger. That's one reason, Goldman says, why Putin wants Iranian nuclear waste transferred to Russia so it doesn't wind up getting recycled into weapons.
On Monday, the Russians announced that further work on the nearly completed Bushehr facility was being delayed, ostensibly because of a dispute over monthly payment arrangements.
To visiting Israelis, Putin intimates that he takes his commitment to Ariel Sharon to heart: Russia will not be the one to tip the strategic balance against Israel. At the same time, Putin is swayed by countervailing pressures to keep Russian factories in business, which is why Russia sold Iran nuclear technology in the first place.
So is Russia, inadvertently, selling Iran the rope by which it will one day hang Moscow, together with the rest of us? Medish, the Carnegie expert, doesn't buy it: "Let's be frank: It was the US ally Pakistan, whose rogue scientist AQ Khan sold Iran most of the 'rope' since the mid-1980s, even as [the US was] rightly lecturing Moscow about the dangers of the Iranian nuclear program."
Medish grants that "Russia has underestimated the risk, and was certainly careless with technology transfers until the mid-1990s, but far less so in the past decade."
He agrees with Goldman that the Kremlin would strongly prefer not to see a nuclear Iran. "But they do not fear it. Nuclear Pakistan looks far riskier from Moscow."
According to Medish, "The real question is how much leverage the Russians have with Teheran. The answer could be less than some experts suppose; certainly less than the Chinese have in the North Korean case."
WHATEVER ITS clout, let's just say Russia doesn't always use it to Israel's benefit. As a member of the Quartet (along with the UN, EU, and US) Moscow's behavior can be downright unhelpful.
Take its reaction to the February 8 Mecca agreement between Fatah and Hamas. Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov's spin was that the deal brought the Palestinians closer to meeting the Quartet's demands for recognition of Israel, renunciation of terrorism and acceptance of previous agreements - a very generous interpretation of what actually happened.
And chances are this will remain Moscow's line at the Quartet's scheduled meeting today in Berlin.
The Russians like the Mecca deal because they've all along opposed isolating Hamas, arguing that the Islamic Resistance Movement needs to be enticed toward becoming a purely political force.
This is why, on his visit to the region last week, Putin said he hoped sanctions against the Palestinian Authority would soon be lifted. He also pushed for a regional peace conference that would, presumably, include Damascus, an approach neither Washington nor Jerusalem is keen on. To be fair, Putin also urged the Palestinians to honor the PLO's past commitments and return kidnapped IDF soldier Gilad Shalit.
Putin didn't come to Israel this time (he made an unprecedented visit to Jerusalem in April 2005), but he spoke with Prime Minister Ehud Olmert by telephone after the Mecca agreement was announced. When he left the region Putin sent an emissary to brief Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni on his talks.
ISRAEL UNDERSTANDS that Russia is a force in Middle East politics, being the only actor that can speak with all parties in the region including Hamas, Hizbullah, Syria and Iran. Not much can be accomplished if Russia is not on board; even as Moscow realizes that not much can be achieved absent Jerusalem's acquiescence.
The Russians say they feel a cultural affinity with Israel's large Russian-speaking population; and trade relations have never been better. There are daily El Al flights; Russian news bureaus maintain a presence in Jerusalem; a Russian consulate was recently opened in Haifa, and a cultural center is due to open in Tel Aviv.
The message from Moscow is that whoever Israel has a problem with, Russia has entree. Of course, the opposite is also true: Russia's interests with Iran, the Palestinian Authority, Hizbullah and Syria often conflict head-on with Israel's.
And when it comes to what is arguably the preeminent crisis of our time - the Islamist threat - Russia's attitude is thanks, but no thanks: What Moscow does not want is to participate in the clash of civilizations. This allows Putin to dissociate his own little etho-Islamist uprising in Chechnya - to pick just one example - from the larger "war on terror" being waged by Washington.
BACK HOME, meanwhile, don't expect Russia to develop into a Western-style democracy. Its political culture makes that near-impossible. Elections are due to take place in the Duma (parliament) in December 2007, and for the presidency in March 2008.
This will be an essentially cosmetic exercise. A seven percent electoral threshold, not to mention an inability to validate signatures to get their parties on the ballot, makes it difficult for Western-oriented reformist parties - an anyway fragmented bunch - to make much headway.
Putin, now only 54, is Russia's indisputable godfather. He may have aspirations to play a kind of Deng Xiaoping role, remaining a permanent behind-the-scenes authority even after formally leaving office. One rumor has him moving over to Gazprom, the state-controlled gas monopoly.
As the Carnegie's Mark Medish explains, "Power groups within the Kremlin are probably struggling to agree on an acceptable formula to allow Putin to retire, while putting in place a new leadership that is strong enough to maintain the current power-sharing arrangements."
Think of it, he says, as a sort of "guided democracy."
GOLDMAN characterizes the cadre that wields power - this nomenklatura - as comprising KGB-types who sit in the Kremlin making governmental decisions, and in state-controlled industries like Gazprom calling the economic shots.
In a book due out soon, Goldman terms this interlocking directorate an "oilogopoly." They've essentially re-nationalized all the industries that matter. And while the media is not state-owned, it is controlled by those who don't want to get on the oilogopoly's bad side. For instance, Gazprom runs a number of newspapers, including Izvestia.
Mind you, the oilogopoly doesn't mind people making a ruble. But it draws the line at allowing anyone to combine wealth, power and a desire to influence Russian politics, especially in a direction at odds with the course Putin has set. Mikhail Khodorkovsky can confirm that.
SO HOW should Israel relate to a resurgent Russia? The easy path would be to label Russia's political culture retrograde - think the brutalized Pvt. Andrei Sychev - its Middle East policies "anti-Israel" and Vladimir Putin himself an "anti-Semite." Such labeling would make some Israelis who don't want to acknowledge Russia's influence feel smug.
But creating a broiges by nursing our grievances would be counterproductive. Our disagreements - and this is where Time's Michael Corleone-Godfather allusion truly applies - are in the realm of business and politics. In other words, they are not "personal."
Putin is no anti-Semite. And what goes on inside Russia isn't our problem.
Pragmatically, Russia needs to be kept engaged with the West. For Israel, that means keeping ties on an even keel, even when Moscow's interests conflict with our own.
Whether on the Quartet, Hamas or Iran, realpolitik dictates that Jerusalem apply a variation of president Lyndon B. Johnson's first rule of Texas politics: It is better to have the Russians inside the tent pissing out, than outside pissing in.
Strange things are happening in Russia. Take a recent BBC report: The Russian military is investigating claims by a certain Pvt. Andrei Sychev that when he refused orders to work as a male prostitute in St. Petersburg, fellow soldiers hazing the new recruit so brutalized him that he developed gangrene in his legs and genitals, requiring amputation.
And pity the reporter who broke that story; since Vladimir Putin was formally elected as president in 2000, 13 journalists have been murdered - the latest, Anna Politkovskaya, gunned down in the lobby of her Moscow apartment building last year.
I used to be an avid Soviet watcher, but with the empire's collapse in December 1991 and the vanishing of the Soviet Jewry issue, I frankly lost interest. Absent the winner-take-all rivalry between liberty and tyranny, the travails of a buckled Russia didn't much interest me.
But what belatedly captured my attention, beyond the poor soldier with the gangrened private parts, was Putin's in-your-face February 10 speech at the Munich Security Conference before senior US and European leaders. Time magazine called it "a striking impersonation of Michael Corleone in The Godfather - the embodiment of implicit menace."
It was the tone as much as the substance that was so unnerving. Putin brazenly accused the US of making the world more dangerous than at any point since the Cold War: "We are witnessing an almost uncontained hyper-use of military force in international relations. One country, the United States, has overstepped its national borders in every way."
America's unilateralist policies, he complained, were prompting "a number of countries to acquire weapons of mass destruction."
Russia has been unhappy with the US for some time over its handling of Afghanistan, its inroads into former Soviet republics, and particularly the US invasion of Iraq.
Putin's generals are threatening to abrogate Cold War-era agreements banning intermediate-range nuclear missiles in retaliation for Washington's plans to deploy an anti-missile defense system in Poland and the Czech Republic, ostensibly to counter new threats from Iran.
SIXTEEN YEARS after the breakup of the Soviet Union Mother Russia is back, more powerful than at any time since the empire's demise.
Russia's foreign policy may be, as Winston Churchill's 1939 aphorism had it, a "riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma."
"But perhaps there is a key," Churchill continued: "That key is Russian national interest."
Start with the Slavic cultural mind-set: a heritage of imperialism, a habitual distrust for - yet envy of - the West, and a disposition toward authoritarianism. Geography also determines foreign policy; Russia has interests extending from Europe to Asia and onto the Middle East.
Moscow is not the "mischief-maker" it once was, Russia expert Marshall Goldman, professor emeritus at Harvard University, told me over the phone.
The Soviets used to facilitate terrorism and arm Israel's enemies. The good news, says Goldman, is that they're no longer promoting terrorism. The bad news is arms sales are brisk. The Russians recently delivered an anti-missile system to Iran worth $1.4 billion; last year Moscow sold Syria the Strelet anti-aircraft system. Russian-made (Syrian-supplied) Fagot and Kornet anti-tank missiles were reportedly used to devastating effect against the IDF by Hizbullah during the summer's Lebanon War.
Russia markets weapons to 61 countries. China and India are its biggest clients despite the not unreasonable expectation that they might be Moscow's rivals in future decades.
Putin's goal is to play the geopolitical game and keep Russia's arms industry humming. It keeps Russian workers employed and provides the necessary infrastructure for Putin's resurgent big-power ambitions.
MARK MEDISH, a top Russia-watcher at Washington's Carnegie Foundation, told me in an e-mail exchange that the old geo-strategic US-Soviet rivalry which once animated Russian behavior has lost its Cold-War intensity.
Gone are the client states and subversive activities. The ethos of Russian foreign policy today, says Medish, is "one of restored national pride, verging on over-assertiveness. Russia is still a relatively weak power and the Kremlin is traditionally good at playing the long strategic game with patience; the Russians know how to play black on the chessboard."
Israeli sources say Russia's main foreign policy goal is to keep the international community dependent on it. Moscow participates in every possible international forum - even holding observer status in the Organization of the Islamic Conference. An application for observer status in the Arab League is pending.
Goldman, who has met both Putin and George W. Bush, says the two men genuinely seem to trust one another. Even as Putin denounces Washington, he refers to Bush as a man he can do business with, echoing Margaret Thatcher's "We can do business together," referring to Mikhail Gorbachev.
Personal chemistry can, of course, prove deceptive. Harry S Truman thought he had Stalin all figured out: "I got very well acquainted with Joe Stalin, and I like old Joe! He is a decent fellow. But Joe is a prisoner of the Politburo."
Yeah, right.
Whether personality matters or not, today's Putin is a very different man from the one who took power some seven years ago, says Harvard's Goldman. Then energy prices were low and Russia's power was at a nadir. The price of oil hovered below $20 a barrel. Today it's around $60.
Russia is now the biggest producer of petroleum and natural gas. Oil brings Russia wealth; gas gives it leverage over a Europe dependent on a pipeline controlled by Putin, says Goldman.
Granted the economy has only recently begun to diversify, and it remains dependent on oil and gas revenues, but Moscow now has the third-largest reserve of hard currency in the world (close to $301 billion at the end of 2006). Not bad when you consider that eight years ago the country was bankrupt.
FOR ISRAEL, what matters most is how Russia exercises its burgeoning influence in our part of the world, and in particular vis-a-vis Iran's quest for nuclear weapons.
It's the Russians who are building the Iranian nuclear reactor at Bushehr; and they have plans to build six more similar facilities. Yet every expert I spoke with is convinced that Russia does not want to see a nuclear-armed Islamic Republic of Iran.
With all that, Moscow is prepared to allow negotiations with Teheran over its nuclear weapons program to drag on till the cows come home. That message also came through loud and clear in Herb Keinon's February 16 Post interview with Andrey Demidov, Russia's top diplomat in Tel Aviv.
But how can Russia facilitate Iran's nuclear program, stymie American-led efforts to impose sanctions against Teheran - and still be perceived as genuinely opposing a nuclear-armed Islamic Republic?
The answer demands a certain amount of Machiavellian thinking: The longer the crisis drags on, the greater is Russia's leverage.
Putin does want to stop Iran from building atom bombs. He recognizes the danger. That's one reason, Goldman says, why Putin wants Iranian nuclear waste transferred to Russia so it doesn't wind up getting recycled into weapons.
On Monday, the Russians announced that further work on the nearly completed Bushehr facility was being delayed, ostensibly because of a dispute over monthly payment arrangements.
To visiting Israelis, Putin intimates that he takes his commitment to Ariel Sharon to heart: Russia will not be the one to tip the strategic balance against Israel. At the same time, Putin is swayed by countervailing pressures to keep Russian factories in business, which is why Russia sold Iran nuclear technology in the first place.
So is Russia, inadvertently, selling Iran the rope by which it will one day hang Moscow, together with the rest of us? Medish, the Carnegie expert, doesn't buy it: "Let's be frank: It was the US ally Pakistan, whose rogue scientist AQ Khan sold Iran most of the 'rope' since the mid-1980s, even as [the US was] rightly lecturing Moscow about the dangers of the Iranian nuclear program."
Medish grants that "Russia has underestimated the risk, and was certainly careless with technology transfers until the mid-1990s, but far less so in the past decade."
He agrees with Goldman that the Kremlin would strongly prefer not to see a nuclear Iran. "But they do not fear it. Nuclear Pakistan looks far riskier from Moscow."
According to Medish, "The real question is how much leverage the Russians have with Teheran. The answer could be less than some experts suppose; certainly less than the Chinese have in the North Korean case."
WHATEVER ITS clout, let's just say Russia doesn't always use it to Israel's benefit. As a member of the Quartet (along with the UN, EU, and US) Moscow's behavior can be downright unhelpful.
Take its reaction to the February 8 Mecca agreement between Fatah and Hamas. Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov's spin was that the deal brought the Palestinians closer to meeting the Quartet's demands for recognition of Israel, renunciation of terrorism and acceptance of previous agreements - a very generous interpretation of what actually happened.
And chances are this will remain Moscow's line at the Quartet's scheduled meeting today in Berlin.
The Russians like the Mecca deal because they've all along opposed isolating Hamas, arguing that the Islamic Resistance Movement needs to be enticed toward becoming a purely political force.
This is why, on his visit to the region last week, Putin said he hoped sanctions against the Palestinian Authority would soon be lifted. He also pushed for a regional peace conference that would, presumably, include Damascus, an approach neither Washington nor Jerusalem is keen on. To be fair, Putin also urged the Palestinians to honor the PLO's past commitments and return kidnapped IDF soldier Gilad Shalit.
Putin didn't come to Israel this time (he made an unprecedented visit to Jerusalem in April 2005), but he spoke with Prime Minister Ehud Olmert by telephone after the Mecca agreement was announced. When he left the region Putin sent an emissary to brief Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni on his talks.
ISRAEL UNDERSTANDS that Russia is a force in Middle East politics, being the only actor that can speak with all parties in the region including Hamas, Hizbullah, Syria and Iran. Not much can be accomplished if Russia is not on board; even as Moscow realizes that not much can be achieved absent Jerusalem's acquiescence.
The Russians say they feel a cultural affinity with Israel's large Russian-speaking population; and trade relations have never been better. There are daily El Al flights; Russian news bureaus maintain a presence in Jerusalem; a Russian consulate was recently opened in Haifa, and a cultural center is due to open in Tel Aviv.
The message from Moscow is that whoever Israel has a problem with, Russia has entree. Of course, the opposite is also true: Russia's interests with Iran, the Palestinian Authority, Hizbullah and Syria often conflict head-on with Israel's.
And when it comes to what is arguably the preeminent crisis of our time - the Islamist threat - Russia's attitude is thanks, but no thanks: What Moscow does not want is to participate in the clash of civilizations. This allows Putin to dissociate his own little etho-Islamist uprising in Chechnya - to pick just one example - from the larger "war on terror" being waged by Washington.
BACK HOME, meanwhile, don't expect Russia to develop into a Western-style democracy. Its political culture makes that near-impossible. Elections are due to take place in the Duma (parliament) in December 2007, and for the presidency in March 2008.
This will be an essentially cosmetic exercise. A seven percent electoral threshold, not to mention an inability to validate signatures to get their parties on the ballot, makes it difficult for Western-oriented reformist parties - an anyway fragmented bunch - to make much headway.
Putin, now only 54, is Russia's indisputable godfather. He may have aspirations to play a kind of Deng Xiaoping role, remaining a permanent behind-the-scenes authority even after formally leaving office. One rumor has him moving over to Gazprom, the state-controlled gas monopoly.
As the Carnegie's Mark Medish explains, "Power groups within the Kremlin are probably struggling to agree on an acceptable formula to allow Putin to retire, while putting in place a new leadership that is strong enough to maintain the current power-sharing arrangements."
Think of it, he says, as a sort of "guided democracy."
GOLDMAN characterizes the cadre that wields power - this nomenklatura - as comprising KGB-types who sit in the Kremlin making governmental decisions, and in state-controlled industries like Gazprom calling the economic shots.
In a book due out soon, Goldman terms this interlocking directorate an "oilogopoly." They've essentially re-nationalized all the industries that matter. And while the media is not state-owned, it is controlled by those who don't want to get on the oilogopoly's bad side. For instance, Gazprom runs a number of newspapers, including Izvestia.
Mind you, the oilogopoly doesn't mind people making a ruble. But it draws the line at allowing anyone to combine wealth, power and a desire to influence Russian politics, especially in a direction at odds with the course Putin has set. Mikhail Khodorkovsky can confirm that.
SO HOW should Israel relate to a resurgent Russia? The easy path would be to label Russia's political culture retrograde - think the brutalized Pvt. Andrei Sychev - its Middle East policies "anti-Israel" and Vladimir Putin himself an "anti-Semite." Such labeling would make some Israelis who don't want to acknowledge Russia's influence feel smug.
But creating a broiges by nursing our grievances would be counterproductive. Our disagreements - and this is where Time's Michael Corleone-Godfather allusion truly applies - are in the realm of business and politics. In other words, they are not "personal."
Putin is no anti-Semite. And what goes on inside Russia isn't our problem.
Pragmatically, Russia needs to be kept engaged with the West. For Israel, that means keeping ties on an even keel, even when Moscow's interests conflict with our own.
Whether on the Quartet, Hamas or Iran, realpolitik dictates that Jerusalem apply a variation of president Lyndon B. Johnson's first rule of Texas politics: It is better to have the Russians inside the tent pissing out, than outside pissing in.
I am an Israel briefer and analyst, a political scientist, and a speaker on Jewish civilization. I'm also a rewrite guy & fact-checker, who can make your writing clear and compelling & help you contextualize.
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