REBRANDING POLAND

How should Jews think of Poland?

As Israel's best friend in the European Union, according to the Israel Council on Foreign Relations and the Polish Institute for International Affairs, organizers of a recent [September 19-20] Jerusalem conference which marked the resumption of diplomatic relations between the two countries twenty years ago.

It is time, they emphatically say, to take a more nuanced view of Poland; to obsess less about the killing fields implanted on Polish soil by Nazi Germany and reflect more broadly on the preceding 1,000 years of Jewish civilization.

It's not an easy sell. The image framed by Polish-born former prime minister Yitzhak Shamir of Poles imbibing anti-Semitism with their mothers’ milk persists. The reasons are plain.

Before a single Nazi boot set foot in Poland, Jewish college students had been obliged to sit on segregated classroom benches. By 1937 a "cold pogrom" had systematically eliminated Jews from Polish economic life. There is Jedwabne, where in July 1941, 1,600 Jews were burned alive in a barn by local Poles before the Nazis could lay hands on them. There is the 1946 pogrom in Kielce which claimed the lives of 42 Jews who had survived the Holocaust.

Moreover, Communist Poland's post World War II record toward Jews and Israel is also spotty. To its credit, Poland allowed the Haganah to set up a military training camp and was among the first to recognize Israel's independence. On the other hand, when Stalin's policy shifted against Israel so did Poland's. By 1953 Israeli diplomats had been declared persona non grata.

The elevation of Wladyslaw Gomulka in 1956 improved matters. Relations remained muted, but Polish authorities permitted tens of thousands of Jews to make aliya. However, with the 1967 Six Day War, Gomulka not only broke diplomatic and trade relations with Israel, anti-Semitism again became an element of domestic propaganda. In the 1970s low level trade ties with Israel resumed. By 1986, as the party began having doubts about the permanence of the Soviet empire, Poland sought improved relations with Israel in the transparent hope of impressing the U.S. "Jewish lobby" and thereby swaying Washington.

Momentously, relations between democratic Poland and Israel were re-established shortly after the communists lost power. Since then Warsaw has gone to great lengths to rebrand its image among Jews. When the Soviets allowed indirect Jewish immigration to Israel, Poland in 1990 crucially provided a clandestine staging area enabling 100,000 souls to reach Zion. In 1995, Poland created the post of minister plenipotentiary for Polish-Jewish relations.

Over the years, President Shimon Peres, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Defense Minister Ehud Barak were all welcomed in Poland. Jewish travelers describe a country whose elites genuinely want to turn over a new leaf. Israeli and Jewish authors are prominently featured in bookstores. Kletzmer music is all the rage. A renewal of Jewish life is underway. And a Jewish museum is under construction in Warsaw.

Annual trade between Poland and Israel stands at $500 million. Polish entrepreneurs seek to invest in Israeli hi-tech; Israelis are active in Polish real estate. Israeli-owned companies are a presence in Poland. Teva ranks as the number two pharmaceutical firm there.

Israeli analysts assert that Poland has become an invaluable diplomatic asset to Israel within the EU -- siding with Jerusalem against the tainted Goldstone Report; refusing to participate in the Durban II conference; derailing a Swedish initiative on Jerusalem inimical to Israeli interests, and as Europe's leading voice against Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's despicable Holocaust denial. Deepening Israel-Polish security cooperation has become a further element in the relationship. And in November relations are to be taken to an unprecedented level when Poland's top leadership echelon is expected to arrive in Israel for inter-ministerial meetings.

All Poland asks in return is for Israelis to see it with fresh eyes and to influence other Jews to do so as well. Not to ignore the ignoble aspects of Polish history, but to place them in the context of a very long, at times positive, and always complex relationship. For some Jews – influenced less by realpolitik than by painful memories – this may be asking too much.

September 2010

London's Jewish Museum

The next time you are in London, make it a point to visit the Jewish Museum .

I was there over the Rosh Hashana holidays. The museum is located near two Northern Line tube stations in Camden Town. It is new, open, sunny and not overwhelming.

I started out on the top floor which is showing a temporary exhibit of illuminated Hebrew manuscripts some of which were on loan from the Vatican -- which I know begs the questions: where did they get them from? And several others which came from various British universities.

Most are of Jewish interest though some are also of Christian interest.

The exhibit which ends on October 10 is modest in size -- as is the museum, but worthwhile.

Downstairs is a permanent installation on British Jewish History. Just the right amount of explanation...audio visual ... and artifacts.

Jews first came to England in 1066. I learned that the first blood libel took place in Norwich in 1144.
And that Jews were forced to wear distinctive badges.

In 1290 the Jews of England were expelled. That explains why Shakespeare who died in 1616 could not have come across many Jews.

The Jews were allowed to return to England in 1656.

By 1855 there was a Jewish Lord Sheriff.

In 1858 Rothschild was allowed to be sworn in on a Hebrew bible as a member of Parliament.

In the 1880s England experienced a great immigration. This coincided with the pogroms on Russia. The East End became a major Jewish neighborhood -- like New York's Lower East Side. So Jews were big in Whitechapel.

I learned further that Jewish women did piece work: making cigarettes and were paid 2 shillings and sixpence for 1,000. The tools they used were on display.

At their economic situation improved, the Jews moved to better neighborhoods like Stoke Newington.

Between the wars there was upward mobility and that is how it transpired that many Jews became cabbies in London. Yiddish was out and English was in.

In 1938-39 the community took in some 10,000 children from Europe ...rescued from Hitler's clutches.

On the main floor there is a general exhibit on Judaism which I thought was very well done. Plenty of good explanations for beginners. There is also a small Holocaust section anchored to a British Jewish citizens who found himself in Europe and survived the Holocaust.

Israel does not feature prominently -- but it does feature -- in the museum; this is not a museum about Israel. It is mostly aimed at British people including non-Jews.

There is a gift shop and a cafeteria which sells sandwiches (kosher + meat) and soups as well as hot drinks. A bit overpriced for my budget but pleasant.

The British Elections: Tory v. Labor - April 2010

Prime Minister Gordon Brown went to Buckingham Palace yesterday to ask Queen Elizabeth to dissolve parliament on April 12. New elections will take place on May 6. At the moment, the Conservative party under David Cameron is leading Brown's Labor party in the polls; the Liberal Democrats, headed by Nick Clegg, are in a strong third position.


The sun may have set on the British Empire, but the U.K. continues to exercise considerable influence in the international arena. Britain is a major force in the European Union and a permanent member of the UN Security Council; it plays a leading role in NATO and the 54-nation Commonwealth. It also remains a world financial center and, through the BBC, wields considerable "soft power" worldwide.
As for its relations with Israel, trade now stands at £2.3 billion annually. But politically the country has been an indifferent friend at best, funding a dozen advocacy organizations that press Jerusalem to soften its security policies.

What would a change in government mean for British-Israel relations? Probably not a great deal—all three parties are on record as favoring Israel's withdrawal to the 1949 Armistice lines. Still, significant differences are discernible in the parties' approach.

Labor: Brown has close personal ties to the Jewish community; his father, a Presbyterian minister, was chairman of the Church of Scotland's Israel Committee. Foreign Minister David Miliband is a non-practicing Jew who recently ordered an Israeli diplomat expelled in connection with Israel's alleged forging of British passports in the assassination of Hamas arms smuggler Mahmoud al-Mabhouh. Justice Secretary Jack Straw has refused to modify the country's Universal Jurisdiction law, invoked to threaten visiting Israeli officials with arrest on "war crimes" charges. The Labor party essentially accepted the Goldstone Report on the 2009 Gaza war. Last week, Britain merely abstained in the UN Human Rights Council vote demanding that Israel pay reparations to Gaza.

Several Labor back benchers are notorious Israel-bashers. Gerald Kaufman has compared IDF soldiers to Nazis; Martin Linton warned that Israel's "long tentacles" could warp the outcome of the coming elections. A group with the name Labor Friends of Israel has called on the government to pressure both Israelis and Palestinians "evenhandedly."

Liberal Democrats: Clegg has urged Britain to stop selling weapons to Israel. MP Paul Rowen is one of parliament's most ardent supporters of the Palestinian cause. And former MP Jenny Tonge, now in the House of Lords, declared it was worth investigating whether IDF aide workers in Haiti were actually harvesting organs for transplant. On the plus side of the ledger, the party recently authorized a support group to foster better relations with the Jewish community.

Conservatives: The tone of party pronouncements on Israel are notably sympathetic. William Hague, a former party leader and now Shadow Foreign Secretary, criticized Labor for not voting against the Goldstone Report. There are promises to modify the Universal Jurisdiction law.

Britain's Jewish community of 300,000 souls holds sway in perhaps a half-dozen of the country's 646 constituencies. While there are just four Muslim MPs, politicians are mindful that the overall Muslim population stands at 2.4 million. Most Jews will likely vote their economic and social interests, though a vocal minority can be expected to support the Tories purely because of Labor's shabby treatment of the Jewish state.

Israel & India

Celebrating its Independence Day on August 15, the nation of India marked 63 years since the end of British rule in the sub-continent. In light of the two countries' more or less contemporaneous struggle for self-determination in the immediate aftermath of World War II, one might have thought that India would establish close ties with the newly born state of Israel straightaway. It did not happen

Under Jawaharlal Nehru, India saw itself as a leader of the "non-aligned" bloc, and Israel as part of the West. Notwithstanding its conflict with Pakistan, its overwhelmingly Muslim neighbor, New Delhi also sought to establish itself on good terms with the Arab and Islamic world. To that end, it wholeheartedly adopted the Arab line at the UN and mapped out third-world strategy with Egypt's Gamal Nasser.
When it came to Jewish history and Zionist aspirations, India's founding elites labored under profound misapprehensions. In late 1938, in the shadow of Kristallnacht, Mohandas Gandhi wrote that he had no sympathy for the idea of a Jewish return to Zion. His advice to desperate and despairing European Jews was to face the Nazis with passivity; to the Jews in Palestine, he counseled an effort to convert Arab pogromists into friends.

India did finally recognize Israel in 1950, allowing Jerusalem to maintain a consular presence in Mumbai (then Bombay). But not until 1992 were full diplomatic relations established. By then, the Soviet empire had collapsed; Pakistan's A.Q. Khan was working feverishly on an Islamic bomb; and Egypt had long since made its peace with Israel.

In the years since then, the two countries have gradually drawn closer. Israelis are unabashedly smitten with India: about 35,000 of them, including many youngsters just out of army service, visit the country each year. Annual trade, which started at $200 million, has by now reached $3.5 billion, and this year India surpassed Europe as Israel's number-two export market (after the U.S.). Israel sells India minerals, fertilizer, chemicals, electronics, and, most significantly, military equipmemt.

Since the November 2008 terror attack in Mumbai, security ties have also strengthened. Reportedly, the two countries are jointly developing a medium-range air-defense system. The Indian navy has visited Haifa port, and India has launched commercial satellites into orbit for Israel.

But then there is Iran, on which Delhi and Jerusalem are at cross-purposes. Iran is India's second biggest oil supplier, and India—competing with China in a race to dominate the world's economy—is heavily invested in Iran's energy sector. India-Iran trade has reportedly tripled in the past five years. Geopolitics plays a role as well: India imagines Iran can be persuaded to dampen Islamist extremism in the sub-continent and curb Pakistan's influence in Afghanistan.

And there are also the cold facts of demography. True, Israel's population of seven million includes 70,000 Indian Jews—but India is a vast, multiethnic country of a billion people, and its Muslim minority, 13 percent of the population, numbers 153 million, exceeding the combined populations of Egypt, Saudi Arabia, and Syria. Second only to Iran, India has the largest non-Arab Shi'ite population in the world. It is notable that Indian Muslims have no history of involvement in terrorism, and their religious authorities abjure political violence. Nor is India as a whole troubled by indigenous anti-Jewish sentiment. Still, the country's elites are thoroughly exposed to the prevailing global fault-finding of Israel and the concomitant rise in global anti-Semitism.

So the Israel-India relationship, while mutually vital, is delicate. Jerusalem would emphatically prefer New Delhi to stop enabling Iran, even as it must appreciate that India will calibrate its relationships according to its interests as it sees them. Under the circumstances, the question is what it would take to convince Indians that appeasing the imperialist mullahs in Tehran will in fact undermine India's long-term welfare and national interests.