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March 8, 2013
Acting in one’s own best interest
Jews are convenient targets so they should be cautious about their political allegiances.
EUGENE KAELLIS
My parents, both of whom grew up in czarist Russia, would often spend hours talking in Yiddish about what they had left behind, often oddly expressing some nostalgia for an oppressive place from which they had, literally penniless, fled. I remember one particular and peculiar incident. My father was comparing a cucumber, locally purchased of course, with the cucumbers of “the homeland,” extolling the superiority of the latter. I remained respectfully silent but thought, “How odd!” Of course, a cold, crisp, allegedly superior cucumber was not enough to make him remain in or return to a land where oppression was chronic, yet I thought of Esau, prepared to sell his birthright for merely a bowl of pottage.
Over the centuries, as Christianity spread across Europe, Jews were viewed with increasing disfavor and hostility, frequently subjected to violence, expropriation and expulsion. For much of the 19th century, as the Great Powers penetrated the less-developed parts of the world, especially in Africa, some Europeans came up with what they considered the perfect solution to the “Jewish problem,” viz., encourage Jews, considered “natural” commerçants, to settle and do business in Africa. British Uganda and French Madagascar were suggested, each “offered” to Theodor Herzl, where Jews could assist in imperialist penetration and exploitation of that continent’s human and natural resources, and simultaneously remove their vexatious and truculent selves, as they were largely perceived, from Christian society. One can only imagine what might have happened (very little of it good) had the offer been (foolishly) accepted.
It was a plan somewhat similar to one that actually transpired in the 17th century in another locus. At that time, the Polish (Catholic) gentry, who then owned (largely Orthodox) Ukraine, hired Jewish resident intermediaries to look after their affairs there while the landowners wiled away their time in pleasurable pursuits. When the Ukrainians finally rose in revolt under Bogdan Chmielnicki, the Poles being beyond their grasp, they hanged a Jew, a proselytizing Catholic priest and, to show their contempt, a dog, part of what was one of the largest massacres of Jews until the Holocaust. To this day, a statue of Chmielnicki occupies a place of honor in Kiev. Jews, of course, don’t like that, but he was, indeed, a bona fide Ukrainian hero.
It is a sobering reminder of how many historic “achievements” contain uncertain, even contrary, elements. Jews, invariably a small, often isolated, often despised community, provided a convenient target for demagogues within the context of broader, perhaps even worthwhile, objectives. Mid-19th century (i.e., post-Napoleonic) Europe provides yet another example of their precarious circumstances. Although the Austrian Prince Metternich, Europe’s leading statesman of the time, was favorable toward Jews, he attempted to suppress (Carlsbad Decrees) any form of liberalism, retaining (or trying to) the status quo, which more or less guaranteed that Jews might be tolerated but they would not be emancipated, as they had been by Napoleon.
The point of this narrative is that Jews, and especially Israel, should attempt to avoid becoming the “cat’s paw” of people or states that have their own perceived interests at heart and want to involve (exploit) Israel in realizing them. In the complex political arena, there are also unintended consequences about which to worry, or unexpected reactions. In 1956, for instance, after Egypt had announced that it would not renew the Suez Canal Co.’s concession following its expiration in 1968 and British troops left the canal zone, Israeli troops, presumably pursuing the perceived interest of Israel, and evidently with the approval of Britain and France, occupied the Sinai. But soon after, following U.S. President Eisenhower’s strongly stated disapproval, Israel had to accept a ceasefire, while the British and French also had to “eat crow.”
Much of the Middle East, as everyone knows, is now in a state of often-violent ferment. Russia, even before the advent of the USSR, had a long history of actual or attempted involvement in the area (note the Crimean War, 1854-6). Today, Vladimir Putin has looked to exploit his geopolitical objectives there, as witness his having supplied arms to Bashar al-Assad’s oppressive and violent Syrian regime. However, Russia is now providing indications that it would like the conflict to end – a current example of the now-evident truth that once a big power has acquired a client state, often it may be stuck with the obligation to assist it, at least diplomatically, even if it does not agree with its client’s behavior, which ultimately may not be in its own best interests. Of course, no one knows how the present episode, i.e., the extended Arab Spring, including the uprising in Syria, will turn out; whether, for example, it will, over time, improve Israel’s security or increasingly endanger it.
To cite a case in which a presumably favorable event had elements of danger within it, the end of the Cold War, which was so widely celebrated, in many ways actually increased the danger of conflicts, not of nuclear exchanges, the chances of which were markedly diminished, but of “conventional” wars, such as in the former Yugoslavia, because during the Cold War, the superpowers realized that they had to rein in (to the degree they were able to) the behavior of their client states and protectorates. In times of emergency, these states, were kept under tight control because, no matter how irresponsible the satellite leaders were in other ways, neither the United States nor the Soviet Union wanted a nuclear exchange, especially one precipitated by a “client state” that had overstepped its bounds. The Cuban missile crisis is a perfect example of this kind of restraint exercised, not by Fidel Castro, rather by both the USSR and the United States.
Although much has changed since the First World War, it was preceded by a system of opposing alliances that caused one assassination, among many others during that period, to plunge Europe into a long, devastating war, at the conclusion of which the seeds had already been planted for a second global conflict. Unforeseen consequences are only some of the many shoals on which the most reasoned geopolitical behavior can founder. Similarly, the United States may be “stuck” with the consequences of Israeli decisions. If, for example, Israel decided that it would like to eliminate the apparently growing nuclear capability of Iran and proceeded to do so, the United States would face the dilemma of just how far it would go to prevent or counter presumed Iranian retaliation. Israel may snatch the Iranian chestnut from the fire, but it, and it alone, might have to face the presumed consequences.
To cite another example of unforeseen events and their consequences: during the New Deal era in the United States, Jews overwhelmingly supported Franklin Roosevelt and the Democratic party; yet, if he had remained president in the immediate postwar period, the indications are that he would probably not have encouraged the founding of a Jewish state, whereas his successor, Harry Truman, quickly recognized Israel de jure, enthusiastically exclaiming, “I am Cyrus!” (referring to the biblical Cyrus the Great, the Persian king who ended the Jewish people’s exile and enabled their return to Palestine).
The lesson of history is quite clear. Jews simply cannot afford to place themselves, more or less permanently or at least for a long time, in the camp of one or another international bloc or one political party. They have to sort out their priorities, while remaining alert, diligent and nimbly responsive in their allegiance.
Eugene Kaellis has written Making Jews, on the theme of the current basic problem of Diaspora Jewry, which is available from lulu.com.
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