Just in time for Holocaust Remembrance Day

April 16th, 2007

From the Jerusalem Post:

The Foreign Ministry on Monday expressed concern to Russian Ambassador Piotr Stegniy about an “anti-Semitic” promotional video that was shown at a Euroleague basketball game in Moscow last week.

The Russian video clip, which depicted CSKA Moscow as a train running over a hassidic-looking Jewish man meant to represent Maccabi Tel Aviv, was shown to thousands of fans in the arena.

“We view the incident very seriously,” a Foreign Ministry spokeswoman told The Jerusalem Post. She said Mark Sofer, the Foreign Ministry’s deputy director-general for Euro-Asia, had spoken over the telephone with Stegniy, who promised to deal with the matter. Israel also sent a letter of complaint to CSKA’s management…

The Foreign Ministry spokeswoman said there was no other way to view a clip, in which Israel is represented by a stereotypical image of a haredi-looking man with side curls and a shtreimel. Anti-Semitic chants were also heard from the crowd, she added.

The Foreign Ministry behaved correctly in taking this most seriously. I hope that they have protested Russia’s continuing sales of advanced weaponry to Syria as strongly.

Update [17 Apr 1713 PDT]: Here’s the video, courtesy of YNet.

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Syria doesn’t mince words

April 16th, 2007

Recently I suggested that the Arab League ‘peace’ initiative is being presented as an ultimatum: accept it as written, or face war. Now the Syrian information minister states this about as clearly as possible:

“If Israel rejects the Arab League peace proposal, resistance will be the only way to liberate the Golan Heights,” warns Syrian Information Minister Muhsen Bilal, at a press conference in Damascus Monday.

The minister explained that Syria had an interest in renewing talks with Israel with support from America and Russia. “Syria wants to reach a fair, comprehensive peace,” he added. However, he also stated that “any nation living under occupation has the prerogative to resist. In Lebanon, Palestine and Iraq, we must liberate all occupied Arab land.” — YNet

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George Soros, a clear and present danger

April 16th, 2007

By Vic Rosenthal

George SorosThe current issue of the New York Review of Books contains an article entitled “On Israel, America and AIPAC”. It’s notable not for its contents, which are a rehash of popular pro-Arab positions, attacks on AIPAC, and a swipe at Alvin Rosenfeld’s article on left-wing antisemitism, but for its author: billionaire George Soros.

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Clinton on Israel-Syria peace prospects

April 15th, 2007

Bill Clinton, with all due respect, needs to think before he speaks:

Former US president Bill Clinton said that peace between Israel and Syria could be achieved within 35 minutes, if Iran would stay out of the matter.

In an interview with London-based Arabic newspaper Asharq Al-Awsat, Clinton said that the two states were on the verge of reaching a peace agreement in 1998, adding that negotiations behind closed doors and without media intervention, such as those conducted in Oslo in 1993, were the only way to solve the conflict. — YNet

This may well be true in the sense that if there were no Iran, Israel and Syria could reach an agreement. But no matter what Iran does in the future, Hezbollah and the Syrian military buildup are facts that won’t go away quickly. Today it would be suicidal for Israel to give up the strategic advantages of the Golan.

The US is anxious to make this happen, hoping to gain influence with Syria so that she will tighten up her border with Iraq. I’m not sure that the leverage will work in that direction.

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The Pope and the Holocaust

April 15th, 2007

The Vatican’s ambassador to Israel has reversed an earlier decision, and will visit Yad Vashem.

Monsignor Antonio Franco, announced last week that he would skip Sunday night’s event because of a caption at the [Yad Vashem Holocaust] museum describing the wartime conduct of Pope Pius XII.

The caption next to the picture of Pius in Yad Vashem’s museum reads, “Even when reports about the murder of Jews reached the Vatican, the pope did not protest,” refusing to sign a 1942 allied condemnation of the massacre of Jews…

Officials from Yad Vashem, the Vatican’s Embassy and the Israeli Foreign Ministry confirmed that Sunday that Franco had reversed his decision and would attend Sunday’s ceremony.

Franco told Ynet he merely wanted to draw attention to the Catholic Church’s stance regarding the picture of Pius, saying it was “only diplomacy.”

According to him, there is evidence that the pope worked diligently to help save Jewish lives during the Holocaust. — YNet

Here is a story told to my wife by a survivor now living in Israel. This woman was not given to making things up and there’s no reason to doubt her story.

Molly’s parents managed to get her family from Germany to Italy by the beginning of the war when she was perhaps 10 or 11 years old. She was hidden in a convent in Rome near the Vatican with her sister and brother and several other children; only the Mother Superior knew that they were Jewish.

Molly remembers that the Mother Superior would take the children from time to time on “dry runs” through a long underground tunnel into another building; she was told that this was part of the Vatican and that this would be their escape route if their presence and identity were discovered by the Germans.

Did the Pope know? How many children were saved through similar arrangements? Who knows?

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