Twilight Zone

Some amazing twilights in recent days: 

 

 

Martyr or Traitor ?

After 30 years in a US jail, and five more years on parole, the American citizen Jonathan Pollard, who betrayed his country and stole reams of top-secret documents from his US Navy Intelligence office selling them to Israel, is now free to leave America, if he wishes.

For America the man is a traitor. Israel portrays him as a quasi-martyr.

 

Pollard was not an Israeli sent on a secret mission to steal documents in the United States. He is an American Jew, with a seemingly disturbed personality, who had a history of spreading fibs to exaggerate his own importance, and who had offered his services to several other countries, before closing a deal with a special unit of the Israeli secret service.  

 

It is not unusual for countries to go to extreme lengths in order to release their caught spies. One need only go back to some well publicised spy-swaps during the cold-war era. Israel, however, has turned Pollard into some kind of a Jewish martyr.

 

Both Prime-Minister Netanyahu and Israel’s President Rivlin have tweeted their delight with his release. “Now we will be able to welcome him and his family home after many difficult years of imprisonment and restrictions...” wrote President Rivlin, as if Pollard was a ‘Prisoner-of-Zion’ locked up by the Soviet Union, because of his wish to emigrate. Israel’s public outpour of “welcome home Jonathan” is unacceptable and way over the top.

 

                       We Want Pollard At Home

 

In the us-against-the-rest world-view that Israel propagates, it increasingly implicates the Jewish People. This is bad for the Jews. To put it bluntly, Israel’s actions can cause increased Antisemitism. In a standard question in polls measuring Antisemitism, interviewees are asked to agree/disagree with the statement «Jews are more loyal to Israel than to the USA« (or country of citizenship). The notion that Jews tend to be more loyal to Israel than to their country is considered to be antisemitic. Israel enabled Pollard to entrench this view.

 

Israel motivating diaspora Jews to serve her interests, has never really been a secret. There is an understandable logic for many Jews to have an emotional bind to Israel. Quite a few Americans of Irish or Italian descent know the feeling. But, if they cannot be relied upon to be loyal, one is justified in distrusting them and disliking them. Once such bias is ingrained, Jews will no longer be considered equal citizens. It is up to the leaders of diaspora communities to ensure that their members do not get pushed into such dilemmas, in which their loyalty to the country is eroded to serve Israel.

 

Pollard not only betrayed America; he also betrayed American Jews. By feeding the notion that Jews are not to be relied upon, he made their lives more difficult.

 

There is no reason whatsoever to celebrate this.

Antisemitismus Politik in der britischen Labour Party

Für Deutsch-Leser:

 

Antisemitismus Politik in der britischen Labour Party. Warum machen auch die Briten, mit Antisemitismus Politik?

 

Hier finden Sie einen link zu meinem Beitrag, der in Tachles, das Schweizer jüdische Wochenmagazin erschienen ist.

Can the USA be a reliable partner for us?

Several messages from friends, who seemed to be rather optimistic, despite the fact that Trump managed to command the votes of almost half of the country’s voters, found me rather surprised.

 

“I am very optimistic about the future of the USA”  or “It feels the world has moved back to being a better place”, “A good day for the frontier of freedom”, and even the hope that “the US finds back to being a legitimate world leader”.

 

Before we get too excited, we ought to consider the country's history. The country that started wars, claiming that it was trying to bring democracy to others, was never a true democracy itself. From slavery they moved into segregation,  and rampant racism is still part of the daily bread.  

 

If we needed any proof, how sick the US is, we need but look at those senior Republican politicians, who still come out in support of Trump and his machinations. We know from the near past how systematically partisan the Republicans on Capitol Hill act: During Obama's presidency, all they did was to put spokes in the wheels. The name of their game was to make Obama fail, in order to prove that he is a failure. Moreover, part of that was pure racism. This will not change. This will be exactly their game-plan for the coming four years.

 

Like most, I also prefer the US to the USSR system. But that should not blind us into becoming all poetic. Democrats as well as Republicans have led us with lies and deceit into unnecessary wars, with millions of dead and many more miserable and homeless. These wars served mainly an industrial-military elite. Much of it was and still is illegal and almost nothing was legitimate about them, nor were they good for the “frontiers of freedom”.   

 

The fact that by chance of birth, we happen to benefit from a decent standard of living, which to a not insignificant extent we owe to these wars and to the deals, which we have been making with corrupt regimes that happen to suit our needs, should not blind us to the truth.

 

We in Europe need to try hard and ensure that Western Europe becomes a stronghold of viable democracy. This is not easy, as we have, unfortunately, tied our hands in an EU partnership with Eastern European countries, that do not share democratic values. That should be our main goal for the next ten years. The United States is unlikely to be a relevant or reliable partner for this endeavour.

 

Freiburg - 2nd Lockdown

Just before the new lockdown came upon us, I managed to go to the opera in Freiburg (A very fine production of Peter Maxwell Davies’ Mr. Emmet takes a walk.)

 

Like all theatres during Corona, they were permitted to sell only very few tickets: 

 

 

They did, however, find a humorous way of filling the empty seats. 

 

 

The next day’s visit to the supermarket proved that Germans continue to have a thing about toilet paper. With the lockdown nearing, people were panic-buying again, and the shelves...empty.