There are several crossroads in the near future. The United States and Israel have had their elections, and have chosen (still tentatively in the Israeli case) to depart from the paths of the previous leaders.
Consistent with his campaign theme of Change, the new American president has embarked on an effort to open a dialogue with Iran. An American friend called my attention to an op-ed piece in the New York Times that picks up on this part of the Obama message, and runs with it further and faster than the president.
Roger Cohen argues that Iran is not like Hitler's Germany, and should not be demonized. He asserts that he is not an innocent like those misled in the 1930s by Theresienstadt, the place in Czechoslovakia that the Nazis portrayed as a pleasant place of exile for Germany's Jews. http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/02/opinion/02cohen.html?_r=1&scp=2&sq=Iran%20&st=cse
Varda carries the Hebrew equivalent of her Grandmother Rosa's name. Rosa was an alumna of Theresienstadt, who passed through on her way to a death camp further east.
Iran is not Nazi Germany. History never repeats itself. The details always differ. However, Cohen's apologetica strikes me as naive. He does not deal with the "death to Israel" proclamations of the Iranian president. He makes a point that the president's opponent in an upcoming election once spoke in a synagogue. He does not mention that the opponent is just as much an advocate as the incumbent of Iran's nuclear options. Cohen claims that Persian Jews have fared better than the Jews of Arab lands. I am not sure that his comparison would hold up against the experience of Morocco and Tunis. It does not square with a conversation I recently had with a neighbor who identified himself as a native of Mashhad in Iran, born into the community that had lived secretly as Jews since given a choice in the 1830s of converting to Islam or dying. It also does not square with people who tell about leaving all their property behind when they left Iran with their families, supposedly on a visit to a country acceptable to the Iranians, that was a really a way stop on their way to Israel. Until the late 1930s, the Nazis encouraged the Jews to leave, and allowed them to take some of their resources.
Cohen also is looking through rose colored glasses at the Lebanese and Palestinians who specialize in aiming their rockets at Israeli civilians:
"Hamas and Hezbollah have evolved into broad political movements widely seen as resisting an Israel over-ready to use crushing force. It is essential to think again about them, just as it is essential to toss out Iran caricatures."
Israel's election presents another crossroad. There is not yet a governing coalition, but the prospective prime minister is talking differently than his predecessor, and differently than the past or present American administrations. Netanyahu is reluctant to accept the mantra of a Palestinian state. He is saying that the Palestinians must learn to govern themselves before they are ready for a state. This is against the background of the schism between the Palestinians of the West Bank and Gaza, and the failure of West Bank leaders to show that they can turn foreign assistance into public services rather than personal wealth for the well connected.
Netanyahu addressed himself to the issue of Iran during the campaign. He said that it would not be allowed to attain nuclear weapons. He did not say who would stop it, or how.
We have to navigate these various crossroads as individuals, as well as watching what political leaders do, and feeling the effects as citizens.
Just yesterday, an Arab friend asked me, in Hebrew, as we were dressing in the locker room of the university gym, "Will there be peace between Israelis and Palestinians?"
I responded that I was hopeful, but doubtful. I asked if there would be peace between Fatah and Hamas. He did not answer.
At these various crossroads, we have to cope with uncertainties that touch upon political tensions between governments, the prospects or demise of national aspirations, and the possibility of nuclear war. Friendship demands that we do not press one another to answer unpleasant questions.
Ira Sharkansky (Emeritus)
Department of Political Science
Hebrew University
Jerusalem, Israel
Tel: +972-2-532-2725
email: msira@mscc.huji.ac.il