Can it be that this government is dumb enough to believe that we should be developing Russia as a strategic alternative to the United States?
We all understand Benjamin Netanyahu’s recent trip to the former Soviet Union: There are several hundred thousand voters here from there who could tip the scales in his direction. But why we have adopted an ambivalent and hesitant stand on the NATO-Serbian conflict is beyond comprehension.
Instead of coming out unequivocally against Slobodan Milosevic’s evil madness, we have Foreign Minister Ariel Sharon mumbling out of both sides of his mouth and the prime minister trying to conceal tacit support for the Serbs by dispatching aid to the Albanian refugees.
No one is arguing against aid being sent, but a humanitarian gesture, however noble, does not obviate what would have been the correct diplomatic response: outright condemnation of Milosevic and his forces of death; outright support for NATO; a total distancing from Russia’s support for the Serbs; and words of warmth and support for the American people who have sent their sons to fight a war for what is right, not what is expedient.
It’s hard to understand Israel’s position if taken out of the context of trying to please Russia.
Some Serbs did fight to save Jews during the Holocaust, but Albania was the only country that protected and prevented its entire Jewish community from being sent to the camps. There are Jews of Serbian origin living in Israel, but so are there Jews of Albanian origin.
We have no strategic or important commercial ties with Milosevic; we share no common enemies or common interests. Nothing in our relationship with the regime could possibly outweigh the need for a strident and vocal moral stand against Serbs committing acts of barbarism unthinkable in this day and age, or the need to support the dispossessed and oppressed.
How can the Jewish state, built on the ashes of the Holocaust, not stand up against ethnic cleansing? And if not us, then who? And how can Israel, which has been the beneficiary of so much American support in terms of its own security, not stand up and be counted as an American ally in a time of need? Are we risking all — morality, loyalty, duty, decency — for some pie-in-the-sky notion of friendship with Russia?
Is it possible that there are really people at the policy level who believe Israel has something to gain by forging a strategic relationship with a bankrupt, unstable and essentially anti-Israeli regime that continues to arm our Arab enemies with missiles and nuclear technologies? And this at the expense of our relationship with the United States?
Maybe I’ve got it all wrong. Maybe there is some reason that justifies our non-condemnation of Milosevic and his policies, the acts of Serbian storm troopers who, on his command, are raping Kosovo, forcing families out of their homes and then burning them, separating able-bodied men from their wives and children, forcing the old and the young onto cattle trucks for deportation and doing God knows what to the men taken from their families.
Perhaps there is some strong reason, known to Netanyahu, Sharon and a few others who, mindful of national security, cannot share it with the people in whose name the government claims to be acting.
Could it be because the majority of the Albanians under attack are Muslims? Surely that’s impossible.
Maybe there are 20,000 or so voters of Serbian origin out there whom Netanyahu does not want to antagonize. Who knows?
There must, I suppose, be some method in the madness. How else can one explain “neutrality” in a conflict where being neutral amounts to being guilty, where the evil is so clear, where it is so easy to differentiate between victim and perpetrator.
Granted, the Albanians are not all pure, and they are guilty of both terrorizing and oppressing the Serbian minority who live among them. But nothing the ethnic Albanians did in the former Yugoslavia can possibly justify the atrocities we are currently witnessing in the heart of Europe.
If there was one country that should have been heard in this crisis it was Israel.
We know the consequences of ethnic cleansing better than others. To stand by silently while it is taking place again is unconscionable.
It is an embarrassment to me as an Israeli and a Jew. It shames me to be led by a government with so short a collective memory and such a low regard for morality and decency.
Ah, I hear some say, here comes Goodman’s politics again. Anything to bash Netanyahu. Sorry folks. This is beyond politics. It’s fundamental. Though, I must say, yet another damn good reason to get Netanyahu and Sharon out of government as soon as possible and try to restore a modicum of sanity in our lives again with someone new at the helm.