American Jews Should Stand Firm against the Iran Deal as They Did 40 Years Ago against a Deal with the USSR

July 27 2015

In 1974, as the Nixon administration was about to grant generous trade benefits to the USSR, American Jewish organizations—and Soviet Jewish activists—criticized the move and urged the U.S. government not to turn a blind eye to the fate of Soviet Jewry. Thanks in part to their intervention, Congress passed the Jackson-Vanik amendment linking economic concessions to changes in Soviet behavior, crucially including the free emigration of Soviet citizens. Natan Sharansky reflects on the implications for today:

American Jewish organizations . . . faced a difficult choice. They were reluctant to speak out against the U.S. government and appear to put the “narrow” Jewish interest above the cause of peace. Yet they also realized that the freedom of all Soviet Jews was at stake, and they actively supported the policy of linkage. . . .

The decaying Soviet economy could not support an arms race or maintain tolerable conditions without credit and support from the United States. By conditioning this assistance on the opening of the USSR’s gates, the United States would not only help free millions of Soviet Jews as well as hundreds of millions of others, but also pave the way for the regime’s eventual collapse.

Today, an American president has once again sought to achieve stability by removing sanctions against a brutal dictatorship without demanding that the latter change its behavior. And once again, a group of outspoken Jews—no longer a small group of dissidents in Moscow but leaders of the state of Israel, from the governing coalition and the opposition alike—are sounding an alarm. Of course, we [in Israel] are reluctant to criticize our ally and to oppose so vigorously an agreement that purports to promote peace. But we know that we are again at a historic crossroads, and that the United States can either appease a criminal regime—one that supports global terror, relentlessly threatens to eliminate Israel, and executes more political prisoners than any other per capita—or stand firm in demanding change in its behavior.

Read more at Washington Post

More about: Barack Obama, Iran nuclear program, Natan Sharansky, Politics & Current Affairs, Refuseniks, Richard Nixon, Scoop Jackson, U.S. Foreign policy

Western Europe’s Failures Led to the Pogrom in Amsterdam

Nov. 11 2024

In 2013, Mosaic—then a brand-new publication—published an essay by the French intellectual Michel Gurfinkiel outlining the dark future that awaited European Jewry. It began with a quote from the leader of the Jewish community of Versailles: “My feeling is that our congregation will be gone within twenty or thirty years.” The reasons he, and Gurfinkiel, felt this way were on display in Amsterdam Thursday night. Michael Murphy writes:

For years, Holland and other European countries have invited vast numbers of people whose values and culture are often at odds with their own. This was a bold experiment made to appear less hazardous through rose-tinted spectacles. Europeans thought vainly that because we had largely set aside ethno-sectarian politics after the atrocities of the 20th century that others would do the same once they arrived. But they have not.

Perhaps the most unsettling part of this self-described “Jew hunt,” which left five people hospitalized, was the paltry response of the Dutch police. Reports suggest officers failed to act swiftly and, in some cases, to act at all. “I and two others ran to the nearest police station, but they didn’t open the door,” one of the victims claimed.

One hopes there is a reasonable explanation for this. Yet Amsterdam’s police force—with its increasingly diverse make-up—may have had other reasons for their reluctance to intervene. Last month, the Dutch Jewish Police Network warned that some officers “no longer want to protect Jewish targets or events,” vaguely citing “moral dilemmas.”

Read more at National Post

More about: Amsterdam, Anti-Semitism, European Islam, European Jewry