A European View: Peres and Europe

As Jews of Europe we applaud the election of Shimon Peres as Israel’s ninth president. Now more than ever Israel needs an advocate with proven international standing. And few Israelis enjoy the respect that Peres commands.
 
We can only marvel at the energy of this 84-year-old. Unlike most of his predecessors, Peres has adopted an activist presidency. Soon after his election he invited into his office PA prime minister, Salam Fayad, UN special envoy Michael Williams, former UK prime minister Tony Blair and Austrian Chancellor Alfred Gusenbauer. In June he spoke at length with Russia’s Vladimir Putin, and just last week he met a delegation representing the 200 million Muslims of India on a historic visit to Israel.
 
Peres seeks to “mobilise the goodwill of the nation”, and arguably his new office gives him that leeway. At the same time he enjoys real political clout should he wish to use it. In private, he can draw on his experience to help current Israeli politicians avoid pitfalls. And in public he can articulate Israel’s case as few others can.
 
Yet there is one area where we at ECJC feel he could do even more. We mean relations not only with European leaders, but also on behalf of the Jews of Europe.
 
Shimon Peres has longstanding and valuable ties with the continent. Peres and the new French premier, Nicolas Sarkozy, have found areas of common interest. Peres has praised Sarkozy’s ambitions for an EU-like format for a Mediterranean Union, and the two men share a vision of Middle East peace.
 
Few international leaders have championed Israel more clearly than Angela Merkel, the first German chancellor to address the American Jewish Committee (AJC). In a rousing speech at the AJC conference in June she called Iran’s attacks on Israel’s right to exist “intolerable for any German government”. Germany has courageously addressed the sins of its past. It is a key ally of Jerusalem’s and a pivot of the European Union.
 
Surely a Peres-Merkel summit would signal the indissoluble bond between the two nations? President Peres could use that opportunity to add his voice to those of German Jewry’s leaders, who recently strongly condemned racist attacks on Germany’s minorities.
 
Nor should we ignore Shimon Peres’s Polish connections. Although the young Szymon Perski did not know it at the time, he was born in 1923 in a Poland that an American defence secretary would in 2002 hail as part of the “new Europe”! Poland’s accession to the European Union was just a dream 15 years ago; now it is a reality. Today’s Polish Jewish community is tiny compared to the six million who lived there in 1939. Yet the fact that they feel generally safe is a nugget of consolation. Wouldn’t a visit by Peres to his original homeland boost Poland’s Jews – a community well represented in the EJCJ?
 
It would certainly bolster Israel’s image in a changing Europe. And this in turn would help European Jews no end. Because it is clear that the current fashion of Israel-bashing, especially through threatened boycotts, opens the door to old fashioned anti-Semitism.
 
What of the specific concerns of European Jews? Here, too, we feel President Peres has a role to play. For instance, the recent formation of the Magyar Garda fascist militia in Hungary is worrying. Similar moves in Bulgaria have caused alarm bells to ring. Where is the voice from Israel that tells Jew-haters “never again”? I daresay the government in Budapest would welcome such a statement. Happily, Europeans are at last taking seriously the scourge of “new anti-Semitism”. Only this month Robin Shepherd of the esteemed British think tank, Chatham House, released a much-praised report on the problem. A visit to London by Peres to add his weight to the initiative would be quite a coup.
 
Using his legendary charm, cannot Peres tell, say, the Lithuanian authorities that they should stop building office blocks over the cemetery where the Vilna Gaon is buried? More than 95% of Lithuania’s Jews were slaughtered in World War II. Sadly nothing can right that grievous wrong. However, thoughtless development surely adds insult to injury.
 
Let’s not forget that 12 of the 33 nations that voted for the creation of Israel at the UN in November 1947 were European: Belgium, Belarus, Czechoslovakia, Denmark, France, Luxembourg, Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Sweden, Ukraine and the USSR (now essentially Russia). Regardless of the ups and downs of intervening years, we as Jews owe these nations a debt of gratitude. All these states have Jewish communities today – a miracle considering the horrors of the past. And all those communities are proudly represented in the ECJC.
 
Two days ago 30 European countries celebrated the eighth European Day of Jewish Culture. Festivities are going on as we write, from Leeds in Britain to Strasbourg and Paris in France – where the emphasis is on cuisine, unsurprisingly! As Jews worldwide prepare for New Year, might it be too much to hope that next year the president of Israel may be invited to play a role in these celebrations in Europe?