2 Friday, January 22, 1982
THE DETROIT JEWISH NEWS
Purely Commentary
Kuwait Ties to Soviet Bloc
Poses U.S. Policy Questions
In the journalistic process of accounting for the em-
phasis now placed on the strategic importance of the Per-
sian Gulf, editors, columnists and media news commen-
tators have begun to take into consideration the impor-
tance of a number of small states.
These states, in their smallness, emerge powerful. The
reason is obvious: their oil wealth.
Some columnists have undertaken to give emphasis to
the need for "securing the Persian Gulf." It is a new ven-
ture, and unless all of the aspects are taken into account,
the discussions will remain either verbal rhetoric or inef-
fective essaying. The facts are of the essence and they must
not be ignored.
In the consideration of the Persian Gulf role one of the
states now more frequently mentioned is Kuwait. Its oil
wealth does, indeed, give it high status.
- In the consideration of the status of all the Persian Gulf
states, the issues affecting Soviet involvements are vital to
the entire issue affecting the Middle East. With the United
States in the forefront of providing military assistance to
all who unite in resisting Russian intrusions and manipu-
lations in the area, the Kuwait attitude toward the USSR
becomes especially important.
Media Analysis Center, based in Jerusalem and al-
ready recognized for its factual studies of the situations in
all of the areas of the Middle East, reveals important data
regarding Kuwait and that nation's relationships with the
USSR, stating:
Kuwait has not only publicly rejected a U.S.
umbrella for the Gulf in military matters, but has
somewhat surprisingly announced that it does
not consider the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan to
be a threat to either itself or the other Gulf states.
Kuwait, also, said last year that it was prepared to
sell oil to the USSR and Eastern Europe if re-
quested — an obvious departure from its previous
policy of holding back oil supplies to the Soviet
bloc.
Moving closer to the Soviet side and chopping
some pieces off the U.S. relationship (as suggested
by the Lebanese weekly Arab Press Service on
July 22, 1981) is also expressed in military terms
as indicated by the Aug. 23, 1981 edition of
Strategy Week. The Washington-based weekly
reports that Kuwait has decided against accept-
ing a U.S. Letter of Offer for 60 additional im-
proved Hawk surface to air missiles ($150 million
transaction including spare parts, technical as-
sistance, training and maintenance). The
Kuwaitis intend to purchase, according to this
report, SAMs from the USSR.
This intention was discussed by a Kuwaiti mili-
tary delegation which returned recently from
Moscow, while another, with authority to sign
contracts, is expected to go to the Soviet capital
later this year. The Emirate, which sits astride a
vital oil sea line of communication, and which
controls islands and water adjacent to Saudi
Arabia, Iraq and Iran, already has about 50 im-
proved Hawks (purchased six years ago), as well
as Soviet SAM-6s and SAM-7s and FROG-7 sur-
face to surface missiles.
The Lebanese weekly APS provides further in-
formation "that unmistakable signs of pro-Soviet
leanings which have become more apparent over
the- last nine months of Kuwaiti diplomacy." It
indicates that the Kuwaiti military team visiting
Moscow during the first week of July discussed
the possible procurement of aircraft, anti-aircraft
missiles, radar systems, tanks and naval equip-
ment. The weekly suggests that "those who
comment on the leanings to the USSR by Kuwait
tend to forget the consistency in Kuwaiti policy —
it is not a new trend, though it has become more
pronounced recently. Similar speculation about
Kuwaiti motives was rife two years ago, in mid-
1979, when the Emirate also approached the
USSR for weapons."'
Accompanying these revelations is this record of
Kuwait contacts linking it with the Communist bloc:
Kuwait in "1975 financed (along with Libya)
the construction of an oil pipeline from the Adria-
tic coast to Yugoslavia, Czechslovakia and Hun-
gary. A $40 million loan was granted in De-
cember 1974 to Hungary. Two years later Kuwait
undertook to meet half the $114 billion estimated
cost of a refinery and petro-chemical complex in
Romania, and toupply that country with 160,000
barrels of oil a day.
Kuwait's contacts just this year with the Soviet
bloc include:
October — Ceaucescu's adviser negotiates oil
and ins*stment issues in Kuwait; Minister Abd
al-Ariz Hussein has 10-day visit to Moscow.
September — Kuwait's ruler has an official visit
A Sample of an Arab, Kingdom's Involvement with the Kremlin,
Indicating the Growing Influence of the Soviet Union in the
Mideast . . . Glory of Post-Ghetto Emphasis on Jewish Legacies
to Hungary, Yugoslavia, Bulgaria and Romania.
August — Kuwait prefers to purchase Soviet
SAMs over U.S. Hawk missiles; Anatoly Filov,
head of the Soviet Foreign Ministry's Mideast
Section, visits Kuwait.
July — Abd al-Aziz Hussein visits Czechos-
lovakia; High-level military delegation from
Kuwait discusSes, in Moscow, the extension of
military cooperation.
May — Leonid Zmiatin, a member of the foreign
relations committee of the Soviet Commumist
Party, visits Kuwait; Kuwait's Deputy Prime
Minister negotiates, in Moscow, arms transac-
tions, and attempts to get Moscow to restrain
South Yemen's policy vis-a-vis Oman.
April — $85 million four-year loan to Romania
used to finance the import of Kuwait's oil.
March — Kuwait leads a $150 million, 41/2-year
loan for Hungary; The Speaker of Kuwait's Na-
tional Assembly meets the Soviet Ambassador;
Kuwait's Deputy Foreign Minister meets the
Soviet Ambassador (the only Soviet Ambassador
in the western Gulf States); Kuwait leads a $117
million, seven-year loan to Yugoslavia.
It would be a lack of confidence in the U.S. government
if the idea were entertained that either the White House
staff or the State Department, or both, are not aware of
what is transpiring.
The American position in the entire Middle East is
cause for concern. Arming Saudi Arabia while that nation
also flirts with the USSR, giving vast sums and military
hardware to the very forces whence come the terrorist
threats to many peoples, including the United States, is an
indication of inconsistency that cannot be accepted in good
grace. The wonder is that there has not been an organized
protest against such U.S. policies.
Perhaps the Kuwaitis will help in the formulation of a
more positive American policy, one which will discriminate
in the choice of friends and in giving comfort to the enemies
of democracy.
When the Ghetto Demonstrates
The Glory of the Legacies
In an age of multiplying tensions, when there is anx-
iety about Jewish identifications and commitments and
loyalties, it is heartening to hear an encouraging message
from and about the oldest of the ghettoes.
Jan Morris, an author who has written much about
Venice, provides such cheer in an article in the NYTimes
travel section, Dec. 13, under the title "Lively Birthplace of
a Faithful-World."
The first of the ghettoes had a road of misery, from its
beginnings in the early part of the 17th Century through
the horrors of World War II. It was suffering, anxiety,
danger, humiliation from the beginning to end.
Yet, it has emerged into a sense of pride. The remnants
speak of a new spirit of kinship with the generations that
are gone, with the present, and those to come.
Therefore, the summation of the present by Morris in
the NYTimes travel account is an impressive one, as it
states:
Though the Jews of Ital3kwere guaranteed full
civic. equality by King Vittorio Emanuele II in
1866, a large community of Venetian Jews lived in
the Ghetto until the prwarious days of Fascism
and Nazism in the 1930s, when many of them left.
During the Second World War, in two terrible
episodes, 200 were deported to Germany and
never seen again. Today only some 20 Jewish
families live within the Ghetto area, but scattered
through the municipality of Venice there are
nearly 700 Jews in all, and their headquarters
remain here within the old confines.
The community council and the rabbinate have
offices in the Ghetto Vecchio; the House of Rest
for elderly Jews is in a corner of the Ghetto
Nuovo; services are held every Sabbath in the
Levantine School, and on special occasions in the
Spanish School, too.
During the last few years the Ghetto has been
noticeably reviving. I remember the place, '30
years ago, as melancholy indeed, its tall buildings
crumbling, its great square rubbish-strewn and
deserted, its Jewishness apparently hidden away
behind locked doors — only an 18th Century stone
slab of rules and regulations, and a somber 20th
Century memorial to the dead of the concentra-
tion camps, honored the history of the first of all
the ghettoes.
Today things are very different. There is a new
and more assertive memorial to the victims of the
Holocaust, a series of bronze slabs by the sculptor
Arbit Blatas, but there is also a burgeoning of
Jewish consciousness in a more hopeful kind.
For one thing those old synagogues are being
restored one by one to glory, and are already be-
coming a tourist attraction fascinating even by
By Philip
Slomovitz
Venetian standards. For another there is now a
lively museum of Jewish art, beneath the German
School. And for a third the Ghetto at large had
found a new pride in itself, and attracts to its
purlieus many kinds of craftsmen and their
families — not to speak of Jewish visitors from
abroad, many of whom are likely to be especially
drawn there during the eight-day festival of
Hanuka.
The old square rings again to the sound of saw
and hammer, children kick footballs abov 4 The
wellheads, and cheer up with their laughte ,le
old people of the House of Rest, which has its own
little oratory, by the way, besides an excellent
kosher dining room that is, I am told, very hospit-
able to visitors.
Jewish shops show themselves again "Shalom!"
is heard across the square. On one corner of the
Ghetto Nuovo Gianfranco, Penzo produces and
sells works of art, in glass and enamel, that are an
innovative blend of Jewish and Venetian forms —
a union of styles, it seems, never achieved before.
On another corner is the shop of the
glassworker Gianni Toso (for the moment anyway
— he is emigrating to 'Israel in 1982): One of his
chess sets, in which a team of Rabbis is matched
against a team of Christian priests, was recently
bought by the Corning Glass Museum, the ulti-
mate accolade for craftsmen in glass.
Then there are a couple of shops selling specifi-
cally Jewish souvenirs, candelabra, ornaments,
postcards; and some Jewish furniture restorers,
following one of the oldest traditions of the
Ghetto; and in the Calle del Forno, Oven Lane, a
bakery still makes unleavened bread and Jewish
sweetmeats. Sometimes there is a wedding in the
Spanish School, and into the little square outside
seep the wheezy strains of its venerable hand-
pumped organ: and almost any day of the year, at
about 10 o'clock in the morning tourists from all
over the world come trailing down the alley-ways
on their guided tour of the synagogues, exchang-
ing old Jewish jokes in Italian, Hebrew or Brook-
lynese. The Ghetto, a place of sad suggestion, has
lost its sadness for now.
Well, almost lost it. We entered the Ghetto at its
northern end, where the silhouette of the Square
is an excitement in itself. We will leave it at the
south, down the long narrow street of the Ghetto
Vecchio, and there we may still feel some gentle
emanations, wistful perhaps rather than tragic, of
sorrows long ago.
.
Dubnow on the Ghetto
"In those gloomy, tumbledown Jewish houses,
intellectual endeavor was at white heat. The
torch of faith blazed clear in them. In the abject,
dishonored son of the Ghetto was hidden an intel-
lectual giant."
—Simon Dubnow in "The Jewish History," 1903
The deportation memorial is sad, of course, and
the list of names, on the wall of the Levantine
School, of those . Venetian Jews who died in the
First World War — Aboaf, Boralevi, Foa. But it is
something less tangible, something suggestive in
the atmosphere or in the old gray walls that
makeS this thoroughfare a little dispiriting still. It
feels, so very tight, so shut-in, so introspective.
Faces look tale down here in the shadowy light,
eyes seem to look out a little suspiciously from the
doors of workshops or the windows of houses up
above. It feels, in short, just a little, just a tremor,
like a living ghetto still.
Of course it is all imagination — the past is gone,
the gates are open, the Jews of Venice are free as
air:, but still I think you may experience, as i
pass through the southern gateway of the GE._ _
on to the sunlitoquayside of Canareggio, where the
fish stalls are a babel of commerce and the es-
presso machines hiss hospitably in the cafes — I
think you may experience, all the same, some faint
sense of unease or even unreality: as though you
have passed through a chamber of time, or wan-
dered down that alley from one sensibility to an-
other.
'There are provisions for admiration and pride in the
recollections of a ghetto that has left a legacy of Jewish
identification.
With the emphasis always given on the evil, there is
joy in the realization that the new generation in that post-
ghetto environment creates a new life, an atmosphere of
self-confidence, an identification with Israel and world—
Jewry. The lashes from the anti-Semitism of the ages, in-
cluding the religious prejudices, are healing. This is the
lesson of Jewish historic experience.