I MEDIA MONITOR I
Will Eastern Bloc
Recognize Israel?
ARTHUR J. MAGIDA
Special to The Jewish News
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36
FRIDAY JANUARY 19, 1990
ditors at The New
Republic have looked
into their crystal balls
and determined that next
month will witness the res-
toration of ties between the
"struggling proto-
democracies" of Eastern
Europe and Israel.
The reason? The long-time
"nullification of Israel in
Communist policy looked]
very much like the nullifica-
tion of their own in-
dependence and identities."
"For decades," write the
seers at The New Republic,
"Israel was at the top of the
enemies list of all who took
their marching orders from
Moscow and of some who
didn't. But Moscow's mar-
ching orders are changing,
and in any case are no longer
heeded by the newly free
citizens of Prague and War-
s a w , of Budapest and
Berlin."
The weekly's editors are
also irked that Israel's
critics required the Jewish
state to have "special
reasons for everything it
does," in this case, main-
taining normal relations
with Ceausescu's Romania.
The "most obvious reason,"
they note, for the years of
Israeli-Romanian relations
was that Romania, alone
among the Communist bloc,
kept its diplomatic relations
with Israel after the 1967
Six-Day War.
These ties also brought
Israel "concrete benefits."
For a price, Romanian Jews
could emigrate to Israel, and
when it benefited
Ceausescu, he would in-
tervene with Moscow on
Israel's behalf. He also
helped smooth the way for
Anwar Sadat's 1977 trip to
Jerusalem and for the Camp
David accords that eventual-
ly emerged from it.
But during a good part of
his regime, note the editors,
Ceausescu was being pro-
pped up by "the most radical
Arab states," Syria and
Libya, and by the Palestine
Liberation Organization.
The editors appear elated
that Romanian students
demonstrating against the
Ceausescu government
shortly before it fell carried
posters of the dictator
swathed in a kefiyeh, the
traditional Arab headdress.
"The students of
Bucharest know," comments
The New Republic, "who
really sided with their
tormentors and assisted
them in the exercise of
power."
'Jerusalem Post' Slams
U.S.'s Panama Invasion
"Not one of America's
finer hours," lamented the
Jerusalem Post about the
U.S. invasion of Panama.
The American action,
noted Israel's only English-
language daily, was
"operationally clumsy and
did not achieve its objectives
with dispatch and efficiency.
Slow, agonizing and costly,
it has become an interna-
tional political failure."
Further, stated the paper,
the Bush Administration
had "insufficient reason" for
its action in Panama. To the
Post, the United States used
"pious arguments" to ex-
plain the invasion — Manuel
Noriega had declared war on
the United States and one
U.S. serviceman had been
killed in Panama. Had the
Soviet Union used such
reasoning for a similar
military adventure, "it
would rightly have been
blasted from the rooftops."
Noriega, now in an
American prison awaiting
trial, was flown directly
from Panama to Miami. This
Manuel Noriega:
"Dubious legality"?
tactic, said the Post, had
"dubious legality," and not,
it continued, just because
the United States had re-
cently condemned Israel's
kidnapping of Lebanon's
Sheikh Obeid.