At the airport I bumped int Radu Ioaind of the United States Holocaust Museum. He had spent a good part of his time here talking with Romanian officials. They are well aware of the persistence of antisemitism in their country and are anxious to address it.
They seem to recognize, as do a number of other Eastern European countries, that one of the measures of their entry into the Western democratic world is the degree to which they address age-old problems in their country, particularly antisemitism.
I posed my question to Radu about the value of such gatherings. He was fully in agreement with what I wrote in a previous post said about this.
It's not what happens at the meeting that counts as much as the very fact of the meeting and the preparation for it by each country.
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2 comments:
As someone living in Bucharest, spotting the “Bucharest OSCE meeting” tag in your blog awakened my interest -- although I couldn’t recall anything related to this meeting: “So, there was such a meeting in Bucharest? When?... Oh, recently?!…”
As I was reading through your posts, some pieces of “news” I’ve seen on TV were slowly coming forth. Nothing like the interesting bits you’ve shared here: comments about the burdened traffic, the camera insisting on a sleeping attendee (eventually woken up and “interviewed” by the “reporter”), and images of the famous -- even iconic, for many -- Gigi Becali (ex-shepherd, now a billionaire and owner of a football club) entering the building (plus the comment that his short speech woke up the participants).
I reckon it would be very difficult to address any serious issue in a country where the media is generally shallow and biased, no matter how anxious the officials seem to be. And, by the way, I believe many politicians owe their popularity to their skillfully putting these inclinations to work.
"...one of the measures of their entry into the Western democratic world is the degree to which they address age-old problems in their country, particularly antisemitism."
Anti-Jewish hatred is an "age-old problem" in eastern Europe because it has always been an "age-old" part of their culture. "Old sins cast long shadows."
This "age-old" anti-Jewish hatred, this egregious culture, has already entered into the Western world on the coat-tails of Islam's traditional anti-Jewish hatred. Political correctness, in the form of anti-Israel fervour within the Western academia and the Christian Left, has become a cloak and a camouflage for anti-Jewish hatred. This is how anti-Judaism has been insidiously translated into anti-Zionism.
Western Leftists have gradually and perniciously created the imbroglio that declares it politically incorrect for any thinking man or women to accuse the anti-Zionist of being anti-Jewish. This is what I would appellate as a constriction of conscience. Islam and Christianity have been propagated and perpetuated by very similar machinations.
"Ill habits gather by unseen degrees,
As brooks make rivers, rivers make seas." --John Dryden
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