The stink of anti-Semitism rises from the streets of Kiev and Moscow. It pollutes the air in Haifa and Tel Aviv. No filtration has eliminated it completely from the odors wafting throughout New York and Chicago.
Abhorrent slogans of hatred make their way into every culture and every language. Despicable anthems of ignorance and fury find refuge in the vernaculars of diverse peoples around the world.
Vladimir Zhirinovsky's anti-Semitism does not preclude him from political success, nor do his candid invectives cause the Russian public to recoil in horror. The world has repudiated his platform and his remarks, but the international momentum of anti-Semitism continues unabated.
This frighteningly common phenomenon is as virulent in Gaza as it is in Moscow. The United Jewish Appeal's fund drive at Dartmouth to resettle Jews wishing to flee the former Soviet Union is a critical and commendable endeavor, however no distance and no donation may be great enough to deliver anybody from an affliction which makes its onerous presence felt the world over.
Operation Exodus in a sense can liberate Jews from one hell only to transport them to another. The United Jewish Appeal says that $1000 can cover the price of moving a family of four from Moscow to Tel Aviv. Weary and battered people travel from page one of The New York Times, where Zhirinovsky's comments are printed, to page four, where readers can see pictures of violent Palestinian slogans scrawled on the walls of the Jabaliya Refugee Camp in Israeli-occupied Gaza Strip.
Members of the militant Islamic group Hamas, wearing black hoods and armed with blue spray paint, inscribe upon a wall, "Neither the days nor the years will weaken our drive for revenge against the Jews. Hamas announces its responsibility for the operation in Ramallah that led to the death of two settlers and the wounding of others." Zhirinovsky and the Russian ultranationalists have not as yet been responsible for any deaths.
Israel's role as a destination for Jews seeking refuge in itself carries interesting implications. The author Philip Roth's latest work, "Operation Shylock," examines the existence of Israel from a variety of perspectives, one of which includes the curious notion of Diasporism.
This movement in fact advocates the repatriation of members of the European Jewry who fled their homelands in the wake of World War II. Diasporism contends that there are few places where the Jewish people are as unwelcome as they are in Israel, and there are few places where intense anti-Semitism has exploded to such great proportions. It fears the potential that, if the atrocities of the Holocaust were to recur, the Middle East would most likely bear witness to the horror.
Although this is an excessive perspective, it does not project a favorable image of Israel as a panacean destination for Jews in peril.
In order for Russian Jews to participate in a program like Operation Exodus, they must come to terms with leaving the place that has been home to their families for perhaps several generations. This is a complex and difficult decision at the very best, and an emigration figure of 8000 per month, is not the product of anti-Semitism alone. The former Soviet Union is just not a pleasant place to live at this point in time, with inflation expected to surge to almost 30 percent per month by summer and the threat of major civil upheaval looming overhead.
The United States as a destination for Russian Jews is a viable alternative, though anti-Semitism in its ubiquity even endures in the land of the free. It is unlikely that there will ever be any Zhirinovskys in Congress or any pogroms in New Jersey, but this country is not guiltless. The Anti-Defamation League reported in the January 25 issue of the New York Times that "anti-Semitic acts against people and property rose 8 percent nationwide in 1993, with a 23 percent jump in assaults and harassment. . . ." This translates to over 1000 instances of direct aggression.
In the same issue a subordinate in the Nation of Islam, the group led by Rev. Louis Farrakhan, was reported as giving a speech in which he declared Jews "blood suckers of the black nation," a people that "crucified Jesus in a kangaroo court." Leaders of the African American community were quick to condemn his remarks, but the initial utterance left the dominant impression.
Anti-Semitism needs to be confronted boldly in all of its manifestations. The United Jewish Appeal represents a worthy cause devoted to those in critical situations, but the solution offered by Operation Exodus is only one segment of an incomplete process. After rescuing those in danger, the world must be rescued from the danger itself.
