Putin intends to wipe out anti-Semitism in his country

AP via The Miami Herald ^ | November 15, 2001 | AP

[CommiesOut]

Published Thursday, November 15, 2001

Putin intends to wipe out anti-Semitism in his country, Russia's chief rabbi says

WASHINGTON -- (AP) -- The chief rabbi of Russia flew home Wednesday convinced that Russian President Vladimir Putin intends to fight anti-Semitism and ``eradicate it completely.''

Rabbi Berel Lazar led a delegation of a half-dozen Russian and American Jews that met with Putin on Tuesday night at the Russian Embassy.

``The meeting proved to me the commitment of President Putin for the well-being of Russian Jewry, his commitment to fighting anti-Semitism in any form in Russia and letting Russian Jews travel freely and retain their dual citizenship,'' Lazar said in a telephone interview from his airplane.

Anti-Semitism is deeply rooted in Russian history, as it is in many European countries.

Even after the breakup of the Soviet Union in 1991, synagogues were burned and marked with graffiti.

Since Putin took office at the end of 1999, arrests and prosecutions in anti-Semitic incidents became more frequent, Lazar said.

But, he said, ``The judicial system doesn't work so well yet.''

Before the Jewish New Year in September, Putin sent a letter to the Jewish community promising to stamp out anti-Semitism.

There are about one million Jews in Russia, the rabbi said, even after massive emigration spurred by Jackson-Vanik legislation that required the Soviet Union to issue exit permits or forfeit trading privileges.

President Bush informed Putin at their White House talks Tuesday that the administration would ask Congress to exempt Russia from the legislation -- a move that Lazar said has his support.

``Jewish identity is our biggest problem,'' the rabbi said. ``Seventy percent of Jews haven't come forward to identify as Jews. They used to be ashamed of being Jewish.''

But now, Lazar said, ``there is a pride in being Jewish,'' although it has not reached Jewish communities in remote areas of Russia. Synagogues are being returned to Jewish control and religious schools are being built.

Asked if he encouraged Russian Jews to emigrate to Israel, the United States or elsewhere, or to remain in Russia with a Jewish identity, the rabbi said he leaves it up to them to make that personal decision.

Meanwhile, David A. Harris, executive director of the American Jewish Committee, called Bush's decision to seek a lifting of Jackson-Vanik's application to Russia ``a momentous event.''

[Inyokern]

What nazi web site have you found it on? The same one that lists Jewish People's Commissars in Lenin's government?

I got it from this Polish website

[Askel5]

Uh-oh ... looks like the syntax has come home to roost.

I've every confidence they'll meet with every success we've enjoyed with our War on Nouns Series in which we've targed (but somehow only exacerbated the problems of) Organized Crime, Poverty, Drugs and Terrorism.

Time to revise my thoughts on the humor-less militant atheist ... somebody's splitting a gut on this headline.

[Askel5]

I say we skip the Global Code of Conduct's slate of "Hate Crimes" and just team up with the Russians in a "War on Evil" and be done with it.

[codebreaker]

Good for him..

[madrussian]

Whatever on earth would make you say this? A Polish visitor would would surely be treated well in Israel. What makes you think he wouldn't?

I was talking about residing in a country.

[madrussian]

What's the matter. You hate those holocaust museums? You think the Jews should also build a holocaust museum for the Ukrainians and Cambodians and Armenians?

Jews in the USA pay taxes. We vote. So taxpayers helped build a few holocaust museums. Why does this make you so angry?

It's not like there was a poll of individual taxpayers what museum they want their money to go for.

[madrussian]

I think is has to do with the fact that they were so set apart from society for so long.

They set themselves apart from the society. There is no universal law that various people will target Jews for no reason.

[ninachka]

HE will also wipe out public drunkeness and so many other unique Russian customs...

There is nothing uniqually Russian about public drunkeness. have you ever been to Amsterdam? New York? Paris? Public drunkenness exists there as well. (Russians simply can hold their liquor better than most. THIS is a unique Russian trait!)

[madrussian]

I got it from this Polish website

They don't have such a table. So the nazi web site you get it from is your head, haha.

[independentmind]

Anti-Semitism is deeply rooted in Russian history, as it is in many European countries.

I wouldn't get overly alarmed at Putin's comments. BTW, the author forgot to mention exactly where anti-semitism isn't "deeply rooted"--outside of Israel, of course. Putin sounds to me like he's trying to please someone--most likely that someone is willing to invest in Russia.

[malarski]

Hey, don't get upset at your own people. I was just quoting from Steven Steinlight's article. My read somehow tells me that the superiority dogma is not only a Nazi invention:

More tacitly and subconsciously, I was taught the superiority of my people to the gentiles who had oppressed us. We were taught to view non-Jews as untrustworthy outsiders, people from whom sudden gusts of hatred might be anticipated, people less sensitive, intelligent, and moral than ourselves. We were also taught that the lesson of our dark history is that we could rely on no one."

Steven Steinlight

[malarski]

THIS is a unique Russian trait!) From my experience Poles and Irish are also good at it.

[marbren]

God made promises to the Jews that he will keep. If Satan can kill all the Jews he can call God a liar.

[malarski]

10 years after the revolution Jews were not running Russia

Which means that for the first 10 years they did. And what about Beria, idealistically running KGB till December 24, 1953?

[Inyokern]

They don't have such a table. So the nazi web site you get it from is your head, haha.

I don't see how it is "nazi" to point out that the Poles are taking credit for the accomplishments of people they have driven out of their country. It is as if the Germans were to claim credit for Einstein.

Poland has had 10 Nobel Prize winners for science, an impressive number, but only one, Marie Curie, would be allowed to live in Poland today.

[Inyokern]

And what about Beria, idealistically running KGB till December 24, 1953?

There have been many accusations that Beria was a Jew, but I have seen no proof of it. As far as I can tell, Beria was a Georgian.

His predecessor, Felix Dzerzinski, of course, was a Pole.

[madrussian]

The web site calls them "Polish-origin", so they define them correctly.

Perhaps, they don't realize the amount of resentment some Jews have towards Poland.

Einstein did develop as a person in Germany. I believe before the Nazis came to power, he was uninhibited in his career. His most famous articles were published in the begining of the century. Or are you counting Jews separately in every country? If you do so, then the question why there is "anti-semitism" has its answer right there.

And to your question why it is "nazi", you didn't ask that question when being pointed out how many Jewish Bolsheviks there were in Lenin's government.

[Askel5]

Lol ... I suppose anyone willing to believe this schlock is rube enough to invest in Russia.

What's funny? I was at a friend's house the other night and had to ask, "What is 'The Protocols of Zion'?"

He explained what it was and why he had it. I explained why I wanted to read through it and he lent it to me.

The full title page reads:

United We Stand, Divided We Fall

THE PROTOCOLS

of the meetings of the

LEARNED ELDERS OF ZION

with
Preface and Explanatory Notes

Translated from the Russian Text by
Victor E. Marsden
Formerly Russian Correspondent of "The Morning Post"

Naturally, Marsden was inexplicably released from (not executed in) the Peter&Paul prison. Though it made him ill to translate the diabolical text into English at the British Museum, he perservered. Of course, the exact details of his death remain a mystery.

Just searching with my stethoscope to get a feel for the beat of the telltale black heart I think still exists in spades.

I guess I found too many parallels between the blowing up of Moscow apartments of late and the blowing up of their own police stations in the '20's, Lenin's NEP and the capitalism (as privatized into the hands of Party faithful turned oligarchs) to be as confident as the rest in the comprehensive metanoia necessary for glasnost or perestroika to be genuine.

[madrussian]

Putin sounds to me like he's trying to please someone--most likely that someone is willing to invest in Russia.

No doubt about it.