TWTW: The World This Week / Episode #64
Kristallnacht…never again…a Frenchman’s view of America & Hamas…Xi offers Biden a ‘respite’?…Europe’s growing pains…a tribute to Paul Boehm…and cartoonist Kamensky on food, Gaza, and Hamas.
This weekly feature for Andelman Unleashed, continues on its mission to explore how the media of other nations are reporting and commenting on the United States, and how they are viewing the rest of the world. Coming to you today back in Paris …..
85 years ago….
….Brown-uniformed SS troops and inflamed Nazi sympathizers rampaged through Germany, sacking and burning some 1,400 synagogues, smashing the windows of Jewish shops, killing 90, and hauling some 30,000 off to concentration camps that had already begun their murderous extermination of six million. That night became part of the horrific vernacular of Nazi rule—Kristallnacht, the Night of Broken Glass. At the end of the war, in April 1945, the liberated survivors of Buchenwald seized on a phrase from a 1927 poem, transforming it into an anthem of determination, displaying it in a multitude of languages on hand-scrawled signs: Never Again.
Perhaps never before have these words held such meaning. Thursday night, on that anniversary—one of many dates that Germany is still trying to live down, and never forget—that phrase was projected on the Brandenburg Gate just steps from Hitler’s Reichskanzlei in Berlin: Never again is now!
To give it even further meaning, Chancellor Olaf Scholz traveled to the Beth Zion Synagogue in Berlin, donning a black yarmulka in respect, and paid tribute to worshipers, including a 102-year-old Holocaust survivor, who he greeted with tenderness and deep reverence.
How others see America
The United States remains one of the few nations whose leadership remains utterly committed to supporting Israel in its battle against Palestinians who remain committed to their own phrase—From the River to the Sea—implying their mission to rid Israel of Jews, perhaps as determinedly as Israel now seems prepared to cut even further any Palestinian presence in the Holy Land.
But now, sympathies have begun to turn, as Secretary of State Antony Blinken highlighted in this readout of his conversation with Josep Borrell, his counterpart in the European Union: “The Secretary reiterated the importance of protecting civilian lives and providing sustained humanitarian assistance to the Palestinian people.”
Few journalists understand the complexities of this issue for the United States and the world better than Le Monde’s Washington correspondent Piotr Smolar, grandson of Hersh Smolar, a hero of the Minsk ghetto who helped 10,000 Jews escape Nazi death camps, son of the editor of the Moscow Yiddish newspaper Folks-shtime, accused and imprisoned in the Soviet Union, suggesting the Communist Party was tolerating anti-Semitism. Decades later, his son Piotr would become Le Monde’s man in Israel. Author as well of the remarkable family memoir, Mauvais Juif [Bad Jew, though sadly never published in English], he would be accused of being insufficiently Zionist—a label pinned on a host of correspondents including your humble servant during one of his reporting trips to Israel back in the 1980s. “In these times of identity assignment,” Smolar wrote prophetically four years ago, describing his book, “we are bad Jews.”
This is just background to the extraordinary analysis he crafted for Le Monde’s French readers from Washington this week: “The United States in the trap of its support for Israel.” As Smolar continued:
Their tragedies intertwine. The first is that of Israel, placed in the obligation to render Hamas militarily incapacitated, because the attack of October 7 on its soil shattered its concept of national security. The second is that of Gazan civilians, whose torment reached unprecedented proportions under Israeli bombs.
The Biden administration demonstrates the difficulty of taking into account both aspects of the drama. It has committed its credibility and resources to supporting the Jewish state, whose government is dominated by arsonist and xenophobic nationalists and whose army is exposed to accusations of war crimes in Gaza.
For American President Joe Biden, this support is not a matter of partisan calculation, but of a necessary moral clarity in the face of the evil embodied by Hamas terrorism. However, the more the Israeli army's war crimes seem to accumulate, the more the horror suffered by the Jewish state a month ago seems to be diluted in public opinion.
A big week ahead in S.F.
As it happens, Joe Biden may be in a position to forget any number of other woes—from his apparently unquestioning embrace of Bibi Netanyahu to an imminent government shutdown to shrinking poll numbers, as Taiwan cartoonist and Cartooning for Peace stalwart Stellina observed:
This week Biden can take his mind off all that with a distraction—welcoming Chinese leader Xi Jinping to the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APAC) summit in San Francisco. Indeed, as this photo suggests, it’s been a year since the two leaders last met—a year fraught with deteriorating relations between the two leading Pacific powers.
As Hong Kong’s South China Morning Post, well-plugged into Beijing’s thinking on a host of issues, suggested that when the two meet, Biden will find “Xi set to pledge a ban on AI in autonomous weapons like drones and nuclear warhead control.” The paper continued:
The potential dangers of AI are expected to be a major focus of the US-China discussions…. In October, the Biden administration announced requirements for the approval of advanced AI products. Under the new rules, such initiatives must receive federal government certification, ensuring they cannot be repurposed for creating biological or nuclear weapons.
China has also advanced significantly in this sector. In his work report delivered at last year’s Communist Party national congress, Xi pledged to “foster the unified and focused growth of strategic emerging industries”, with a special emphasis on AI.
And then there’s the question of broader issues:
The dialogue on AI falls short of indicating a broader consensus on other military matters. China has already signalled to the US that it intends to restore military-to-military dialogue channels, but it still defends positions that are radically different from those adopted by Washington.
The final take on the session, though, from the South China Morning Post is just a trifle narrower:
Venues, stepladders and logistical nightmares: the hurdles facing protocol gurus for Xi-Biden meeting:
The nations have distinct diplomatic styles, mirroring their political systems: the US focuses on retail politics; China is scripted and top-down
Biden and Xi have a long personal history, but that will not affect their long-awaited policy dialogue on Wednesday on the Apec sidelines
Though as one reader asked, perhaps just a trifle tongue-in-cheek:
And what goes (largely) unsaid
Last week, I was called on, while passing through Prague, to discuss the media dilemma in covering Gaza on Alhurra TV’s evening news broadcast. If you can understand Arabic, you will find the entire segment by clicking here:
Otherwise, I began talking about the frightening death toll among journalists covering the war in Gaza, which as of this past Friday has now risen to 40, according the most authoritative figures from the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ):
CPJ is investigating all reports of journalists and media workers killed, injured, or missing in the war, which has led to the deadliest month for journalists since CPJ began gathering data in 1992.
As of November 10, CPJ’s preliminary investigations showed at least 40 journalists and media workers were among the more than 12,000 killed since the war began on October 7—with over 10,600 Palestinian deaths in Gaza and the West Bank and 1,400 deaths in Israel.
The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) told Reuters and Agence France Press news agencies that it could not guarantee the safety of their journalists operating in the Gaza Strip, after they had sought assurances that their journalists would not be targeted by Israeli strikes, Reuters reported on October 27.
For the most current figure, be sure to check here. A CPJ official further told me, “by comparison 17 journalists and media workers have been killed in the Ukraine war since Russia's full-scale February 2022 invasion.” That’s after more than 21 months of conflict.
How others see the World
Expanding Europe?
This was a perhaps historic week in Europe that was largely buried beneath events further from home. “The European Commission recommends opening accession negotiations with Ukraine,” Hubert Wetzel, Brussels correspondent for the Munich daily Süddeutsche Zeitung reported. “For the country, this is a further step towards the EU. Now the heads of state and government of the member states are under pressure to act.”
Commission president Ursula von der Leyen had just paid a visit to Ukraine leader Volodymyr Zelensky in Kyiv, heralding the vote, with neighboring Moldova, itself under siege from Russian elements, riding in on the same measure. As Wetzel continued:
[Ukraine] which is in a bitter war with Russia, is by far the largest of all EU accession candidates—integration into the Union will be difficult and expensive. It is also clear to the Commission that there are still significant deficits in Ukraine, especially in the fight against corruption, in rolling back the political and economic power of oligarchs and in the treatment of national minorities….
The fact that the Commission nevertheless spoke out in principle in favor of membership negotiations is primarily for political reasons: the military situation is currently not favorable for Ukraine. The Middle East conflict that has flared up again is directing international attention to another region of the world, and there are political forces gaining ground in the USA who no longer want to give Kiev any help…. At the same time, the Commission's decision puts the 27 EU countries under pressure to act.
China, Hungary, bring it on
“China's e-car giant BYD is apparently moving to Hungary,” went the report from editor Marcus Thierer in Frankfurter Allgemeine Sonntagszeitung. Viktor Orbán was a guest in China for two weeks.
Theurer continued:
Hungary's Prime Minister was received with warm words in Beijing. “We consider you a friend,” President Xi Jinping assured the visitor from Europe. While other EU member states have increasingly distanced themselves from China in recent years, Orbán's Hungary has maintained and deepened its close relations with the Asian world power.
China has become an important economic partner for the Eastern European country—and it looks like these ties will become even closer in the future. On his trip to China, Orbán also paid a visit to a rapidly growing model Chinese company: in Shenzhen he was a guest of the BYD car company. The manufacturer is a high-flyer in the international auto industry and is now the second largest producer of electric cars in the world behind Tesla. Company boss Wang Chuanfu presented his latest models to the visitor from Hungary in Shenzhen.
And then, there’s Paul Boehm
Every Veterans Day (11 November when Germany surrendered to the Allies in a railway car the Forest of Compiègne in 1918), a bouquet of flowers appears in the little metal ring beneath the words:
Here fell
22 August 1944
Paul BOEHM
Died for France
There are these little memorials all over Paris, and on the 14th of July (what we Americans call “Bastille Day”), on November 11, and the day each gave his or her life for their country in the final battle for Paris as allied armies approached in the final moments of World War II, these same flowers appear magically next to their name. As it turns out, Paul Boehm was a janitor and a resistance leader, commanding “the 7th sector” of the FFI (Forces Français de l’Interieur), who was mortally wounded in bitter fighting against the hated Boche that took place just beneath our windows. I have grown immeasurably closer to his memory in the 43 years since I first pitched up in an apartment here on rue de Solferino. I wish him, all those who have given their lives for their country, and those who they held dear, deep and wonderful memories of what they might have been without war.
Just 20 feet away ….
Perhaps France’s largest march ever against anti-Semitism kicked off Sunday afternoon at Paris’ Place des Invalides, led by two former French presidents—Sarkozy and Hollande—plus the leaders of the French National Assembly and Senate, not to mention a host of stars of stage, screen, and politics. Hundreds of thousands rolled past the National Assembly, turned down the Boulevard Saint-Germain and passed the rue de Solferino here, barely 20 feet from the tribute-on-the-wall to Paul Boehm.
And then they burst into song…the Marseillaise, what else?
Finally, there’s Kamensky ….
The inventive Austrian cartoonist Kamensky imagines the reality of bread to the starving populaton of Gaza and the challenges of getting it into the right hands, with Hamas lurking just behind and certainly below.
Marian Kamensky, who draws simply under his last name, currently calls Austria his home, though it might just as well have been his birthplace of Slovakia or any of several Slovak towns where he spent his youth, Germany where he learned lithography and began publishing in a host of European newspapers and magazines from Die Zeit to Der Spiegel, before settling finally in Vienna where he now works as an illustrator and cartoonist, drawing for the Cartoon Movement. We last saw him in August, riffing on the sorry, patched up state of our planet.
Here’s how Kamensky imagines himself:
As usual, Professor Rotberg is enormously astute and generous (in his praise!) ... which is very much reciprocated !
We will both continue our analyses in hopes of moving some needles in the proper directions.
Oh so very kind and generous of you, Judith … clarification is indeed a core of my mission & it is so gratifying when that is appreciated!!