Page 8-The Canadian Jevvish News, Thursday, July 10^ 1986
M-T
The New York Times (June 29) says that the PLO, far from being a bankrupt organization, is still rolling in money.
That information comes from one Saed Musa, a onetime cohort of Yasser Arafat who became disenchanted with the latter's leadership and now heads a dissident group of Palestinians backed by /Damascus.',; ■ ^    ~■'
JWe have always, known that the PLO has been morally and politically bankrupt — ever since it launched its terrorist war against innocent civilians. .
Several weeks ago, however, certain Western newspaper sources, including the prestigious publication Forbes, began circulation reports that the PLO was suiffering from economic collapse because of its large welfare and other programs..
Not so, according to the disaffected Saed Miisa who told New York Timesman Ihsan A. Hijazi that the PLO has amassed a fortune in bank accounts in Lebanon; Jordan and Switzerland, • , The PLO's resources in the diisty city of Amman in Jordan are about $700 milhon. Musa indicated that the PLO had a billion dollars in Beirut banks when the terrorist PLO collective was forced to leave the city by the Israelis.
While Palestinians languish in squalid refugee camps in Lebanon, Jordan and else\yhere Yasser Arafat has been visiting African countries where, according to another Arab source (the ArabjoumalAl Shiraa) he has been giving each nation he visits $5 million to dissuade it from reestablishing diploinatic relations with Israel. , The PLO is far from being financially bankrupt. Arab petrodollars from Libya and Saudi Arabia are still filling its bottomless coffers. PLO money is finding its way into various investment instruments.
The spectacle of PL6 moguls riding high while ordinary Palestinian people bear the brunt of poverty and exploitation by other Arab nations is in the long tradition of corrupt political cynicism. ■
lITio owes
We note with some sense of amusement one of the lesser quarrels that is now animating the Israeli-Egyptian discourse? ■
Dr. Yitschak Ben Gad, an Israeli political commentator, indicates that an Egyptian scholar is now calling for reparations from Israel for the gold which the ancient Israelites took with them when they departed Pharaonic Egypt some 3,(XX) years ago.
Prof, ffahgiat Ahmad, the Egyptian scholar in question, has even written a bcM)k about Us subjed caUed Phara^ Moses. After researching his topic in various archives, Ahmad came to the conclusion that the exodus from Egypt was so sudden and the vkithdrawal of so much bullion so disastrous that the empire of the pharaohs collapsed as a result.
Ahmad has been backed in his historical reconstmction of Egypt's ancient period by the Cairo daily Al Gumhuriya which has added an interesting twist to the discussion. The paper says that what the Israelites accomplished was admirable because the Pharaonic empire was cruel and oppressive.
The Egyptians have nonetheless called upon Israelis, the lineal descendants of the Israelites, to repay the debt for the gold (used, the Egyptians note, to construct a golden calf) plus accrued interest, The sum of $40 billion has been mentioned.
An Israeli scholar has challenged the Egyptian reckoning by pointing out that the 300,000 Israelite slaves who labored for 280 years are owed back wages for 3,000 years — plus interest.
Shaul Menashe, the Israeli who responded to Prof. Bahgiat's claim, asked the Egyptians to forward to Israel the difference since the unpaid wages exceeded the gold taken from Egypt.
The good-natured debate on this question apparently obscures a deeper issue — the claim that Israel will some day have to pay compensation to Palestinians who lost property and assets when they left Palestine in 1947-48.
The humorous exchanges between Israel and Egypt on compensation may be a symbolic one with important jx)litical resonances. We believe, however, that discussion over the rights of Palestinians (and the rights of Jews who lived in Arab lands) is better than warfare over the same issue.
Perhaps, the Egyptians are showing the way to dialogue on this difficult question.
Jewish'Ukrainian relations studied
Hope far other two solitudes
SHELDON KIRSHNER
The relationship between Jews and Ukrainians is burdened by history. For hundreds of years, in Europe, Jewish and Ukrainian interests were inimical. And even today, in Canada, Jews and Ukrainians have clashed over the Deschenes Commission, which was established to investigate war criminals living in this country.
Is there no end to Jewish-Ukrainian lack of mutual understanding? ;
Howard Aster and Peter Potichnyj, in Jewish-Ukrainian Relations, Two Solitudes (Mosaic Press), grapple with a historical — and emotional — problem that should concern all of us. McMaster University political scientists, Aster and Potichnyj concede that Jews and Ukrainians are "locked in a Gordian knot which ai^iears to be insurmountable." They acknowledge that there are "very few, if any, pdhts at which Jewish and Ukrainian perspectives and interests coincide."
And yet, they write, there is hope.
In addressing themselves to the issue, which has generated more heat than light, Aster and Potichnyj knew they were navigating through dangerous, unknown waters. "When we first approached the topici we faced a variety of significant problems — the relative paucity of research sources, the incoherence of almost any methodological approach... the general intellectual skepticism with which our colleagues viewed our efforts in this area, the apparent ossified layers of prejudice and confused meanings..." ,
Aster and Potichnyj .who originally prepared the essays in this volume for two learned societies conferences in 1982, do not pretend to have definitive answers.    They   regard their
monographs as ''preliminary" and ''exploratory^" ''beacons in an intellectual area shrouded by fog."
Infinite — and perhaps irrecon-ciable — controversies complicate the study of Jewish-Ukrainian relations. Several examples will suffice.
•In Ukrainian eyes, Bogdan Chmielnicki is a national hero. But to Jews, he is a savage murderer. Chmielnicki, a 17th century figure; led a revolt against feudal Polish landlords oppressing the Ukrainian population. The management of their estates was often in the hands of Jewish rent collectors. To the average Ukrainian peasant, the Jew was a symbol of Polish Catholic oppression. According to the Ukrainian Encyclopedia, the Jew "found himself between the hammer and the anvil."
Jewish and Ukrainian historians are in general agreement that the Jew, as the unwitting instrument of hated Polish power, generated animosity. But what Ukrainians fail to point out is that Ukrainian anti-semitism was more than the sum total of the Jews' association with the Polish nobility. ,
•In a forum conducted in Jewish Social Studies, a Jewish and a Ukrainian historian examined the turbulent career of Simon Petlyura. the 20th century Ukrainian nationalist, and arrived at radically different conclusions.
Taras Hunczak described as "absurd" the accusation that Petlyura was anti-semi tic and that he played a role in the post-1917 pogroms in the Ukraine. Hunczak went on to say that "to convict Petlyura for the tragedy that befell Ukrainian Jewry is to condemn an innocent man and to distori the record of Ukrainian-Jewish relations."
Zosa Szajkowski n^utted Hunczak's arguments, going as far as to state that his paper should not have been published in a journal of .serious Jewish scholarship.
Charging Hunczak with having produced "a journalistic propoganda artfcle,'' he condenmed Petlyura for "leading and sanctioning" the pogroms. "Of this truth there can be no doubt."
The Encyclopedia Judaica. though hardly as harsh, is not kind to Petlyura. It says that when his forces retreated before the Red Army in the winter of 1919, his units "turned into murderous bands and perpetrated mass killings of Jews... Petlyura did little to stop the wave of mob violence.;."
The entry takes note of die Ukrainian claini that Petlyura could not be personally held responsible for the pogroms, "because of the anarchical conditions of the. revolutionary
Bogdan Chmielnicki
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•Aster and Potichnyi themselves say that the short-lived Ukrainian (1917-1920) state accorded Jews "a significant degree'' of national autonomy, and that Yiddish was recognized as an official language. To the authors, this represents the "highest and most accommodating period" in Jewish-Ukrainian relations.
The Encyclopedia Judaica ; admits that this was "a special period" for Jews and Ukrainians. Yet it also points out that the Jews' autonomous status was abolished in 1918 and that the subsequent progroms which took place, "without the Ukrainian government taking any effective measures to assure the seciirity of the Jewish population." . proved that the whole oif this project had been directed more at securing the assistance (of Jews) in order to achieve a complete separation from Russia than at really developing a new positive attitude toward Jews.''
•Aster and Potichnyj, in their collective summary of the Holocaust, say that Ukrainians, with "the exception of cruninal elements," did not participate in genocidal actions -against Jews. But the Encyclopedia Judaica says that "great parts of the Ukrainian population wholehearted-
ly collaborated with the Nazis in exterminating the Jews..." Elsewhere, the encyclopedia says the number of Ukrainian Nazi collaborators was :-'particularly large."
Aster and Potichnyj. however, concede that the Ukrainian. national /underground "did not make a public stand in defence of the Jews.' *.
In their effort to trace the sources of Jewish-Ukrainian tension. Aster and Potichnyj do reveal some interesting . facts.
The autonomy granted to Jewish communities by the Polish kings was^ beneficial. However, they say; it was a major factor in .spoiling Jewish-Ukrainian reldtiohs: Jews prospered under the rule of the Poles, but Ukrainians found themselves under their ■ heel. .
The separateness of Jews and Ukrai-. nians was reitiforced by religious differentiation. This, in turn, was accentuated by "a complex system of differentiated economic activity."
Writing from a Ukrainian perspective, Potichnyj admits that his people have been affected by religious anti-semitism. As he puts it: "It is undeniable that a part of the Ukrainian sensibility towards the Jews relates back to the way in which Christianity in general views thie Jews."
Ukrainians also have viewed Jews as "money-grubbing" aliens who were not only agents of Polish ovierlords, but, later, of the Soviet state.
Looking at the positive .-aspects, he states that the Ukrainians have/despife their general hostility to Jews, viewed them as "spiritually oriented." He adds that the emergence of Israel has had a positive impact on Ukrainians who equate the history of Zionism with the Ukrainian struggle for national independence.
Aster detects a common theme in Yiddish literature — the portrait of a fierce, drunken Ukrainian given to swift anger. He concludes that when Ukrainians have fought their oppressors, the result has been the persecution of the Jews.
Both Aster and Potichnyj suggest that Jews and Ukrainians can work together to achieve a better working relationship.
Aster says it is incumbent on Jews to "unravel the complex nature" of their own history and "to see how that interpretation affects the way in which Jews perceive Ukrainians..."
He argues that since the Ukrainian search for an independent homeland is likely to be a "driving force" inspiring Ukrainian activitiies outside the Soviet Union, and since 800,000 Jews still live in the Ukraine, Diaspora Jewry should consider getting involved in their struggle for ^'human rights and national liberation.
"Is this not a basis for joint efforts between Jews and Ukrainians?"
What Aster and Potichnyj are really saying is that Jews and Ukrainians can resolve their historic differences if an independent Ukrainian state arises in the Soviet Union. "One may indeed conclude therefore that only when the conditions of foreign domination are eradicated, for both Jews and Ukrainians, that many of the problems in Jewish-Ukrainian relations may be resolved."
To put it mildly, their prescription is incredibly simplistic, For if what they say is true, Jewish-Ukrainian relations will not improve: The Soviet Union has no intention of breaking up its unity by satisfying the yearnings of Ukrainian nationalists.
Jews and Ukrainians, if they wish to achieve any kind of mutual understanding, will have to find realistic means by which to address then- deep-seated problems. They can begin by trying to understand each other's religion, history and culture. The question of Ukrainian national independence is a red herring, a pipe dream, and it should not get in the way of the real struggle at hand: a genuine rapiMTOchement between Jews and Ukrainians, now and not at some future date.