Newsgroup: it.politica.internazionale
Titolo: sulle relazioni tra Romania ed Israele

http://www.jewishideasdaily.com/content/module/2011/12/2/main-feature/1/from-bucharest-to-jerusalem/e
 
 
The cabinet of Romania headed by Prime Minister Emil Boc came to
Jerusalem on November 24 to hold a joint session with Prime Minister
Benjamin Netanyahu's government. Boc spoke eloquently of the two
countries' common security concerns and shared views on peace and
security. In February 2011 Poland's cabinet held a similar joint
meeting in Jerusalem—a further indication of the close ties between
post-Communist East Europe and the Jewish state.
 
Still, Romania is a unique case. Firstly, Israel and Romania have had
continuous diplomatic relations since 1948. Whatever the other sins of
the country's Communist ruler Nicolae Ceausescu, who reveled in a cult
of personality along with his wife Elena, Romania did not join other
Soviet satellites, Arab and so-called non-aligned nations in their
efforts to isolate Israel. If anything, Ceausescu—who came to power in
1965 and met his bitter end in 1989—heightened diplomatic ties and
even established air and sea links with Israel. That this decision was
coordinated with the Kremlin and had ulterior motives does not detract
from its significance, according to Israel's former ambassador to
Romania, Yosef Govrin. To complicate the picture, Bucharest had
recognized the Palestine Liberation Organization in 1974 and provided
it with training and logistical support.
 
In recent years, Romania, with its population of 22 million (mostly
Eastern Orthodox) and an EU member since 2007, seems to have moved
even closer toward Israel. In July 2011, Netanyahu became the first
Israeli leader to visit Bucharest since Ceausescu's fall. Security
cooperation between Jerusalem and Bucharest came under scrutiny in
July 2010 when an IDF helicopter practicing flying over unfamiliar,
steep terrain (not unlike Iran) crashed in thick fog into a Carpathian
mountain ravine killing one Romanian and six IDF soldiers.
 
Romania is also distinguished by the fact that alone among East
European countries during the Soviet period, it did not engage in
state-sponsored anti-Israelism or anti-Semitism. Its Jews were allowed
to openly study their heritage and (for a price) to make aliyah.
"Romania never voted in the UN for equating 'Zionism with Racism' nor
for negating Israel's participation in the General Assembly, as did
other Soviet satellites," said Govrin. The 400,000 Israelis of
Romanian heritage also contribute to a sense of mutual affinity.
 
The country has had an outsized part on the international stage dating
back to the enlightened role played by Nicolae Titulescu (1882–1941)
at the League of Nations, according to historian Rafi Vago of Tel Aviv
University. It had sought to bridge East and West and to broker an
Arab-Israel peace. Well-intentioned or not, Ceausescu helped convince
Israel's Labor Party leaders that Yasir Arafat had the capacity to
moderate his views. In this sense, Ceausescu helped pave the way for
the ill-fated Madrid Conference (1991) and in the (1993) Oslo debacle.
More constructively, he helped encourage Egypt's Anwar Sadat (1977) to
make peace with Menachem Begin. Then as now, Romania steadfastly
opposed an imposed solution preferring direct negotiations between the
parties.
 
Bucharest's backing for Israel remains adroitly modulated. In a U.S.-
vetoed Security Council resolution in 2004 condemning Israel for
targeting Hamas founder Sheik Ahmed Yassin, Romania joined other EU
countries in abstaining.  In November's UNESCO vote in favor of full
membership for "Palestine," Romania abstained (after having cast a
negative vote in a preliminary round of voting). With less gusto than
some other EU countries, Romania continues to help stoke Iran's
economy, even as it takes criticism for being a jumping off point for
Iranian-run global narcotics being moved to Western Europe.
 
On balance, however, Romania is counted among Israel's allies. Its
opposition to a unilateral declaration of Palestinian statehood within
the EU favorably counters erstwhile friends like Denmark and Sweden
who exhibit scant patience for Israeli diplomatic and security
concerns. Romanian-Israeli bilateral relations have progressively
improved. In January 2001, at the start of the second intifada, the
two countries signed a free trade agreement. Annual commerce in 2010
stood at $428 million though ties go far deeper as Israeli investment
in Romania—not all of it trouble-free—reportedly runs at $3 billion.
 
Part of what motivates Romania's desire for closer relations with
Israel today is its long failure under Ceausescu to come to grips with
the Holocaust. "During World War II no country except Germany was
involved on such a scale in the massacre of its Jews as was Romania,"
according to Walter Laqueur's Holocaust Encyclopedia. Between 1941 and
1945 under the fascist Iron Guard rule of General Ion Antonescu Jews
in many parts of the country were savagely persecuted. Of the 757,000
Jews who lived there in 1930—4.5 percent of the population—some
420,000 was killed (not counting the multitudes murdered in territory
ceded to the Soviets as part of the Nazi-Communist Pact). Many other
thousands were conscripted into forced labor battalions.
 
Now, there is a remnant community, mostly elderly, of between 6,000–
12,000 souls; of whom fewer than a thousand are under the age of 25.
Then again, the head of the community Aurel Vainer sits in the
Romanian parliament representing the Jewish minority and a modern
Jewish Community Center serves the population concentrated in the
capital. In fact, the community is presently marking the 130th
anniversary of Romania's Zionist movement.
 
Despite a strong residue of anti-Semitism still prevalent scholars
familiar with the country tend to agree that the current political
leadership—including President Traian Basescu—is doing a mostly
satisfactory job to dampen that oldest of hatreds. Indeed, the
government helps fund the Elie Wiesel National Institute for Studying
the Holocaust in Romania and is cooperating with Israel in training
Romanian teachers in Holocaust education. While in Jerusalem, Boc and
his ministers also visited Yad Vashem. All this, said Vago, reflected
the regime's way of grappling with the country's sordid history during
the Shoah.
 
Beyond assuaging its historical conscience and maintaining a Ceausescu
legacy that it can be singularly proud of, Romania derives other
benefits from its relations with Israel. Though in the EU, Romania
leans more toward Washington than Brussels (it is not yet part of the
Euro currency zone). It has signed a deal with Washington to base an
array of interceptor missiles intended to protect Europe from Iran.
Bucharest not unreasonably hopes that its ties with Jerusalem abet its
credentials on Capitol Hill. On a purely practical level, thousands of
Romanian workers have found employment in Israel doing mostly
construction.
 
As distinct from Israel's fair-weather friends in Western Europe,
Romania, like Poland and other East European nations, shares a sense
of responsibility for the decimation of its Jewish community.
Romanians tend to be pro-American; they reject the anti-Zionist legacy
of the Soviet empire and, tellingly, lack a significant Muslim
population (66,000 in Romania). Moreover, the local media is less
swept up in anti-Israelism so public opinion is less poisoned against
the Jewish state.
 
None of this should be taken for granted, as Ambassador Mark Sofer, a
former deputy director-general of Israel's Foreign Ministry
responsible for Central Europe and Eurasia, told scholar Manfred
Gerstenfeld of the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs: "The goodwill
exists on both sides and it is up to us all to capitalize on it."

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Il prossimo passo per rompere l'isolamento è lo scambio del Pippero
alla frontiera israelo-bulgara.