|
The
Jews of Austria and the Palestinians of Israel both
demand restitution
By JONATHAN
POWER
January 9, 2001
LONDON - In the dying days of the Clinton
Administration two totally separate but nevertheless very
interlinked Jewish issues are possibly but uncertainly in
the final stages of being laid to rest. The first, more
than well publicized, are the negotiations orchestrated
personally by President Bill Clinton, over a settlement
of the 1948 Arab-Israeli war. Will the losing side, the
Palestinians, regain land and religious sites they then
lost and will the refugees who lost their homes and farms
in the area now claimed by Israel as the Jewish state be
given "the right to return"?
The other, rather less publicised, but just as
important an issue is almost the mirror reverse of the
Middle East one. It is the restitution of Jewish
property, art and businesses appropriated by the Nazis in
Austria. Tomorrow (Wednesday), under the mediation of the
U.S. deputy Secretary of the Treasury, Stuart Eizenstat,
opens what is intended to be the final round of
negotiations between the Austrian government and Jewish
victims on the terms for a final settlement. There will
be a closing meeting in Washington next week.
If the Palestinians have cause to complain that they
have waited far too long for their day of justice the
Austrian Jews can complain even louder. For decades,
since the ending of the Second World War, successive
Austrian governments, socialists, centrists or coalition
have connived to keep the issue under the carpet. Right
of Return? Even Austria's Jewish émigré
Nobel Prize winners were not encouraged to come home.
Right of possession? Homes have rarely been returned and,
today, an important part of the governing coalition is
led by a man, Joerg Haider whose own parents bought at a
knock down price a large rural estate (in which he now
lives), compulsorily sold by a Jewish family. Looted art
only began to be returned in any quantity three years ago
and much remains in Austrian museums and private
collections, much of it overseas.
In the greatest single scandal of all, the home,
property, art, jewels and private bank of the Thorsch
family (then the second largest private bank in Austria,
bested only by the Rothschilds who have also been
maltreated) were confiscated by the Nazis and barely a
penny has been returned. Compare this with Nazi-occupied
Denmark that engaged in the serious restitution of all
looted property and art within six months of the ending
of the war. Or, even more tellingly, compare this with
Germany that moved very rapidly to settle all Jewish
claims and, in the case of the private Warburg Bank,
returned it within a year.
There can be no collective innocence either in Austria
or Israel. Only one in twenty Jewish Israelis living in
Israel today have personal experience of the 1948 war and
the confiscations in its aftermath. Yet modern Israel has
no choice but to realize that in its parents' time
700,000 Arabs were forced out of the only homes they and
their forefathers had ever known. Hundreds of villages
and 400,000 hectares of orchards and cultivated fields
were abandoned. Today the Jewish state seems unable to
comprehend the sentiment of the Palestinian negotiators.
Why are the Palestinians supposed to settle for
one-quarter of their homeland? Why do so many of them
have to give up all that was theirs?
The only difference, but a very important one, between
the Austrian and the Palestinian situation is that the
Arabs started the 1948 war. It was the Arab decision not
to accept the creation of a Jewish homeland that sparked
over 50 years of bloody struggle between Arab and
Jew.
Austria only began to emerge from its torpor when
electing the former Secretary General of the UN, Kurt
Waldheim, to be its president in 1986. The international
row over his candidacy, sparked by newly discovered
documents, forced modern Austria to confront the fact
that he had probably participated in a war crime himself.
Chancellor Franz Vranitzsky led the debate to re-open the
Austrian mind to confront the reality that Austria was
not a "victim state" but many of its citizens had happily
cooperated with the son of Austria, Adolf Hitler, in his
quest to extend the Third Reich over much of Europe.
(Amazingly, until the Waldheim crisis, the allies, the
U.S., Britain, France and Russia had gone along with the
Austrian myth of the victim state, even agreeing to it
being written into the State Treaty that marked the
ending of the allied occupation in 1955.)
Thus the Clinton Administration has in its hands in
its closing days the two great unresolved issues of the
Jewish past. In Austria, until very recently, the
government has resisted serious restitution. Will it
still and will it try to prevaricate until Eizenstat is
out of office and a less sympathetic administration takes
power, hoping as Austria has in the past to ride out
international opinion even though at some point it may
begin to seriously affect economic investment? In the
Middle East the Palestinians know they will not get a
better deal once Clinton, and probably Prime Minister
Ehud Barak, are gone, but will they too prevaricate,
preferring another 10 years of intifada and the economic
ruin that goes with it, trusting to war that something
better will come their way?
If Messrs Clinton and Eizenstat can solve these two
conundrums they both deserve the Nobel Peace Prize.
I can be reached by phone +44
7785 351172 and e-mail: JonatPower@aol.com
Copyright © 2001 By
JONATHAN POWER
Tell a friend about this article
Send to:
From:
Message and your name
 
|