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DANIEL KUMERMANN:
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Czech mate

A lot was said and written after Prime Minister Ariel Sharon compared the current Israeli situation to that of Czechoslovakia in the year 1938, before it was sold out to the Nazis by the Munich Pact. Some harsh words also came from President George W. Bush.

I will not even attempt to deal with the issues of the accuracy of this comparison. I must, however, stress that I do not think it is a coincidence that an Israeli politician used Czechoslovakia as an example to make his point.

In all the decades that I have been closely following Israeli politics and in the four-plus years that I spent here as an ambassador, I could not help noticing that our country comes in handier for purposes of comparison and illustration than would ordinarily be its proper share given its size and population.

Let me recall the so-called Prague Spring of 1968 which is, in Israel, one of the best-known periods of modern Czech history. There is ongoing discussion in my country as to what should be considered its starting moment: Most would agree that it was the writers’ conference of autumn 1967.

The conference was opened with a speech which was largely an impassioned attack against the Czech Communist regime which had given in to Soviet pressure and broke off diplomatic relations with Israel about half a year earlier. Was that coincidence? I do not believe so, as after all, the reestablishment of these relations became one of the main themes of that famous spring.

The (co)founder and first president of Czechoslovakia, Tomas Garrigue Masaryk, was the only politician of his status and era who, in 1927, visited British Palestine not only to make all the obligatory diplomatic calls, but to devote at least half his visit to seeing the progress of the Zionist enterprise with his own eyes.

Masaryk considered anti-Semitism to be one of the major historical sins of European cultural space and, like many others, hoped that humanization and cultivation in the old continent would do away with it. After standing up to the tide in the anti-Jewish show trial of a certain Leopold Hilsner (much like Emile Zola in the case of Alfred Dreyfus), he reached a similar level of skepticism as did Theodor Herzl and believed that for the time being Europe could not rid itself of this sin.

He also believed that the only way for Jews to reach relative safety was to have a homeland of their own in their traditional territory, and like Czechs and Slovaks, through a renewed and revived sense of nationhood.

(Given all that happened but a few years later, as well as what is going on in Europe today, one must admit that his vision was very clear and farsighted.)

Even though we had our Hilsner case, the overall level of anti-Semitism in the modern history of the Czech Lands has been one of the lowest in Europe, which again led to one of the highest levels of assimilation before World War II. Czech Jews, nevertheless paid a very heavy price for that by having one of the highest — if not the highest — rate of losses in Holocaust. As many admit, "it was only Hitler who eventually told them they were not Czechs but Jews."

WE CAN find a connection even where the sense of national (in)security is concerned: It may seem as something totally obsolete in today’s Europe especially when we are already almost in the most "liberal and progressive" club of states in the world, the European Union.

Yet, the not-so-faraway past, when Czechs were seen by some not as a people in its historical homeland, but as some kind of improper Slavonic incursion into holy Germanic soil, can still play havoc with our national subconscious.

This feeling of something shared with Israel in the past and present is also what we are bringing to the above-mentioned club. Of course, once we are in, we shall have to heed its common foreign policy, but at the same time we shall be among those who will steer this policy and we cannot give up all of our feelings and collective experience.

At least that is what it should be like. Enlargement is the word most commonly used in connection with what is going to happen in the coming May — implying in a way that there is something set [down] to which the "new countries" may add here and there. What should, however, really happen is the first step to true and full-fledged reintegration of the continent.

All of the newcomers have always been a true part of European history and never ceased to be so. Our experience is as truly European and as valuable as that of the countries on the other side of the former Iron Curtain. Only if all of them are blended together can a new European consciousness be born.

Yes, their economy is better and their lifestyle more comfortable, but their Europeanism is no better than ours.

I know that these thoughts may sound good, but they may not be at all easy to put into practice. And, given the real weight of my country, it may not be at all easy to influence, let alone sway European policy in the Middle East.

On the other hand, one of the best things I heard Shimon Peres say — during the period of the Swedish presidency of the EU — that Sweden treats Israel as if Israel had a choice between the Swedish and the Israeli situation and chose the Israeli one on purpose.

And that is it. The EU always speaks about being balanced and even-handed in this conflict. I am not sure it is always able to be as even-handed as it should be in understanding and empathy, which, however, is the main weapon the Union may have when dealing with Israel and gaining importance in the whole region.

Thus, if we, with our national experience, get the chance to leave our imprint on the common Middle-Eastern policy, it will be better for European standing in Israel and it may help the EU and Israel find the way to each other. Which, after all, should be our common interest.

The writer is a former ambassador of the Czech Republic to Israel.

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