Hebrew University-Hadassah School of Public Health and Community Medicine Genocide Prevention Program
Two years ago, strolling down Jerusalem‘s Aza Street, I picked up a worn yellowed thin paperback copy of Sakharov Speaks, a collection of the writings of the nuclear scientist who founded the Human Rights Committee in the Soviet Union in 1970. The pages may be yellowed but the words come to life decades later. The first anniversary of the Iranian government s brutal suppression and crackdown of protests against the rigged results of its national elections has just passed. What Sakharov had to say back then about the Western world’s response to Soviet repression is a striking indictment of the world\s tepid response to the Iranian crackdown and repression now.
In the 1950’s, Andrei Sakharov was awarded the Stalin Prize for his theoretical work on the hydrogen bomb. Appalled by the dangers of nuclear arms race and the heavy handedness of the Soviet regime, he became a dissident devoted to human rights. He and his wife Elena Bonner were later exiled to Siberia. To show support for Sakharov, the Nobel Committee awarded him the Nobel Prize for Peace in 1975. In an interview with a foreign correspondent, Sakharov was asked if what was then called rapprochement would lead to democratization of Soviet Society, and what would happen if there was rapprochement without democratization.
Here is what Sakharov had to say, somewhat paraphrased and edited. “Rapprochement in which the west, in effect accepts the Soviet Union rules of the game would be dangerous, because it would not really solve any of the world\s problems and would mean simply capitulating to real or exaggerated Soviet power. It would mean an attempt to trade with the Soviet Union, buying its gas and oil, while ignoring all other aspects. Such a development would be dangerous because it would have serious repercussions inside the Soviet, Union”
Furthermore, “It would contaminate the whole world with the anti –democratic peculiarities of Soviet society….As a result, ..,the world would become disarmed and helpless while facing our uncontrollable bureaucratic apparatus.” (italics mine)
Here is his punch line: “Rapprochement, were it to proceed totally without qualifications, on Soviet terms, … would pose a serious threat to the world as a whole.”
Now let’s do a simple thought experiment in history and current events. Take the word rapprochement and replace it with engagement. Do the same for Soviet Union and Iran.
Back then, Western governments listened to several resolute individuals, notably Senator Henry Jackson, and the world stood up to threats posed by Soviet tyranny, repression and mischief making. Sakharov called for adoption of the Jackson Amendment which linked trade to unrestricted emigration –later Basket 4 of the Helsinki Accords. The Soviets, desperate for Western technology, accepted the accords. The emigration triggered by Helsinki Accords started the ball rolling towards the loosening up and eventual break-up of the Soviet system in the 1990’s.
And we see the results. Just a few days ago, as I was writing this piece, a Russian student (in our program for international students) came in to browse through Sakharov’s book as a few of us searched for some references for her work on air pollution in Ashkelon. Another Russian student is doing a project on air pollution in Bet Shemesh, a satellite city outside Jerusalem. A third is doing a PhD on road injury epidemiology in Vladimir, the first capital of old Russia, where Raul Wallenberg was imprisoned. All is free, relaxed and open.
Today, world leaders continue to ignore groups standing up for human rights of dissidents in Iran. They fail to invoke the existing tools of international law to indict Ahamadinejad for incitement to genocide, and have done little to stop the metastasis spread of genocidal Islamic jihadist incitement, now, dangerously spreading to Turkey.
So again: “It would contaminate the whole world with the anti –democratic peculiarities of [Iranian and Islamist] society….As a result, ..,the world would become disarmed and helpless. [Engagement] were it to proceed totally without qualifications, on Iranian (or Islamist] terms, … would pose a serious threat to the world as a whole.”
Many Western elites, academics, and intellectuals appear to be succumbing to the assault on the core values of respect for life and human dignity. In the name of multiculturalism, they condone such assaults on these values. Last November, over dinner in an elegant restaurant in Lodz, an epidemiologist, the holder of a prestigious chair in a major Scottish university, after holding forth on Israel’s evils, told that the values of multiculturalism lead him to excuse stoning in Iran. This remark, made over wine and pasta, came just after he described in detail his tour of the Lodz ghetto. Despite his declared commitment to positivism as a basis for prioritization and decision making in public health, he was uninterested in the statistic that 614 of every 615 Muslims killed since WW2, fell in wars, genocidal conflicts, massacres, and terror attacks between Muslims.
|So far, the policies of the 1st recent Nobel Peace Prize winner, President Obama .seem to represent everything Sakharov warned against. The clenched fist has become a limp wrist. Obama so far appears to have distanced himself from those who are democratic and free, and continues to appease tyrants and rogue states who assault life and respect for life, the most basic of all human rights.
Sakharov was clairvoyantly prophetic about what he called rapprochement—aka engagement-- without democracy resulting in the contamination of the West with the peculiarities of those opposing its values. The contamination has reached into the Nobel Committee. –and I suggest, President Obama himself.
Sakharov was a lonely prisoner of conscience exiled to Siberia when the Nobel Committee recognized him for protesting repression. It continued the tradition in 1989, when it awarded the prize to the Dalai Lama. Last year, the Committee awarded Obama the same prize, even though his messages have telegraphed a high degree of indifference to state repression, brutality and evil in Iran, North Korea and other members of what I call the Axis of Genocide and Genocidal Terror. So far, Obama appears to be shadowboxing with genocide, genocidal terror, and evil.
So this anniversary of the Tehran crackdown is the time to heed the quiet words of fire on the yellowed pages of the book I bought on Aza Street. They hold true ever more today. Today Iran continues to brutally suppress its dissidents and members of non-Islamic religious groups. It executes minors, imprisons homosexuals, and tortures and harasses political dissidents, whose gallantry SPME saluted in its conference on Iran last November in Cleveland. Its leaders incite to genocide, equip and train genocidal terrorists, and illegally pursue the development of nuclear weaponry. Iran has become the epicenter of an axis of incitement to genocide, genocidal massacres and genocidal terror. The members of this axis are North Korea, Sudan, Syria, Gaza, and there is the danger that Turkey is teetering on the brink. The chattering classes of the West, notably Western Europe, are averting their gaze. Political and intellectual elites seem to lack the will to confront the Islamist threat, and bow and kowtow to the cults of death, darkness and medievalism more sinister than those posed by the Soviets. An Australian feminist is famously quoted as saying that multiculturalism means that stoning is no different from wearing high heels. The West has become hesitant in standing up for its core values: respect for life, the dignity of the individual, democracy and unfettered inquiry, and the rights of women. Has Western dhimmitude required us to coin a new term--timiditude?
Failure to counter the epicenters of jihadist suppression of human rights, incitement to genocide, genocidal massacres and genocidal terror has already, to paraphrase Sakharov’s words, contaminated the whole world with the anti –democratic peculiarities of [Iranian and Islamist] society.
Will we wake up? The clock is ticking. Lately, there have been some stirrings to suggest a possibility of change in direction, in keeping with Sakharov’s legacy. Everything is determined, but choice is given.
Professor Elihu D Richter MD MPH Genocide Prevention Program Hebrew University-Hadassah School of Public Health and Community Medicine
Jerusalem Israel
I thank Professors Israel Charny and Sam Edelman, Drs Yael Stein, Ed Beck, and Joel Fishman for comments and encouragement.
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