Letter from Athens

by

David A. Harris

Executive Director, American Jewish Committee

April 22, 2003

            Greece, the first garden of liberty’s tree. Thomas Campbell*

            It had been some time since I last saw the familiar red flag with the hammer and sickle up close. To be honest, I didn’t miss it.

            In 1974, I had had more than enough exposure to that flag. Teaching in the Soviet Union for several months, until my expulsion, I was treated to a daily dose of it. Watching my school—Moscow School Number 45—march in the annual parade marking the 1917 Bolshevik Revolution had immersed me in a veritable, and suffocating, sea of red. And traveling frequently to neighboring Warsaw Pact nations had only added to the experience. No surprise in any of that.

            What did come as a surprise, though, in moving to Rome in 1975 to work with Soviet Jewish refugees in transit, was discovering the popularity of the Italian Communist Party and the ubiquity of that red flag with the hammer and sickle even there. Sure, Italians touted the moderation of their form of communism, in contrast, say, to the more Stalinist brand embraced by their French counterparts. But it still came as a shock to see young, well-educated Italians proclaiming their belief in anything even remotely linked to the profoundly corrupt, stifling, repressive system I had just experienced firsthand, and that Soviet Jews (and others) were fleeing in droves.

            In the 1980s, the flag was still around, but its popularity was in a free fall. By the 1990s it was only to be found in a handful of places, principally China, North Korea, and Cuba.

            But on that lovely Saturday only a few weeks ago, right smack in the heart of Athens, the red banners and flags with the hammer and sickle filled half of Syntagma (Constitution) Square. They were an intrinsic part of the mass demonstration organized to protest the war in Iraq. And they were in good company—the Palestinian flag was almost as popular. The signs held aloft included “Bush=Hitler,” “Bush=Sharon=Hitler,” “Stop USA and British Barbarism,” and “USA,” with the letter S depicted either as a swastika or in the form of the Nazi SS.

            We make war that we may live in peace. Aristotle

            Needless to say, there was not a single banner even remotely criticizing Saddam Hussein or his murderous regime—yet why should that come as a surprise? The organizers, purporting to defend the human rights of the Iraqi people, chose only to assail  America’s “imperialist” policies (and Britain’s as well), while blithely ignoring nearly three decades of Iraqi-initiated war, terrorism, torture, and tyranny. But then, as the New York Times reported on April 7, a poll released three days earlier revealed that “94 percent of Greeks oppose the war against Iraq. Last month, another survey showed that more Greeks had a positive view of Saddam Hussein than of Mr. Bush and that a majority of those polled believed that the United States was as undemocratic as Iraq.”

            The strong anti-U.S. sentiment was captured by the remarks of the Greek composer, Mikis Theodorakis, quoted in the same Times article, who called Americans “detestable, ruthless cowards and murderers of the people of the world. From now on, I will consider as my enemy those who interact with these barbarians for whatever reason.”

What greater crime can an orator be charged with than that his opinions and his language are not the same? Demosthenes

            Our American Jewish Committee delegation was in the city for meetings with Foreign Minister George Papandreou (our third meeting with him in the past seven months), the American ambassador, and the leaders of the Greek Jewish community. With our luck, the hotel housing us fronted on none other than Syntagma Square. To make matters still more interesting, our hotel was named the Grande Bretagne, a not-so-subtle reference to the other “culprit” country.

            As the New York Times reported on April 16:

            Britain, too, has drawn Greek ire. Late last week, the organizers of an   international book fair [in Athens] announced that they had withdrawn their           invitation to British participants, who were supposed to be the guests of honor.

            The night before the demonstration, the hotel management had slipped under each door a notice urging guests not to leave or enter the building the next day between noon and 3 p.m.

            Unwilling to miss such a big event, we left the hotel at 11:30 a.m. and waded through the assembling, and largely good-natured, crowd, who were being treated to the blare of—you guessed it—American rock music.

            By the time we returned to the hotel at 3:30, the crowd had moved on toward the American Embassy, leaving the façade of our hotel splattered with red paint reaching up to the second floor and anti-American graffiti scrawled on an exterior wall and the sidewalk in front of the entrance.

            It was striking to watch hotel employees on their hands and knees trying to clean up the mess left by a crowd purported to have the “workers of the world” at the heart of their concerns. But then, of course, these hotel employees had committed the “sin” of working for the “capitalist running dogs” in order to put bread on the table and, therefore, presumably deserved their hapless fate.

            As circumstances would have it, we were to meet with the American ambassador that very afternoon in the hotel café. The meeting had originally been set for 1 p.m., but his security detail, monitoring the events, eventually decided on 4 p.m., by which time things were once again deemed safe.

            When the ambassador, an old friend, arrived, he told us that there was no damage to the American Embassy this time around. During the last demonstration, forty-two windows had been broken. To our surprise, he added that the security budget for our nation’s embassy in Athens was the second highest in the world, following Beirut.

            The problem, it seems, is twofold.

            First, there has long been a strong current of anti-Americanism in Greece. It comes principally from the left—the hard-core elements of the ruling Pasok (Pan-Hellenic Socialist Movement) Party which, under Prime Minister Andreas Papandreou, the party’s founder, took a staunchly anti-American, anti-NATO, pro-Arab, and pro-Third World (Tritokosmikos, or “Third Worldism”) line through the 1980s; lingering resentment over America’s unabashed support of the right-wing military junta, led by George Papadopoulos, that ruled Greece from 1967 to 1974; and the 5 percent to 8 percent of the population that today identifies with the communist movement, a legacy of a much stronger communist influence in years past.

            It is often forgotten that the communists almost overran Greece. As Roy Jenkins writes of the years 1944-45 in his magisterial biography of Winston Churchill:

            In the run-up to the last Christmas of the war … Churchill’s preoccupation was not with the Ardennes, but with Greece. As the Germans withdrew from Greece the ELAS guerillas made a determined attempt to take over the government of the country. [ELAS was the military wing, and EAM was the political wing, of the   Greek wartime resistance. Both were under Communist control.] One of Churchill’s strongest resolves was that this should not be allowed to happen. A Communist Greece, he thought, would be a disaster for the Western Allies …    This had within a few years become firmly settled American policy. The United    States commitment to sustain the democratic countries of Europe against Soviet   expansionism could be dated almost precisely to the proclamation of the Truman Doctrine at the end of February 1947, when America took over British commitments for the defense of Greece and Turkey.

            Second, until recently Greece was known throughout intelligence circles as a weak and notoriously unreliable link in the struggle against terrorism. Only with the dramatic arrests in the last few months of members of the deadly November 17 faction, whose victims have included Americans, has this begun to change. Indeed, it was the image of Greece as soft on terrorism that almost doomed its chances to host the 2004 Summer Olympic Games.

            Of course, Greek opposition to American-led military action in Iraq was far from unique in Europe. Big demonstrations were organized in virtually every major capital of the European Union-member countries, Saddam Hussein’s thuggish regime was a nonissue, and polls showed overwhelming percentages of the population against the war option. Still, there is something distinctive about the Greek situation.

            Any excuse will serve a tyrant. Aesop

            Americans readily—and understandably—succumb to the alluring charm of Greece, and especially its islands, as a tourist destination. Moreover, Greeks all seem to have relatives in the United States. Yet anti-Americanism runs quite deep, and it’s not just from the left.

            In the 1990s, the country as a whole, animated by the strong link between Greek national and religious identity, largely sided with the Serbs, fellow Orthodox, in the latest round of the Balkan wars, and thus strongly opposed U.S. support for the Bosnian Muslims and, later, the NATO bombing of Serbia.

            Even so, one shouldn’t exaggerate. Americans are made to feel welcome in Greece. As one Greek told us, “It’s American policy, not the American people, which we object to.” And, of course, Greece is a member of NATO and has a thick web of relations with the United States. Currently holding the presidency of the European Union, Athens has by all accounts handled the job, and particularly the complex transatlantic agenda, skillfully.

            Constantin Simitis replaced Papandreou as prime minister in 1996. The new Greek leader, though hailing from the same Pasok Political party, has softened Greece’s hard edge and reoriented Greek foreign policy, building smoother ties with the United States. He has been greatly assisted by the widely admired foreign minister, George Papandreou, the Amherst-educated son of Andreas Papandreou and grandson of George Papandreou, another Greek prime minister.

            Greece has also come a very long way in its policy toward Israel.

            In 1947, Greece voted against Resolution 181, the UN Partition Plan calling for the creation of a Jewish and an Arab state in Mandatory Palestine. In 1975, it abstained on the infamous “Zionism is racism” resolution adopted by the UN General Assembly. More shocking still, it was the last country in Western Europe to establish full ambassadorial ties with the State of Israel.

            All virtue is summed up in dealing justly. Aristotle

            Though it is little remembered today, when Arafat was expelled from Lebanon in 1982, he chose to go first to Athens, asserting that the Arab nations, unlike Greece, had failed to help him. Indeed, during that decade, Papandreou reached out not only to the PLO but also embraced Libya and Syria, while giving Israel the cold shoulder. It was all part of a policy called Anoigma, an orientation to the Arab world, driven largely by considerations of ideology, geography, economy, and, perhaps above all, the pursuit of allies in its longstanding conflict with Turkey.

            A few examples of this policy: During the 1980s, Greece became the first European Community (now the European Union) member to extend official diplomatic recognition to the PLO. In 1984, Greece signed an agreement to sell $500 million worth of Greek-manufactured weapons to Qaddhafi’s Libya. And in 1986, after Britain revealed Syrian complicity in a plot to blow up an El Al airliner departing from London, Greece was the only country in the then twelve-member European Community that ignored London’s call for punitive measures against Damascus.

            Wrong must not win by technicalities. Aeschylus

            The American Jewish Committee first met with the Greek leader in the mid-1980s. Our primary goal was to press for closer ties between Greece and Israel. It was not our most successful diplomatic effort, though Papandreou could be rather disarming, I learned. After all, how many prime ministers of foreign lands can claim to have lived in exile in the United States for over two decades, become an American citizen, served in the U.S. Navy during World War II, and come to admire many Jews at Harvard, where he received his Ph.D. in economics, or at Berkeley, where he taught for eight years?

            I particularly remember the prime minister’s self-assured lecture to us, which went essentially as follows: I know Arafat. I know Assad. I know Qaddhafi. I know the Arabs, and I know the Muslims. I can tell you that Israel can trust them to make peace. Take a chance. Take my word for it. Peace is possible.

            A few years later, we met with Papandreou again. It was the 1990s, the world had been turned upside down by the disintegration of the USSR and Yugoslavia, and he was back in office for a third term (1993-96) after four years in the opposition.

            In the meantime, under his successor, Prime Minister Constantinos Mitsotakis of the right-of-center Nea Dimokratia (New Democratic Party), Greece had opened a new chapter in its bilateral link with Israel, strengthening ties and, in 1992, signing a bilateral cooperation agreement on culture, education, and science.

            Let me add an important historical footnote before going any further.

            To underscore the importance of intergroup relations, leaders of the American Jewish Committee and the Greek American community had been working collaboratively for years to usher in a new era in Greek-Israeli relations and, for that matter, in ties between Cyprus and Israel. Together we had traveled to Athens, Nicosia, and Jerusalem and met countless times with Greek and Cypriot officials, including during their visits to the United States. Enough good things cannot be said about the role played by the Greek American community, led by Andy Athens of Chicago and Andy Manatos of Washington, in encouraging the positive trend begun by Prime Minister Mitsotakis (and later followed by President Glafcos Clerides of Cyprus); the determined efforts of the late David Roth, AJC’s intergroup diplomat par excellence, should certainly not be forgotten, either.

            To be both a speaker of words and a doer of deeds. Homer

            In this new era, Papandreou’s speech to us was rather different. It went something like this: Greece is surrounded by mortal danger from an encroaching Muslim world. Iranian mujahideen are moving into Bosnia. Albania is unraveling and hundreds of thousands of Albanians are trying to enter Greece. In Macedonia (which the Greeks call the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia, or FYROM), the Albanian minority is stirring up trouble and looking to link up with their brethren in Albania and Kosovo to form a Greater Albania on Greece’s northern border. Turkey, to the east, is a permanent menace to us. Who better than our Jewish friends can understand the Muslim peril we again face, having already once been occupied for centuries by Muslims? Who better than Israel can grasp the danger to our survival as a Western outpost in this turbulent region?

            Papandreou’s thinking had evolved to the point where, in 1994, Greece and Israel adopted a protocol for military cooperation, a quantum leap forward in the bilateral relationship. In the ensuing years, still more progress was attained in this sector. Greece came to understand the value of enhancing ties with a fellow democracy in the eastern Mediterranean. It also realized that Turkish-Israeli links were developing rapidly and, while not directed at Greece, could potentially leave Athens out in the cold. And it recognized that gestures toward Israel might be well received in Washington.

            Today, according to the Greek Foreign Ministry, Israel is Greece’s most important Middle East market for exports. As many as 200,000 Israelis annually visit Greece, an important source of income for a country heavily dependent on tourism. And the Greek government has noticeably toned down its anti-Israel rhetoric, while contacts between the two countries continue to increase.

            The Greek media, however, is another story. It is overwhelmingly hostile to Israel and, to put it mildly, doesn’t shy away from sensationalism. Ariel Sharon is never likely to get a fair hearing, and Israel is routinely portrayed as the aggressor, irrespective of the facts on the ground.

            This media climate also makes it very tough for the small Greek Jewish community. Just after 9/11, for example, the American Jewish Committee received an urgent e-mail from a Jewish leader noting that the Greek media was peddling the vicious canard that the Mossad was behind the terrorist acts and that, forewarned, 4,000 Jews had stayed away from the World Trade Center on that fateful day. We were asked to provide ASAP the names of those Jews killed on 9/11 to disprove the media’s claims.

            The Central Board of Jewish Communities in Greece issued a report in September 2002 citing the media’s irresponsibility in presenting Israel as a “Nazi country” and portraying Palestinian suicide bombers as nothing more than “persons in a state of despair.”

            Have I missed the mark, or like true archer, do I strike my quarry? Or am I prophet of lies, a babbler from door to door? Cassandra in Aeschylus’   Agamemnon

            The report asserted that “the anti-Israeli atmosphere has led to several anti-Semitic incidents” and proceeded to describe those incidents in detail. Several press accounts, the report noted, went so far as to point a finger at the Greek Jewish community for its “apathy” in the face of “the genocide of the Palestinian people by Sharon.” In effect, Greek Jews were being accused of indirect complicity in these alleged crimes.

            The Jewish community’s unsettling findings were buttressed by another study issued two months later by the Greek Helsinki Monitor. Entitled Anti-Semitism in Greece, A Current Picture: 2001-2002, the conclusions were equally disturbing:

            [T]he real depth of anti-Semitism in Greek consciousness is evidenced by the ease with which it manifests itself in mainstream expression, unimpeded and seemingly unnoticed, during times of crisis. The Greek press has played a major   role in this area. Since September 11, 2001, and with the increasing violence in the Middle East, the blatant anti-Semitism regularly heard on the fringe has been voiced in the print (especially) and electronic media by a spectrum of influential personalities in politics, labor, education, and culture. So widely discussed was the rumor that 4,000 Jews working in the World Trade Center were forewarned and thus escaped death, that a poll taken for state TV showed 43 percent of Greeks as believing the rumor, as opposed to 30 percent who did not.

            History has amply demonstrated that if a country’s leaders are silent or equivocal in the face of anti-Semitism, the message to the population is crystal clear—there are no serious consequences for expressions of anti-Semitism. Conversely, if leaders are outspoken and resolute, then it is possible, if not to eliminate anti-Semitism, at least to render it socially and politically unacceptable in mainstream society.

            Unfortunately, the Greek Helsinki Monitor report offers little encouragement in this regard:

            The Greek government has yet to take a strong and consistent stand against anti-Semitism. Even extreme anti-Semitic views openly expressed by Orthodox clergy members, politicians, factions, cultural icons, and journalists pass without comment. Attacks on Jewish monuments and property receive little, if any, attention in the media and faint condemnation by the political and spiritual leadership. Of course, many members of Greek society find these acts disturbing. Yet the prevailing tendency is to compare them to the larger-scale anti-Semitic   violence elsewhere in Europe, and judge them to be inconsequential or at least not a serious threat.… Because anti-Semitism is a non-issue, no internal or external  pressure is exerted to modify media portrayals or alter public opinion, as is the   case with other forms of racism.

            Against this backdrop, the Greek Jewish community is all the more remarkable for its resilience and commitment.

            Numbering not more than 5,000 in a country of 10.6 million (less than 0.05 percent of the population), they are the heirs and custodians of a Jewish presence in Greece that dates back more than 2,000 years and which has played a significant role in the country’s history, not to mention Jewish history. And, needless to say, the larger topic of the intersection of Greek and Jewish civilizations is a vast subject unto itself.

            Where the Hebrew asked: “What must I do?” the Greek asked: “Why must I do    it?” Matthew Arnold has put the differences between the two spirits in a series of famous epigrams. The uppermost idea with the Greek was to see things as they really are; the uppermost idea with the Hebrew was conduct and obedience. The Hebrew believed in the beauty of holiness, the Greek believed in the holiness of  beauty. Abram Leon Sachar

            From Crete to Rhodes, from Corfu to Elos, from Larissa to Ioannina, from Corinth to Patras, and from Athens to Salonika—and this is only a partial list—Jews were, and in some cases still are, an essential part of the Greek landscape.

            Some of these Jews are Romaniots, the original Jews on Greek soil. They are neither Ashkenazi nor Sephardi, but a direct link to the world of Hellenistic Jewry. Flavius Josephus, the renowned first-century Jewish historian and general, and Benjamin of Tudela, the celebrated twelfth-century Jewish traveler and chronicler, were among those who documented the earlier history of the Romaniots. 

            Other Greek Jews, in fact the vast majority, are Sephardi. They found refuge from Spain and Portugal in the Ottoman Empire, which was the occupying power in Greece during the period of the Inquisitions (and until the Greek revolution in 1821). And a few Ashkenazi Jews made their way to Greece in the nineteenth century.

            By the year 1537, Salonika (aka Thessaloniki) was being described as the “metropolis of Israel, city of justice, mother of Israel, like Jerusalem.”

            World War II brought with it the brutal Nazi occupation of Greece and the devastation of Greek Jewry, a tragedy that has received less attention than it deserves. Thousands of Greek Jews joined their compatriots in defending the homeland, but in less than two months the country fell to the invading forces. By the war’s end, an estimated 65,000 Greek Jews, 85 percent of the total Jewish population, had been exterminated, principally in Auschwitz-Birkenau.

            Even more Jews might have been deported and killed had it not been for the actions of the church. As Moses Constantinis, the current president of the Central Board of Jewish Communities in Greece, wrote recently in the Forward, “The Greek Orthodox Church in particular—and in contrast to centuries of official animosity toward the community—helped many Jews escape deportation.”

            Close to 45,000 of the Shoah’s victims were from Salonika, leaving a once great center of Jewish life in tatters. Today only about 1,000 Jews live in this lovely city on the Aegean, seeking to preserve memory while, against all the odds, planning for the future. The community’s current president is hoping to attract Argentine Jews of Greek ancestry emigrating from a country whose economy has been in a tailspin for several years.

            The largest concentration of Jews is now in Athens, the nation’s sprawling capital that is in the midst of a major makeover for the 2004 Olympics, where a Jewish school, museum, synagogue, and numerous organizations all function.

            The Greek Jewish community, like Jews elsewhere, is concerned with the intertwined challenges of grappling with static numbers, sustaining communal institutions, and inculcating Jewish identity in their youth.

            It is also acutely aware of the external challenges—widespread lack of sympathy for Israel’s situation; expressions of anti-Semitism; limited public understanding of the Shoah generally and the Greek Jewish tragedy specifically; scant political and cultural impact; and the enormous influence wielded by the Orthodox Church on the life of a country 95 percent of whose population identifies, however nomimally, with the church.

            To be sure, on a daily basis, life can be very good. The roots of the Jewish community—and its sense of national pride—run very deep in Greece’s soil. The country as a whole has prospered in recent years thanks to its membership in the European Union (not so long ago its citizens emigrated in search of economic opportunity—witness the large Greek communities in places like Astoria, Queens, or Melbourne, Australia—but today Greece is experiencing immigration, principally from the Balkan countries and the Middle East). And there is that indisputably seductive Mediterranean joie de vivre, which turns every meal, every cup of coffee, every stroll, and, of course, every vacation into something hard to beat.

            Of all the peoples, the Greeks have best dreamed the dream of life. Johann Goethe

            When you stop to think about just what this tiny Jewish community is shouldering, it’s another truly inspiring reminder of the indomitability of the Jewish spirit.

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Note: This is #29 in a series of occasional letters on topics of current interest. For copies of previous letters, please contact Alina Viera at vieraa@ajc.org or 212-891-6703.