I should be saying congratulations because Israel is celebrating its sixty-seventh anniversary and, of course, if we look back over these years, Israel has achieved so much.
Avigdor Eskin: Well, it’s probably also because we are much older than sixty-seven years, if you take us from the time of Abraham, when he came to the land of Israel originally four thousand years ago, but sixty-seven years since we returned and became independent again. We were only six-hundred thousand people then and now seven and a half millions, which is quite a big difference!
So, yes, it’s a wonderful time, tough time, also the whole miracle that people who haven’t seen each other for two thousand years, let’s say, the Jews of Georgia and the Jews of Sweden never met each other for two-thousand years came to the same place and became one nation. It’s something that is very difficult to comprehend how it happened, and it happened because covered to most important factors, one is a mutual spiritual heritage, which is viable, known as the Torah to us, and, also, a current threat from outside.
This feeling of threats, Russia is going to celebrate soon together with the whole world and with Israel the seventieth anniversary of victory over Nazi Germany and Israel somehow lives with this feeling of Nazi Germany on daily basis much more than any other country, and this gives us some feeling of responsibility to our leaders and to us, to the citizens of Israel to be alert and to know that never again should be never again!
And may we look at the fact just briefly that many leaders have decided not to come to Moscow to celebrate the 70th anniversary of Victory Day. Who will be representing Israel?
Avigdor Eskin: Some of them will maybe still come, but there is the kind of internal Israeli debate plus the conflict around S-300 supplies to Iran and the unfortunate outcome could be that Israel will be represented just by the Ambassador which I think many Israelis feel would be very poor decision on the side of Israel, because well: we can argue with Russia on everything, from January 1st until May 8th, but not on May 9th, and from May 10th we can argue again about all over the same things until next May 9th, because it’s a special day.
Russia was the world leader, was the – with no question – the most important power to crash the Nazis. Alongside, by the way, with a very brave and very wise British Prime Minister Churchill who was instrumenting this Victory as well as other leaders as well but nevertheless Russia heroes comes first.
And who ever will not be in Moscow on this May 9th, will make a mistake of simply not reading the history.
And let us now then continue by discussing this issue of Iran brought up recently, as being an obstacle between the relations of Russia and Israel, according to information it was actually revealed by “Haaretz”. There are multi-billion dollars deals going on between Israelis and the Iranians.
Avigdor Eskin: Oh, yes, this is a very interesting story, I mean, it comes back to 1968 when there was the Eilat-Ashkelon Pipeline Company established and this was joined Israeli-Iranian venture, and it works since then. Unbelievable! Then, they had a special multi-million account to satisfy Iranian leaders (I will not elaborate on this more). And there were some also legal debates between the companies, one of them is taking place now and the Israeli censorship is very strict on this but whatever I’m saying now was allowed to be published and we can discuss it but it comes up to, I will not say multi-billions but few billions definitely turned over between Israel and Iran through this pipeline company on annually basis.
Of course, I cannot blame Israel, this is not the case, because Israel does not frighten Iran in any way.
Israel doesn’t frighten to destroy Iran, and whenever Iranian leaders talk about destroying Israel, dismantling Israel, bombing Israel, this is all actually their “raison d’être”, then it becomes the situation when Israel needs to act. But there are other ways of approaching the problem as well, and this leaking in Haaretz newspaper I think is a wonderful example of what could be done in the Middle East if our neighbors would love their children more than what they hate others.
Some people will be very surprised of getting this information, wouldn’t they?
Avigdor Eskin: This is absolutely exclusive information which hasn’t been for some reason discussed yet but is revolutionary news for many people.
Let’s now turn to the relationship at the moment between the United States and Israel. It is not a secret it has recently become even more complicated. Now in your view what are the options for these two countries?
Avigdor Eskin: Let’s look at the United States and the last deal with Iran. I want to speculate and to say that the American approach to Iran reflects more the co-approach of certain big business-structures in the United States who believe that America should slowly go home from the Middle East.
And for a very simple reason: that America will need less and less the Middle East from now and on since America already became number one in the field of gas, America has become number one in the field of oil and America doesn’t need any Arab gas and oil anymore, and if needed, it will not need in the course of the next three or four years and now this can be all replaced by energy resources from Latin America, etc.
I mean it’s a very different view of the world if you just take America out of the Middle East. And then in the Arab countries will become probably – I can’t say there will be no significant difficulties at all but – they will be like Somalia, Nigeria and other places where people do not produce but live only on the nations resources that their countries give to them. And America will not need them.
They just can do other things with their own industry, and will be not involved there. And what Obama did with Iran was to say actually: “Listen, we want to cut down our involvement in this region to the minimum” and this is one of the ways which could improve relations between America and the whole world, by the way.
And it could solve many problems between America and Israel. It will mean that America will not interfere simply!
However, there is another approach which has something to do with more psychological set of Obama’s administration: not to see the reality but rather to try by force to impose certain reality of democratic values, gay-marriages, etc., and other values which are not inborn values for the Arab population of the Middle East, to say at least.
And it’s not working very well about rather bringing us to hundreds of thousands of people killed for nothing. Well, this is something which America will have to decide whether they will become more active or more passive in the Middle East, but the economic and some other developments show that there is a good chance that they will move to some soft isolationism in the closest future.
Let’s go back now to a bit of history, and the fact that the International Community still feels that Palestinians should be given their own Arab state alongside Israel. Anything new on that?
Avigdor Eskin: I would say yes, you see, that the whole world was talking about Crimea belonging to the Ukraine and now we are hearing some new voices from all over the world, including in Georgia that we heard about recognizing Crimea as a part of Russia, so there are some new developments, people think differently today and quicker it seems.
What is valid is the basis for the British Mandate, and we go back to the League of Nations to 1920, and then you come up with Israel in the current boundaries plus the “territories” plus Jordan.
Well, I mean it sounds like a joke but if we are talking about any legal mandate, this was what Palestine was supposed to be. And legally, Israel doesn’t have to move in this direction at all.
Everybody else will then tell you who thinks different from me, yes, maybe so, but we still think that is a matter of public interest, let’s say in the world, to create is a matter of consensus and we already discussed it so many times of when we are going to change our mind now.
But the world is different and Israel is different, and also the attempt of Israel to start with this process in the Gaza strip which ended up with a big tragedy, with a terrorist enclave from where Israeli’s southern cities are terrorized and is an outcome of Israeli Air-Strikes, many people in Gaza suffers severely so we’ll move. Why not enjoy this quiet and peaceful situation as it is now, why to go and try something which can turn the whole region into a nightmare? This logic will start working quite soon, I think so.
I’d like to conclude by asking you something which is very topical at the moment which is Ukraine, and we are seeing more and more people going to Israel from Ukraine. Now, according to Israeli official reports, is almost 7000 Ukrainians now that are going to your country. In your opinion, Avigdor, is this a result of ever more anti-Semitism in Ukraine at the moment?
Avigdor Eskin: This is one of the reasons people go to Israel. The economic realism will probably be the first today, mostly we are talking about refugees from Donetsk and Lugansk but not only Kiev and other places were the violence is becoming a threat for many average people. We see that many Jews are quitting to Israel from Ukraine today and the numbers are quite substantial, 7000. This means that a 6% of Ukrainian Jewish population left Ukraine during the last year. Probably this year, the numbers will grow inevitable.
