Book Review: Kreisky, Israel, and Jewish Identity. By Daniel Aschheim, Ph.D.
A true story:
A Jew fled his homeland one step ahead of the Nazis, returning after the war.
Within 15 years he became his country’s foreign minister and then chancellor. Under his leadership his country was the only one facilitating Russian Jews’ transit to Israel. Even following a terror attack aimed at ending that transit, he kept it going.
He hosted Israeli Prime Ministers Golda Meir and Yitzhak Rabin. He was hosted in Israel by Prime Minister Menachem Begin, whose personal secretary said whenever his boss was in trouble, he turned to this Jew for help. That help included negotiating – three times – the release of captured IDF soldiers.
This Jew also befriended Shimon Peres who credited him with an important role bringing together Begin and Egypt’s Anwar Sadat.
This Jew provided financial support for a brother in Israel and spoke proudly of his nephew, an IDF officer.
He tried to warn Israel of the imminent Yom Kippur War surprise attack. In 1975 he instructed his country’s U.N. Ambassador to be one of only 25% of nations to vote against the “Zionism is racism” resolution.
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The above sounds like the tale of a true 20th Century Jewish hero.
It’s all true.
But it’s not all that is true.
Also true is that others said this very same Jew was soft on Nazis, an enemy of Israel, an enabler of terrorism, and profoundly conflicted about his own Jewish identity. Advertisement
He insisted there was no such thing as the Jewish people; that Jews were not an ethnic group or race, but only a religious group. (He was agnostic). He argued Zionism and antisemitism are not opposites, but actually reinforce one another. He analogized Nazism to Zionism, equating claims of Jewish peoplehood to the Nazi racial categorization of Jews. Despite losing 20 family members in the Shoah, three decades later he was slandering Israel for “using the most rotten methods [of oppression] in modern history.”
Who was this Dr. Jekyll/Mr. Hyde figure?
Bruno Kreisky was Austria’s Foreign Minister from 1959 to 1966 and its Chancellor from 1970 to 1983.
Kreisky steered Austria’s steady course of Cold War neutrality despite living in the intimidating shadows of the Soviet Union’s Iron Curtain and subsequent crushing of protests in neighboring Hungary (1956) and Czechoslovakia (1968),.
But neutrality did not mean idleness. He played an active role in global affairs – from facilitating a North and South Korean dialogue to befriending Libya’s Muammar Gaddafi and Syria’s Hafez al-Assad. He befriended Sadat and the P.L.O.’s Yasser Arafat years before they signed agreements with Israel.
On the home front Kreisky kept former known Nazis in his government, arguing that “everybody had the right to make political mistakes in their youth” and that “thirty years later, [it is] time to erase the past.”
Embracing the “Austria as Nazism’s first victim” rationalization, Kreisky rejected the “collective guilt” argument for Germans or Austrians. Yet he insisted Israelis bore collective guilt for their country’s wrongdoings.
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Winston Churchill defined Russia as “a riddle, wrapped in a mystery, inside an enigma.”
Churchill never met Kreisky.
Compared to Kreisky, Russia is child’s play psychology.
Daniel Aschheim, Ph. D, is Israel’s Deputy Consul General in Chicago. As he is quick to point out, he is no psychologist. Nonetheless his new book Kreisky, Israel and Jewish Identity provides a clear navigation through the actions and statements reflecting Kreisky’s muddled psyche.
This thoroughly researched and readable story provides uniquely Jewish and Zionist insights into a singular historic figure. The book’s themes – personal and political – remain relevant to today’s global affairs and world Jewry.
Despite his overwrought efforts to separate the two, Kreisky’s public persona was closely linked to his tortuous Jewish identity. The result was a strange brew of personality, perhaps further laden by survivor’s guilt.
During his momentous time in office, Kreisky positioned small Austria for an outsized role on the world stage. His name, if vaguely familiar in the U.S. 50+ years ago, is now a trivia question answer that few would get correct – if ever asked.
Aschheim illuminates the underexamined Kreisky, shedding light on a character central to understanding the middle years of the Cold War and the beginning years of Middle East diplomacy. Few know of the role played in both dramas – Cold War and Middle East – of this mystifying Jewish national leader.
It’s a complex story.
But it’s totally true.
Book Review: Kreisky, Israel, and Jewish Identity. By Daniel Aschheim, Ph.D.
A true story:
A Jew fled his homeland one step ahead of the Nazis, returning after the war.
Within 15 years he became his country’s foreign minister and then chancellor. Under his leadership his country was the only one facilitating Russian Jews’ transit to Israel. Even following a terror attack aimed at ending that transit, he kept it going.
He hosted Israeli Prime Ministers Golda Meir and Yitzhak Rabin. He was hosted in Israel by Prime Minister Menachem Begin, whose personal secretary said whenever his boss was in trouble, he turned to this Jew for help. That help included negotiating – three times – the release of captured IDF soldiers.
This Jew also befriended Shimon Peres who credited him with an important role bringing together Begin and Egypt’s Anwar Sadat.
This Jew provided financial support for a brother in Israel and spoke proudly of his nephew, an IDF officer.
He tried to warn Israel of the imminent Yom Kippur War surprise attack. In 1975 he instructed his country’s U.N. Ambassador to be one of only 25% of nations to vote against the “Zionism is racism” resolution.........
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