The Middle-Eastern question continues to be given extensive coverage in the main international dailies, especially engaged in examining the real prospects for peace in the Holy Land and the possible outcome of an international peace conference. The Bush administration, says the Herald Tribune (3/6), “continues to drag its feet and be uncertain about its strategy, instead of grasping a fragile window of opportunity […]. And so, backing away from or putting off its proposal for a regional conference, it proceeds with a series of ‘micro-missions’ aimed more at managing than resolving the conflict. As the administration ought to have learned at the beginning of this year, such timidity only causes disasters”. The USA, in the view of the American daily, ought, on the contrary, to “find a way of committing itself to finding a solution that may involve the two States and be broadly based on last year’s accords, accompanied at the same time by a process that should begin with Palestinian reforms and elections and guarantee a new security”. The peace process, says the comment in the Herald Tribune, also requires that Bush should induce Sharon “to back off from his refusal even to contemplate the eventuality of a final accord and to discuss such proposals as Palestinian sovereignty or the abandonment of the Jewish settlements”. To put an end to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, the military solution is “insufficient”: so says Bernard-Henry Lévy in Le Monde of 4/6. To the Israelis he urges “the solution of peace: the solution of those who, in spite of the river of blood that separates them – every day a little bit more – from their Palestinian interlocutors, are begin everything again, to begin all over again as it were from zero and resume the journey of pilgrims of negotiation, dialogue and step-by-step rapprochement”. A huge debate on the resurgence of antisemitism has occupied the German press in recent days. Wiring in the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung (FAZ) of 4/6, Michael Hanfeld refers to a study presented by the Berlin office of the American Jewish Committee, which accuses the German press of antisemitism on the basis of an analysis of the articles on Israel published by various dailies. However, the same “partiality charged against the commentators”, argues Hanfeld, “animates the authors of the study. None of the correspondent and commentators cited escapes their destructive criticism”. As regards the accusations of antisemitism made against Jürgen Möllemann, vice-president of the German Liberal-Democratic party (FDP), in response to a recent declaration he made on the events in Israel, Ulrich Raulff, writing in the Süddeutsche Zeitung of 3/6, points out: “There are limits to the discussion” on antisemitism; respecting them is “a question of individual morality. Nonetheless, it is a mistake – he continues – to believe those who say it is useful and a good thing to speak of everything. The ‘important discussion’ on antisemitism”, concludes Raulff, is nothing but “the mendacity of those who want to ensure the circulation of something indecent”. The weekly magazine Spiegel of 3/6 dedicates its cover story and a special feature (“Mise-en-scène for overcoming a taboo”) to antisemitism. It particular, the magazine wonders whether it is possible to adduce “a case of classic antisemitism”, or whether it is “only an attempt to arouse prejudices at the subliminal level”. Uri Avnery writes: “May the Germans criticize Israel? Why not? The horror perpetrated by the Germans against the Jews sixty years ago has nothing to do with the current Israeli policy”. “No one in the world must choose between Israel and Palestine”, adds the author. “We can and we must be in favour of both”. “Antisemitism – he concludes – is an enemy of the Jews and it is also an enemy of the Arabs”. “The persecutor persecuted” is the title of the article by Elke Schmitter dedicated to the accusation of antisemitism levelled against the German writer Martin Walser, who in his last novel “fantasises about killing a critic, easily recognizable as Marcel Reich-Ranicki”, and, in doing so, makes “wide use of antisemitic clichés”. “if a leading German author, with a superior cultural formation”, comments Schmitter, “tries to destroy one of his critics in a satire that contains antisemitic stereotypes, the thing is alarming”.
