Putin Overshadows Netanyahu’s Meeting with Obama
Ayala Emmett

For those who would like to see a peace and two-states solution and for those who would like to see it derailed, the meeting between Benjamin Netanyahu and Barack Obama got lost in Putin’s military move into Crimea and the crisis in Ukraine. The media was busy figuring out Putin’s

military moves, and Obama’s and European leaders’ responses; here at home criticism by Republicans of the president’s leadership drew much more attention than yesterday’s meeting at the

White House.

From the American perspective, the meeting was preceded by great efforts on the part of Secretary Kerry to broker a peace resolution between Israelis and Palestinians. In that sense the meeting was a lost opportunity for a political focused attention on renewed American efforts.

Global events like the Russians sending troops to the Crimean Peninsula and the fragile situation in Ukraine dominate international politics to the detriment of “local” concerns like the Israeli Palestinian conflict. There are, however, serious local consequences. For those who support the recent American efforts for a resolution, the question is how much time, energy, and interest there would be for a continued Kerry shuttling to reach an agreement between Israelis and Palestinians.

Those who oppose a resolution could find an ally in Putin’s Russian nationalism, in his claim that he is protecting endangered Russians in Ukraine; while this

claim has not been supported by facts on the ground, nationalists could now seize on it to invade and occupy; in Putin’s version citizenship in Ukraine, or for that matter citizenship in any other sovereign state, is trounced by Russian nationalism. Putin’s claim undermines citizenship as a ground for ethnic diversity and forges a “motherland” that can invade any country on the flimsy excuse of protecting its own ethnics.

History has witnessed this approach many times over with disastrous consequences. For Jews the irony of the pious Russian claims to Crimea is not lost. There have Jews in Crimea long before Catherine The Great took it away from the Ottoman Empire in the 18th century. In the years since and through the Stalin regime, Crimea was the site of Jewish hope and tragedy, of dreams of a possible homeland for Jews and a war and that decimated the Jewish population and a Stalin regime that incarcerated Jews in gulags and murdered its leadership. Russia now and in its Soviet version was never about ethnic minority rights.

Putin can live with the absurdity that he crushes human rights of his own Russian nationals in his country and criminalizes LGBT citizens. He has already been emboldened when the Olympics took place in Sochi, with little protest from democracies around the world. It was not lost on those here in the United States who would like to follow Putin’s example and deny human and civil rights to LGBT, African Americans, Hispanics and undocumented immigrants and who have publicly praised Putin.

Putin’s military action has global consequences beyond Crimea and Ukraine. It will embolden nationalists who refuse ethnic groups equal rights. In Israel it will bolster those who would like to derail the peace process and a two-state solution; it will encourage those who have already denied civil rights and human rights to 20% of Israelis, its Arab citizens.