Don't Judge A Book By Its Cover

Today is the first time I remember that I saw a picture of Hafez al-Assad. I was struck by how much this evil dictator looked like a mild-mannered accountant... Weird.

Pierre van Paassen

This was a fascinating man who actually predicted the Holocaust. A Protestant Dutchman who immigrated to Canada at age 16, he was very pro-Jewish. Here is an excerpt from his memoirs relating to a trip he took to Warsaw in 1927, where he talks about how the Poles were all too eager to rid themselves of the Jews:

For five days I walked around the Warsaw ghetto, climbed the stairs of tenement houses, spoke to men, women and children; everywhere the same story: they were all poverty-stricken, all the Jews in the sixty or seventy city blocks, which made up the ghetto; three hundred thousand pauperized Jews. It was the same all over Poland, in the towns and villages, masses of ruined middle class people. The misery of the three million Polish Jews beggared all description. And why was this? Why this ruination and squalor? Was all this accidental or unavoidable? 

So long as Poland was under the Tsar, Jews constituted a class of traders, merchants, cattle dealers, shop and tavern keepers, teachers and foresters; in short they were the middle-men. With the glorious resurrection of the Polish state, the Poles became the masters and started to build a middle class of their own, entirely composed of non-Jewish
citizens. The new middle class was built, unavoidably -- I was quite frankly told in official places and government circles -- on the systematic and calculated ruination of the Jewish population. There was no alternative. It was a question of life and death for the new Poland to destroy the old middle class or get rid of it. There were three million Jews too many in the country. Ultimately they would have to perish or be evacuated, go elsewhere, anywhere. The Polish authorities did not care where they went. In Poland they were unwanted.

Gen. Ulysses S. Grant's "Obnoxious Order" To Expel Jews

As a General in the Civil War, Ulysses S. Grant ordered that all Jews be expelled from the Department of Tennessee. President Lincoln canceled the order before it could be implemented.

Later in life, Grant tried to make up for the misjudgment, protesting against oppression of Jews in Russia, and becoming the first sitting US President to attend a synagogue dedication and service:


https://www.jhsgw.org/history/presidential-visit

The Last Jew of...

Interior of Kabul's sparse synagogue

There are a few stories like this I've noticed, so I though I'd collect the ones I could find in one place:

• The Last Jew in Asmara, Eritrea
• The Last Jew in Afghanistan (Kabul)
• Escape of the Last Jews in Syria (2015)
• As of 2011 there were seven Jews left in Iraq. (Warning: Daily Mail has inappropriate ads)

Perhaps the following anecdote (from Wikipedia) is symbolic of the quality of the US State Department's understanding of Russia, considering they couldn't even translate a one-word motto correctly:

Symbolic reset On 6 March 2009 in Geneva, U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton presented Sergei Lavrov with a red button with the Russian text "перегрузка". It was intended that this would be the Russian word for "reset". Clinton explained that she wanted to reset relations between Russia and the United States. However, Lavrov explained to Clinton that "перегрузка" actually means "overcharge". The two pressed the button anyway. Clinton explained that the American side meant it; they wanted a new era of better ties.

Incidentally, a simple Google Translate of "перегрузка" yields the definition "overload" and various other synonyms, not reset.

Famous. Last. Words.

From a National Geographic article of March 6, 2014:

Geography may also serve as a constraint. Maria Lipman, an analyst with the Carnegie Moscow Center, says that "geographically speaking" the [Crimean] peninsula has some interesting challenges. For example, in the north "it has a narrow strip of land that connects it to Ukraine. The peninsula itself is very dry, with almost no source of fresh water," and thus relies on mainland Ukraine for water. "Crimea cannot simply be severed from Ukraine."

 (Emphasis added.)

Postscript: 12 days later, on March 18, Russia annexed Crimea, severing it from Ukraine....

pwned