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Last update - 00:00 04/02/2008
Moshe Kantor's house of lords
By Anshel Pfeffer

An interview with European Jewish Congress President Moshe Kantor is hardly that.

Throughout the 45-minute audience in his presidential suite - since that is what it is - questions are brushed away, treated at best as minor intrusions and at worst as signs of gross ignorance on the part of the interviewer. Kantor has a clear vision for the future of the Jewish people, and now that he sits at the helm of the largest representative body of European Jewry, he is going to push that vision with all his considerable strength.

Despite living in Geneva for the last 15 years, the Moscow-born 53-year-old is still the ultimate caricature of the Russian oligarch, an image he lives to the full, haranguing his secretary and bodyguards, snapping at his publicist. At more peaceful moments he gazes benignly down at his supplicants, which he somehow manages to do despite his relatively short stature. This is Jewish leadership not to be trifled with.
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Kantor, who made his fortune in the metal business, was in Jerusalem last week to attend the board of governors meeting of the World Jewish Congress - not that the EJC is in anyway subordinate to this world-wide forum, he insists. The European organization, representing 3 million Jews across the continent, is a fully independent entity, he says.

He insisted and got his own private meeting with Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni before she addressed the conference. As he did in his election campaign last year, he insisted that the snobs from France, Britain and Italy treat their Eastern brothers with the correct degree of respect. Now he is demanding that respect from the rest of the world, not least from the government of Israel.

While the rest of the grand leaders of the Jews are treading warily around the question of Diaspora Jews' involvement in the negotiations over the future of Jerusalem, he dives headfirst into the whirlpool.

"Israel's leadership should recognize that all the Jews in the world have the right to vote in Israeli elections," he states right at the beginning. "If anyone with at least one Jewish grandfather or grandmother has the right to make aliyah under the Law of Return, then we need to grant them equal rights. If citizens of the United States and Russia living in Israel can vote here in their countries' elections, Jews around the world should be able to vote in Israeli elections. We love the countries in which we live, but no less, we love Israel and demand to take part in its burdens and privileges. It is part of our hearts and pain."

But when who exactly he thinks the world's Jews should vote for in such elections, he is not so equivocal. While he firmly stands behind everything Benjamin Netanyahu told the WJC meeting, he also believes the Olmert government should be allowed to remain in power.

"Today when you see the economic crisis in the whole world, you can see they are working well here. I am satisfied with their conduct; don't confuse process with results."

As many neo-Nazis as Jews

Like all other Jewish leaders, Kantor is concerned with anti-Semitism in Europe. However, he sees it on a much grander scale.

"Only now are we beginning to understand the meaning of the Holocaust," he says after analyzing the situation in Germany between the world wars, "and we now realize that the situation today is no less dangerous than it was on the eve of the war. There are now more neo-Nazis in Europe than there are Jews."

How he has reached this frightening statistic is not entirely clear but he has a solution ready: "We must commemorate the Holocaust on a great scale, since today there is a feeling that Europe is tired and fed up with Jews. We cannot agree with this, especially when we remember that the 12 million Jews before the war have been replaced by only 3 million today. In every single Jewish family, expect perhaps among some of our African brothers, there were victims of the Holocaust. We cannot leave this tragedy on a low priority," he says.

Kantor is planning a grand, continent-wide gesture. He wants all the governments of Europe to convene in Nuremberg on the 70th anniversary of Kristallnacht and enact a series of laws safeguarding tolerance. He put the idea to German Chancellor Angela Merkel in a meeting four months ago but has yet to receive an answer.

"We have patience, but it's limited," he says ominously.

But Kantor is also looking toward the future, and he has a plan for battling assimilation and ensuring Jewish continuity. It is called Project Link, and he had a presentation at hand for the congress.

Jews have serious achievements, he acknowledges, "but who can listen to all these people with glasses," he says, making small circles around his eyes with his fingers, "and the Nobel Prizes, we need a long educational process to explain the importance of science to young people," he says.

"We have to present them with important people who have changed things, with success stories, such as Sheldon Adelson, the richest Jew in the world, Benjamin Netanyahu, the political success story, and Roman Abramovich, with all his young girlfriends. Young people want to know the formula to their success and the importance of the Jewish factor in that," he says.

Kantor envisages hundreds of short "Hollywood style" films depicting these kind of success stories, motivating young Jews to stay Jewish.

Show Iran force

To ensure that the Jews survive, facing the Iranian threat is imperative. The EJC sponsors the "Luxembourg Forum," which Kantor calls "the best panel of experts in the world on the issue," and says is about to deliver its seminal report. But Kantor is not waiting for the report - he already knows all the facts. After rattling off a string of statistics, he concludes, "We can't do much to stop them from having a bomb; they already have all they need."

Sanctions won't work anymore. The military option has to be put squarely on the table "so that Iran realizes that there is no time for games and that what they are doing threatens the whole world, not only Israel but Russia and Europe also," he says.

In this context, he has nothing but praise for Russia's role on Iran.

"It is only low-grade nuclear fuel that it is selling to Iran, and it gets it all back," he says. He is convinced that Russian President Vladimir Putin is totally in line with Western efforts.

"You have to ask yourself, is there one thing that Olmert has asked that Putin has turned down?" he says.

He is also sure that Putin and his government are sincere at fighting anti-Semitism, which Kantor says is "only at a social level, not a government one."

Kantor met Putin at the Kremlin in October, in a widely publicized meeting that signaled a realignment in the Russian president's relations with Jewish organizations. Until then, the leadership of the Chabad-dominated Federation of Jewish Communities in Russia was seen as the only organization with a connection to Putin. Kantor was head of the Russian Jewish Congress, a body marginalized in the past. By meeting him, Putin seemed to be signaling that he was shifting his favors.

A lot is needed to finance this whirlwind of activity. Kantor, like other billionaires who head major Jewish organizations, already has poured in millions of his own, but he needs more, a hundred million dollars. He has set up the European Jewish Fund for that purpose. Any Jew, "even Israelis, can contribute, just as long as they have at least one Jewish grandparent," he says.

Well, not every Jew - the entry fee is a bit too high. "He has to give a minimum donation of $1 million, and that will give him membership in perpetuity, and his descendants after him," says Kantor. "It will be the European Jewish house of lords."

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  1.   He`s less pompous and less dangerous than Yossi Beilin 00:37  |  Absolute Sweden 05/02/08
  2.   moshe kantor 03:17  |  hollingsworth 05/02/08
  3.   What Are Jews Still Doing In Europe? 07:07  |  Yishai Kohen 05/02/08
  4.   The Jewish Godfather 10:30  |  Honi 05/02/08
  5.   3. "They live in Europe in fear" 22:16  |  Euro-Jew 05/02/08
  6.   This goy couldn`t say it better 00:34  |  hollingsworth 06/02/08
  7.   Kantor`s role models? G-d help us 08:05  |  Bruno 06/02/08
  8.   Make note 21:34  |  hollingsworth 06/02/08
  9.   Re: What Are Jews Still Doing In Europe? 11:39  |  Daniel Hazzani 26/05/09
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