Have you been in a gas chamber, Mr Shagal?

Israeli Foreign Ministry should recall their new Ambassador to Belarus within 24 hours.

Let’s take a break from discussing meat prices, and use our imagination for a while. Just think, a new ambassador from a civilized country, let it be Germany, arrives to Israel and gives his or her first press-conference. And so the ambassador says: “I am a German citizen, there was no Holocaust in Germany. The Germans were not killed in concentration camps. As for Israel, well, I cannot say, I should read your Israeli newspapers. I will answer your question in six months. I am a journalist and I know exactly how articles are written. German gas chambers?... Are you kidding, I only have a microwave oven at home! Have you been in a gas chamber yourself?”

Don’t doubt, this ambassador will be recalled immediately - simply to save him from being drowned by the Israelis in the Mediterranean Sea. Unfortunately you can’t be drowned in the Dead Sea. The ambassador’s diplomatic career will be over with no chance to get an employment with the authorities. And public opinion will crush him as a cockroach. But more than 24 hours have passed since a similar statement by the new Israeli ambassador to Belarus Iosif Shagal – and he is still in Minsk, neither recalled nor fired. However he replied to my BelaPAN colleague’s question about political prisoners exactly the way my imaginary ambassador did in the first paragraph.

But I should probably hope for the better. Maybe ambassador Mr Shagal is not a fool, but just uninformed? He probably forgot to check the world map and has no clue where Belarus is located? Didn’t Fonvizin (Russian playwright of the 18th century whose comedies mocked contemporary Russian gentry – ed.) say that geography is a cabman’s study? According to Mr Shagal he has to read papers for at least half a year to get an understanding of what is going on in the country and where he is in general. In this case I have to say that Mr Shagal is completely professionally inappropriate for his post, because any diplomat appointed to a country will learn everything about it before arriving, and of course before giving a press-conference. Real diplomats will read newspapers for the previous couple of years, will talk to colleagues, will get prepared to the press-conference to avoid embarrassment in front of journalists and common people. And Mr Shagal embarrassed himself.

I’d rather not waste my time for arguments with unintelligent dabblers, but I will still answer the question that he asked the BelaPAN journalist. Yes, Mr Shagal, I, Iryna Khalip, journalist, have seen KGB jail. And this is exactly what you call “a concentration camp for political prisoners” because all political prisoners get to KGB jail first. There political cases are forged, sentences are passed, and then the political prisoners are taken to different prisons. So yes, I confirm. And my husband, your fellow diplomat Andrei Sannikov, presidential candidate 2010, is a political prisoner and is in prison now. And Mikola Statkievich, another presidential candidate, is there, too. You can ask another candidate, Uladzimir Niaklayeu how it felt to be a KGB prisoner, where people in civilian threw him having taken him from a hospital right after a severe assault. Oh, I forgot, you are an Israeli citizen and in Israel the Mossad do not kidnap politicians from hospitals…

Mr Shagal claims he is a journalist and knows how articles are written. And by saying so he questions the very existence of political prisoners in Belarus implying that everything was created by the media to have something to talk about. In other words, he admits that he personally lied and wrote fairy tales in his journalist assignments. By the way, I have searched for traces of his journalistic accomplishments, and all in vain. He must be both a bad journalist and a bad diplomat.

And here comes another Mr Shagal’s quotation: “I know Lukashenka personally. In my view, Lukashenka is a leader. He has certain drawbacks, but the Belarusian people’s proper votes shows that no matter what someone says about cheating with the voting results, the Belarusians had a good life – salaries and pensions were paid, it was clean, the economy operated perfectly.” He said that when he still was in Israel, on 26 January, in an interview to the Internet channel ITON TV.

It reminds of something, doesn’t it? Anyway, it reminds me of Lukashenka’s old quotation: “Germany was raised from ruins thanks to firm authority and not everything connected with that well-known figure Hitler was bad. German order evolved over the centuries and attained its peak under Hitler. Hitler formed powerful Germany with his strong political power.” Well, Mr Shagal, congratulations. You and Lukashenka have reached an excellent understanding in your views on the history of the 20th and 21th centuries. You speak the same language and use the same terms. I can only imagine what the subject of your conversation was when the credentials were passed.

In fact, this is the first time I am embarrassed for Israel who has not found a single diplomat to appoint to the embassy in Belarus, a complex country working in which demands both intelligence and professionalism. This is no Lichtenstein where ambassadors’ job is mainly to visit each other. For years have I been reading and listening about the Jewish people who, having lost dozens of millions in Holocaust, have been building their state in the middle of a desert and reviving the dead language in order to survive, to preserve their national identity, to stay a people. And it reminds me of Belarusians’ struggle to preserve themselves as a people, to make their mother tongue the state language and their country an independent state! Indeed, so much in common. So why then when the Israelis demand – which they have the right to – a global solidarity and support in their struggle to survive, a Mr Shagal denied this right the Belarusian people who want to survive and to live in a decent state, too? This is unprofessional, Mr Shagal, and dull. And despicable, if you will.

I have always taken pride in being related to the Jewish people and felt sorry for at least two dozens of my relatives who never got a chance to hear about the foundation of Israel – for they were burnt in gas chambers. Israel however remembers them; their names are all listed in Yad Vashem. My mother miraculously survived Holocaust, and having lost her grandparent and other family in the Warsaw ghetto in the 20th century, she became a mother and mother-in-law of political prisoners in the 21th century. Holocaust is not over for her. And don’t you doubt, Mr Shagal, you disgust her, just like the entire Jewish minority of Belarus, relatives of the political prisoners, and simply all the Belarusians and Israelis who can read and think. You and your boss Avigdor Lieberman – the anticorruption investigation of his activities doesn’t seem to result in his favor.

As a matter of fact there is a big difference between Israel and Belarus. In Israel, voters decide everything. And I bet that after the next election Avigdor Lieberman will leave the government as a black sheep, and that with him the shadow of Iosif Shagal will disappear in the salty and muddy waters of the Dead Sea. But they will leave sediment deep in the sea. And each time a new ambassador arrives to Minsk Belarusian people will wonder “Will this one be more decent than Mr Shagal?” Of course he will! You cannot move below the lowest point, can you?

Iryna Khalip for charter97.org