Israel Wants ROC Schindler in ROC Textbooks

Kuomingtang News reports that the government of Israel wants former ROC diplomat in Germany to be remembered in local textbooks for saving Jews from the Holocaust:

During World War II, Ho Feng-shan, then Consul-General of the Republic of China at Vienna, issued more than 2,000 visas to Jews, helping them to leave for Shanghai to escape Nazi Germany’s genocide. Raphael Gamzou, head of the Israel Economic and Cultural Office in Taipei, recently told Wang Fan-sen, vice president of Academia Sinica, that Israel hoped that the ROC Government would include Ho’s righteous deeds in its history textbooks.

Wiki has an entry on Ho:

After "Kristallnacht" in 1938, the situation became rapidly more difficult for the almost 200,000 Austrian Jews. The only way for Jews to escape from Nazism was to leave Europe. In order to leave, they had to provide proof of emigration, usually a visa from a foreign nation, or a valid boat ticket. This was difficult, however, because at the 1938 Evian Conference 31 countries (out of a total of 32 which included Canada, Australia, and New Zealand) refused to accept Jewish immigrants due to their fear of Nazi Germany. The only country willing to accept Jews was the Dominican Republic, offering to accept up to 100,000 refugees on generous terms. ^[2] In spite of the prohibition of the Chinese Ambassador to Berlin Chen Jie (陳介), who planned to strengthen the relations between his country and Germany, Ho continued to give visas on humanitarian grounds. Chen Jie sent an agent to Vienna Embassy to investigate Ho's activities. He spread the rumor that Ho was selling the visas. The agent arrived unexpectedly but, as he did not find any evidence about the false accusation, he had to return to Berlin empty handed. ^[3] At the time it was not necessary to have a visa to enter Shanghai, but the visas allowed the Jews to leave Austria. Many Jewish families left for Shanghai, whence most of them would later leave for Hong Kong and Australia. Ho continued to issue these visas until he was ordered to return to the ROC in May 1940.

The exact number of visas given by Dr. Ho to Jewish refugees is unknown. It is known that Dr.Ho issued the 200th visa in June 1938, and signed 1906th on October 27, 1938. How many Jews were saved through his actions is unknown, but given that Ho issued nearly 2,000 visas only during his first half year at his post, the number may be in the thousands.

Another tidbit about Ho:

At one point the building that housed the ROC consulate in Vienna was confiscated by the Nazis on the ground that it was a Jewish property. The ROC government refused Ho’s request to relocate the consulate, but Ho paid out of his own pocket and move the consulate to a smaller place. While there Ho continued to issue visas to Austrian Jews until he was ordered to return to China in May 1940.

Ho's forty years of service to the ROC government received its due reward. In 1985 he was accused of embezzlement and stripped of his pension. From this article that relies on the testimony of his son, a local academic, in describing the affair:

Sadly, the name of the human rights hero was tainted with an impeachment for embezzlement in 1985, where he was charged by a former subordinate of embezzling US$300 and other minor counts.

Ho Feng-shan's son, Ho Mon-to holocaust director of clinical research at the National Health Research Institute, has sought to have his father's name cleared since 1978, when he was elected as a member of the Academia Sinica.

Having collated records from evidence given by his father and written documents, Ho Mon-to and his younger sister became even more convinced their father was falsely accused and determined to put the record straight.

"When my father was appointed ambassador to Colombia, from Bolivia in 1970, he refused to recommend his subordinate to a consular position. This led to the subordinate's accusations two year later," said Ho.

Ho shows the complexities of diplomats from authoritarian states in Hitler's Germany. Ho would go on to serve the Chiang government during its murderous, authoritarian heyday. Similarly diplomats from Portugal, Japan (Sugihara, who also resigned in protest about Japanese treatment of Chinese in Manchuria, and Yoshiro Fujimura, behind one of the individual attempts to end the Pacific War in 1945), Spain, Italy and other authoritarian states saved thousands of Jews during the war.
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China pressure gains a victim in Israel

An Israeli parliamentarian calls off visit to Taiwan because all 1.3 billion people of China were moaning about it:

Deputy Knesset Speaker Carmel Shama (Likud) has decided not to join a delegation of Knesset members expected to visit Taiwan this week.

Shama explained that he had decided not to join the trip due to Chinese pressure. "After I was invited by the Taiwanese, the Knesset speaker appealed to me following messages conveyed by the Chinese. As the State of Israel needs China's help in curbing the Iranian nuclear program, I have decided not to join the delegation."

China gets upset about -- wait for it -- the Deputy Speaker. What a shame. Sadly, Shama seems unaware that China is feeding Tehran's nuclear weapons program, sometimes using Taiwanese firms as a conduit. It's a cheap and profitable way for China to keep American attention focused on anything other than Asia. Does Shama actually believe that his refusal to visit Taiwan is going to change opinions in Beijing? Or that if he had gone, Beijing would have changed its policy toward Tehran's nuclear weapons program? All he did was feed the beast -- as we often say, behavior that is rewarded is repeated, and Shama's kowtow will simply result in more demands from China.
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Freeman quits as nominee to NIC

According to this sign, you can buy stamps of Taiwan AND the ROC at this post office.

Politico reports:

The controversial appointee to chair President Barack Obama’s National Intelligence Council walked away from the job Tuesday as criticism on Capitol Hill escalated.

Charles W. Freeman Jr., the former ambassador to Saudi Arabia, had been praised by allies and by the director of national intelligence, Dennis Blair, as a brilliant, iconoclastic analyst. Critics said he was too hard on Israel and too soft on China, and blasted him for taking funding from Saudi royals.

Freeman “requested that his selection to be Chairman of the National Intelligence Council not proceed,” Blair’s office said in a statement. “Director Blair accepted Ambassador Freeman’s decision with regret.”

The withdrawal came after Sen. Joe Lieberman (D-Conn.) grilled Blair at a Senate Armed Service Committee hearing Tuesday. Lieberman cited his “concern” about “statements that [Freeman] has made that appear either to be inclined to lean against Israel or too much in favor of China.”

In particular, Freeman has described “Israeli violence against Palestinians” as a key barrier to Mideast peace, and referred to violence in Tibet last year — widely seen in the U.S. as a revolt against Chinese occupation — as a “race riot.”

Lots could be added to this, like the fact that he thinks Taiwan independence is "whacko." Some of the stuff written about Freeman was just ridiculous, and it was surprising that anyone thought he was someone who "speaks truth to power." This will be good for Taiwan; Freeman was pro-China and pro-annexation.

More ominous was the way that the debate was controlled by the Israel debate. What should have been the priority, his strange views on, and closeness to, Chinese elites, simply served as ammunition for the splits over Israel. Pat Buchanan once wittily remarked that the White House was Israeli-occupied territory, but really, our whole foreign policy is dominated by debates over Israel, to the exclusion of the rest of the world. Very unhealthy.

UPDATE: Andrew Sullivan observed that this whole debate played out on the net, on blogs and news and discussion sites. The US MSM ignored it or was in the dark. Welcome to the brave new world of Web 2.0, folks. He notes:

There are a couple of things worth noting about this minor, yet major, Washington spat. The first is that the MSM has barely covered it as a news story, and the entire debate occurred in the blogosphere. I don't know why. But that would be a very useful line of inquiry for a media journalist.

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Recent Taiwan Sightings in the Media -UPDATED-

UPDATED II: I'm moving this piece to the top. Foreign Policy in Focus has absolute dreck by a pro-China "scholar" who actually has a teaching post in the US. Stop by and leave some good blog love for this loser:

The pluralistic setting in Taiwan guarantees that the island’s politics will be complicated. The current race for greater international recognition is also being fueled by several other factors. One is the DPP’s accelerated effort to desinify the island, which divides population and fuels hostility with the mainland. It remains to be seen how the dilution of the island’s Chinese culture will gain any tangible results for Taiwan. The island may change its name, as Michael Jackson did his face. But it cannot sail away from the Mainland.

There's quite a few paragraphs of this garbage -- note the crack about Michael Jackson, which is hard to read as anything other than racist..... UPDATE III: FPIF DID NOT take my comments, and the comment function seems to be off. That's what happens when you run propaganda instead of scholarship, guys. UPDATE IV: Nope, I'm wrong, apparently it is a system problem. Also, remember that this is part of a debate with the other side represented here.

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Haaretz has a great editorial on Taiwan and the UN this week:

And Israel? It has no choice but to go with the flow, as they say in Jerusalem. At least this is what Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni did during her visit to Beijing last week, when she praised the "shared values" of China and Israel. Some in Taipei wondered exactly what the minister was referring to - values like democracy, human rights and freedom of speech? The insult to the Taiwanese is particularly harsh in light of their identification with Israel: two small and effervescent "real democracies" engaged in their own security-existential troubles, exposed to threats from a huge external enemy and dependent on American protection and aid. Some call Taiwan "the Israel of the Pacific" and "the David of the Far East."

Chen is not naive. He knows his initiative will fail. He knows the "regional Goliath" is also a "global Goliath" and that "might makes right" turns the wheels of international diplomacy. His role boils down to showing the world its moral nakedness.

Rock on, Haaretz! Taiwan Journal, whose new issue is out, notes that National Geographic says Taiwan is Asia's Best Kept Travel secret:

The National Geographic Traveler, a popular travel magazine in the United States, published a special report to introduce Taiwan's diverse sights and cultural features in its November/December 2007 issue. In the 13-page article, the NGT's senior editor Jayne Wise and chief researcher Marilyn Terrell wrote about their voyage to Taiwan and their visits to various parts of the island.

Titled "You have won a trip to ... Taiwan!," the report pointed out that the two from the United States traveled halfway around the world. When Wise and Terrell arrived, they discovered Taiwan and called the island "Asia's best-kept secret," according to the article.

The duo, who had never been to Asia before, made their trip to Taiwan in November 2004 after Wise won two free round-trip air tickets to Taiwan in a lucky drawing in February of the same year. The NGT dispatched its photographer and contributing editor Justin Guariglia to Taiwan in May 2005 to take photos, which cover seven full pages in the story.

UDATE: a friend in the know points out that the "lucky drawing" has the GIO's fingerprints all over it. Conservative Richard Halloran reviews the US One China Policy -- Time for Change?

Perhaps it is time for the Bush administration to fashion a policy of a) strategic clarity, in which the U.S. would set out explicitly its objectives in the confrontation between China and Taiwan, and b) tactical ambiguity, in which the U.S. would declare that it would respond to threats to the peace in a political, economic and military manner of its own choosing and timing.

The United States would dump the "one-China policy" in favor of asserting that the ultimate resolution of the Taiwan question would be governed by self-determination. Whatever the new policy would be labeled, it would insist that the people of Taiwan be allowed to decide whether they want to be independent or join China.

Halloran pointed the way to this long speech by Alan Romberg,

When I told my friend and colleague, Professor Steven Goldstein, Director of the Fairbank Center's Taiwan Studies Workshop, that I had chosen the topic The U.S. "One China" Policy: Time for a Change?", he asked if I had gone over to the "dark side." Though he knew the answer, his rhetorical question reflected the fact that, at least in some of the circles he and I travel in there is a nascent, and perhaps more than nascent, debate about the relevance of the "one China" policy today. Calls for change come from both sides- on the one hand, from those who say the United States should "face reality," as well as live up to its ideals, and support the independence of democratic Taiwan; and, on the other hand, from those who favor open U.S. support, not just for peaceful resolution of cross-Strait issues, but for peaceful reunification as the only way to avoid an eventual crisis, indeed an eventual war.

That Americans coming at this issue from such polar opposite positions should see such fundamental problems with the policy suggests to me that the policy's essential nuance, its "art," if you will, and its value, are being lost and that for this reason alone it merits attention.

Enjoy!

[Taiwan]