December 20, 2016
The image of an
assassin standing over the dying
body of Russian ambassador Andrei Karlov is a shocking one — but not a
surprising one.
As Vladimir Putin’s man in Turkey, Karlov was the public
face of that murderous dictator’s war crimes around the globe and of oppression
at home. Andrei Karlov is the human embodiment of policies that deployed bunker
busters to kill babies, sent fighter planes on scorched earth bombing runs that
destroyed a whole city, aided Syrian madman Bashar al-Assad in his campaign
that has killed hundreds of thousands, and even ordered attacks on UN aid
workers.
So I, for one, am
shedding no tears for Andrei Karlov. Frankly, I’m surprised his murder didn’t
come months ago. After all, this was the lead sentences of a Washington
Post story from Oct. 9: "There seems to be no way for the international
community to stop the ongoing war crimes being committed by the Syrian regime
and its Russian allies, especially in Aleppo," the newspaper reported.
"But by brazenly flouting international law, leaders and rank-and-file
officials in both countries are opening themselves up to future justice in
multiple ways."
Justice has been
served.
After watching
the death of Karlov, I could not help but remember the case of Ernst vom Rath,
a Nazi diplomat in France, who was gunned down inside his consulate by a Jewish
student in 1938.
Like Karlov, Rath
was the public face of atrocity — in this case, Adolf Hitler's genocide,
anti-Semitism and coming global aggression.
That era’s
politicians fiddled while Hitler burned down Europe, so it took a nobody named
Herschel Grynszpan to stand up for freedom and make a powerful statement that
evil must be fought whether in a conference room or on a battlefield.
Was Rath an
innocent victim? Certainly not. He had not only defended Hitler's oppression of
the Jews as "necessary" for Germany to flourish, but he stood idly by
as Hitler devoured Europe and murdered its innocents. Rath could have stood up
to the Nazi leadership when it would have mattered most, but he did not.
Which brings us
back to Andrei Karlov.
Karlov's job in
Turkey was to ease tensions over Russia's atrocities in Syria and its
incursions inside Turkey itself — meaning his job was to enable and normalize
Vladimir Putin. Given that role, he wasn’t a diplomat, but a soldier, and his
death is the same whether it came on a battlefield outside Aleppo or in an art
gallery in Ankara. His killer was also a soldier — not a terrorist, mind you,
but a soldier. Terrorists kill innocent people with trucks in Christmas markets
or with planes in skyscrapers. Soldiers kill their fellow soldiers.
Will history
vindicate Mevlut Mert Altintas, Karlov’s assassin? That's for history to judge.
But it has vindicated Grynszpan — and, indeed, vindicated others who have
fought against aggression and fought for freedom.
Gersh Kuntzman
