Clock ticking for Zentai

BARRING a successful final appeal against a ruling by Minister for Home Affairs Brendan O’Connor, Charles Zentai may soon be on a flight to Budapest to face charges over a war crime he allegedly committed 65 years ago.

After the ministerial decision to make him eligible for extradition, the Perth octogenarian is almost certain to face a Hungarian court over a 1944 murder. If that happens, he will be the first Australian resident extradited for war crimes.

Zentai, who was in the Hungarian army, is accused of complicity in the killing of Peter Balazs, an 18-year-old Budapest Jew. It is alleged he arrested Balazs, before helping to beat him to death and dispose of his body.

Zentai arrived in Australia in 1950, no doubt eager to start a new life. But the past has a compulsive habit of escaping its bounds, as it did in 2004, when Zentai, by then in his 80s, was located in Perth by the Simon Wiesenthal Centre’s “Operation: Last Chance”.

For more than four years, Zentai’s lawyers have argued the technicalities of jurisdiction as they tried to prevent a court from ruling him eligible for the extradition the Hungarian government had applied for.

Meanwhile, the media has emphasised the 88-year-old’s age and frailty. But the Executive Council of Australian Jewry has rightly come out in support of Minister O’Connor’s decision, stating there must be no statute of limitations on war crimes.

If Zentai is found guilty, he can at least consider himself fortunate to have lived a life of relative tranquillity –- a life denied to Peter Balazs.

Whoever did leave the teenager at the bottom of the Danube in 1944 probably did not spare much of a thought about him -– or countless Jews like him.

It is said the wheels of justice grind slowly but they do turn. For Charles Zentai, they may soon come full circle.

Acting UNilaterally

IF ever there were a lesson to be learnt from acting unilaterally in matters of international affairs, it was served up by Ariel Sharon with Israel’s disengagement from Gaza in 2005.

Born out of frustration with the impasse in the peace process, at the time many hailed the courage of the move, particularly as it incurred the wrath of huge swathes of the population, tearing the country in two emotionally -– and, in many people’s opinions, physically.

And yet, four years on, Sharon’s attempt to take matters into his own hands, by handing control of the Gaza Strip to the Palestinians, appears to have been an abject failure.

The power vacuum created by the withdrawal of Israel has been filled by the terrorists of Hamas, hell-bent on the destruction of the Jewish State, and with no qualms about indiscriminately raining rockets down on innocent civilians. Operation Cast Lead and all that has followed in its wake, including the global opprobrium heaped on the Jewish State, are a direct result of disengagement.

Yet, the lesson of acting unilaterally has not been learnt. Last weekend, the Palestinian Authority decided it too was going to try to force the issue –- seeking support internationally for the creation of a Palestinian state outside of a more comprehensive peace settlement.

A PR stunt or a realistic aim? The jury tends towards the former. And yet, one must wonder whether it is the international climate that has encouraged the Palestinian leadership to put out its feelers.

This year, more than any year since Oslo, the eyes of the world have been focused on Israel and no opportunity has been lost to take the country to task. Which is why it’s all the more galling that the Australian Government -– unquestionably one of Israel’s most loyal friends on the global stage – chose to change its traditional stance at the United Nations on the motion affirming “the right of the Palestinian people to self-determination”.

While few today would disagree with that simple sentiment, the contentious nature of the accompanying text, combined with the fact that the motion fails to contextualise “self-determination” by referencing a comprehensive settlement with Israel, makes this a one-sided and, indeed, unilateral declaration.

Precisely what prompted the Government to alter its position is not yet clear, and support for the Palestinian cause is certainly not reprehensible in and of itself. But those who believe in an inevitably doomed, one-sided solution are bolstered in their beliefs, if that support is expressed without mention of support for Israel and the needs and the requirements of the Jewish State.