Six Reasons for Europe's Anti-Israel Bias

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[bayouranger]

Interview Series: Frits Bolkestein, former EU commissioner: "People defer to numbers. There are hundreds of millions of Arabs and less than eight million Israelis...then there is the oil issue". And four more reasons for anti-Israel bias.

From 1999-2004, Frits Bolkestein was the European Union’s commissioner responsible for the internal market, taxation, and customs union. Before that, he had been the Dutch Defense Minister and leader of the Liberal Party, VVD. In 2005, he became a professor – of the intellectual background to political developments – at both Leiden University and the Technical University of Delft.

Bolkestein observes: “The Israeli ‘file’ in the European Commission is a difficult one because so many factors come into play. In recent years, Israel has undoubtedly lost a publicity battle. This, however, is only one factor that plays a role. Another is that people defer to numbers. There are hundreds of millions of Arabs and less than eight million Israelis. Third, there is the oil issue. Oil contracts are negotiated on a bilateral basis and this makes them highly political. The Arabs have an abundance of oil and could someday impose an embargo once again. The Netherlands already had that experience in 1973.

“A fourth factor is the influence of so many European Muslims with their electoral power on foreign policy. I met Dominique de Villepin, when he was the Foreign Minister of France, at a Bilderberg conference and asked him how French foreign policy had been affected by the presence of five to six million Muslims. He replied: ‘Not at all.’ This was not very convincing.

“A fifth factor that further complicates the issue is a guilt complex toward Jews and Israel

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the risks of unlimited Muslim immigration. My colleagues were ten years behind the Netherlands on this issue and did not want to discuss it. I said to one commissioner that they almost considered me a racist. He replied: ‘Drop the word almost.’”

In 2010, I quoted Bolkestein in my new book The Decay, Jews in a Rudderless Netherlands. He had said, “Jews have to realize that there is no future for them in the Netherlands and that they best advise their children to leave for the United States or Israel.” He arrived at this conclusion due to problems he foresaw in the Netherlands, specifically resulting from the unsuccessful integration of many Muslim immigrants and the difficulties this would create for conscious Jews.[2] This caused a major public outcry.

Simultaneously many articles were published describing the current harassment of recognizable Jews in the Netherlands _______________________________________________________

Idiots. The Jews aren't calling for a European holocaust.

[Thane_Banquo]

I think you can chalk it up to old fashioned European anti-semitism, as well as the bitterness of the European left that Israel chose the side of the West during the Cold War.

[SJackson]

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