Why Europe Hates Israel

FREEMAN E-MAIL LIST ^ | November 29, 2001 | By Bret Stephens, an editorial page writer for The Wall Street Journal Europe.

[dennisw]

FYI

[keithtoo]

Good article. I have a few friends from Europe and they are universally sympathetic with the Palestinians. Its really surprising how much they criticize Israel.

If not for the US, Israel wouldn't have a real friend in the world. And I'm glad to be a US supporter of Israel, she has all the right (as in left) enemies.

[meridia]

Plenty of Jews from the "Old Country" are quite aware of the pervasive, deeply embedded institutional anti-semitism in Europe. King Hussein spoke about it in the 40s. Back in the 60s I was shocked about some incident I'd heard had taken place in London, which I considered on a par with Civilization, and mentioned it to a Jew who spent several years of her childhood in one of the concentration camps, and she howled with laughter at my naivite, and claimed,

"London, SMONDON!!
ALL the Europeans despise Jews." That was her distinct memory, lol.

YMMV, realize the above is just a tiny anecdote. But for me, I really do NOT figure HOW the WSJ considers European JEW-HATRED to be anything extraordinary, as it's been livid and vivid for well over a thousand years. Them shetls ain't all they're made up to be in sappy sentimental nostalgia novels, much less the ghettos where most Jews in European cities lived until the 1800s...

[RANGERAIRBORNE]

Well, considering that most Eeurpoeans couldn't wait to help the Nazi's round up their Jews and ship them off to death camps (especially the French!), it is not a mystery why "Europe hates Israel".

Let's not make this more complicated than it is, folks!

[Malesherbes]

Pretty good analysis. The world should ignore these Belgian courts which have assigned themselves jurisdiction over the whole world (probably to attract attention to their insignificant little non-nation.) The world should also ignore the world's greatest opportunist, the German Green Joschka Fischer, leftist street rioter and associate of known terrorists, now turned smarmy-mouthed Foreign Minister.

[BenF]

All Jews should get out of Europe now, before it's too late.

[AGAviator]

Typical Israel apologist logic. The country's current Prime Minister aids and abets cutthroats to kill civilians, and a Belgian court calls it what it is - a war crime. Then the apologists go to work and dismiss it as Jew-hating.

Israel claims a right to kill Arafat's people because they don't exercise enough control over murderers among the Palestinians, then denies all involvement whateover in murders in Lebanon with a far larger toll.

Israel has as much right to be bombed as anybody in the Occupied Territories.

[BenF]

Thanks. In case anyone forgot just what a "special" person you are, you reminded everyone.

[RMrattlesnake]

SATAN hates jews Europe hates Jews Hummmmmm.

Those who hate jews are on the side of satan...

[timestax]

Europe SUCKS !!

[timestax]

SATAN hates jews Europe hates Jews Hummmmmm. Those who hate jews are on the side of satan... 11 posted on 11/29/01 5:43 PM Pacific by RMrattlesnake [

I'm a W.A.S.P., but after I saw those old newsreels of what those NAZI's did to those Jews, I understood that we should help them so that NEVER HAPPENS AGAIN!!

[dennisw]

When was the last time you bitched about the many Muslim psycho killers out there? Such as Saddam Hussein? Such as Hafez Assad and Hamas?

 

Here's the type of crazies Israel has to contend with each day. 

 

Masked Palestinian members of Hamas carry the body of 14-year-old Mohamed El Sawaf, one of three Palestinian killed by Israeli soldiers yesterday in Gaza, during his funeral in Gaza Strip, September 30, 2001. At least 602 Palestinians and 169 Israelis have died since the uprising against Israeli occupation began after peace negotiations deadlocked. REUTERS/Suhaib Salem	A Palestinian boy wearing a Hamas headband runs past a fire in the street after demonstrators burned effigies of Israeli bulldozers and checkpoints in the West Bank town of Nablus Saturday, Sept. 29, 2001 to mark the anniversary of the start of the second Palestinian uprising or Intefadeh which was sparked on Sept. 28, 2000. (AP Photo/David Guttenfelder)
A Palestinian boy carries a toy plastic gun during a rally of the militant Islamic group Hamas in the West Bank town of Bethlehem September 7, 2001. The rally was to support and hounor the relatives of those who have given their lives in the fight against Israel, Hamas announced. REUTERS/Reinhard Krause	A Palestinian boy holds a toy gun during a Hamas rally supporting suicide bomb attacks against Israel, at the Al Noserate refugee camp in Southern Gaza Strip, September 14, 2001. Israel and the Palestinians pressed ahead on Friday with efforts to arrange truce talks after a surge in violence overshadowed by the terror attacks in the United States. (Suhaib Salem/Reuters)
An undated photograph released by Hamas September 10, 2001 shows suicide bomber Mohammed Shaker Ihbeishi, who blew himself up at a train station in the northern Israeli town of Nahariya the day before. For the first time an Israeli Arab is believed to have carried out a suicide bombing in the Jewish state. Sunday's attack killed three people at a railway station in northern Israel in the name of the militant Islamic group Hamas. REUTERS/Handout	An undated family handout picture shows suicide bomber Raed Barghouthi, from a village near the West Bank city of Ramallah. The Islamic group Hamas claimed responsibility September 6, 2001 for a suicide bombing in Jerusalem this week in which 15 people were wounded. REUTERS/Handout
A masked member of Izzedine al-Qassam, the military wing of Hamas, demonstrates in front of a poster of Osama Bin Laden during a march held by various Palestinian political factions marking the anniversary of the Palestinian uprising against Israel, in the West Bank town of Bethlehem Friday Sept. 28, 2001. Writing in Arabic on poster reads "The Islamic Jihad movement stands beside all honorable people of our nation". The Islamic Jihad is a radical Palestinian group. (AP Photo)

 

[Lent]

Europe Versus the Jewish State

     By Yuval Steinitz - August 24, 2001

     European commitment to Israel's existence seems solid and stable. You would hardly find a European
     statesman or thinker who expresses explicit support for the annihilation of Israel.

     Yet a careful analysis of two common European positions - the support for the Palestinians' "right of return"
     and the objection to almost any Israeli defense operation - suggests that Israel's adversaries in the Middle East
     might find some hidden partners to their aim of destroying the Jewish state.

     Let's start by analyzing the prevalent European support for the Palestinians' "right of return." Should we be so
     charitable as to assume that enlightened people in Europe indeed fail to understand that the "right of return"
     formula means the extinction of Israel?

     Of course, most advocates of this Palestinian demand would base their position on a purely moral ground. The
     fact that the refugee problem is a result of the refusal of all Arab nations, including the Palestinians, to accept
     the 1947 UN resolution on establishing both a Jewish and a Palestinian state, seems entirely irrelevant to their
     humanistic approach. Even the ensuing Arab offensive, which was explicitly aimed at destroying the embryonic
     Jewish state and exterminating its people, is not the issue.

     The only thing that does appear to matter to some Europeans is that, according to their views, the rights of
     Arab-Palestinians who left their homeland 53 years ago are fundamentally superior to the rights of Jews who
     left their homeland almost 2,000 years ago.

     Ignoring, for the sake of argument, the dubious validity of the above reasoning, since our aim is not to refute it
     but rather to explore its cultural background, two important aspects emerge. First, that by advocating the above,
     those Europeans, in fact, withdraw their historical support for the 1947 UN resolution on the establishment of
     the State of Israel.

     Second, this humanistic approach reiterates one of the key principles of classical European anti-Semitism: that
     Jews are foreigners by nature, and hence, they are inferior vis-a-vis the natives, whether in Europe or in the
     Middle East.

     The claim that many Europeans see the Jews of Israel as fundamentally inferior in their national rights to their
     Arab neighbors, exactly as they used to be inferior to their European neighbors in the past, is supported from
     yet another perspective. Most European leaders vehemently criticize Jewish settlement in Judea and Samaria,
     which means that they negate the Jewish right of return to central territories of their historical homeland. The
     main justification for their demand to freeze the settlements is that they might "jeopardize the forthcoming
     Palestinian state."

     Yet many of the same leaders do support the Palestinian right of return to territories inside Israel, thus
     supporting the Palestinian demand that freezing Jewish settlement in the territories will be accompanied by the
     process of sending hundreds of thousands of Arab-Palestinians to settle inside the Jewish state.

     Can they innocently ignore the presence of a symmetrical threat jeopardizing the Jewish state?

     As a former activist in the Peace Now movement I, together with my friends, shouted the slogan "two states for
     two people!" in the name of justice and equality. In our innocence, we never imagined that, concomitant with the
     process of establishing the Palestinian national homeland, we would be asked by some of our former European
     allies to slaughter - in the name of the selfsame principles of justice and equality - the precious lamb of the
     Jewish national homeland.

     Another issue that might shed some light on the real intentions of some European leaders toward Israel is their
     overwhelming objection to the right of Jews to protect themselves whenever required. Of course, it will be
     difficult to find a public figure in Europe who explicitly asks the Jews to sacrifice themselves without fighting
     back, as they did in the Holocaust. Yet, despite some general statements about Israel's natural right of defense -
     like any normal state - there is hardly an Israeli military operation that escapes their condemnation, while all
     the while refusing to take into account the brutal terrorist attacks on Israeli civilians, or the bold violations of
     all arms-control commitments by the Palestinian Authority.

     If Israeli soldiers return fire on Palestinian policemen who are shooting at a neighborhood of Jerusalem, our
     European friends express "sorrow" concerning "the violence on both sides." If Israel's F-16 airplanes target
     proper military installations as a response to the massacre of civilians in a shopping mall near Netanya, the
     European reaction is that it is "an improper excessive use of force, that might lead to unnecessary casualties."

     When Israel shifts its policy to pinpointing and striking at prominent terrorists, in an effort to minimize the
     danger to the entire Palestinian population, they consider it "execution without trial." When Israel imposes a
     closure on the territories to prevent suicide bombers from entering the country, they feel "uncomfortable" with
     "collective punishment."

     In short, Israel enjoys the universal right of self-defense, but not in a concrete way. Here again, one can observe
     the double standards of many Europeans, who would hesitate to dispute the right of other nations to fight their
     enemies, and all the more so when their civilians are being purposely targeted. When it comes to Israel,
     however, it is only restraint that derives some consent. It would thus seem that the old habit of seeing helpless
     Jews persecuted by their adversaries might still play some role, albeit unconsciously, in some modern minds.

     No doubt anti-Semitism is out of fashion nowadays in enlightened European circles. But if one can disguise a
     good old tradition under the cover of humanistic support for the Arabs in the Middle East, why not give it a try?

          (The writer, a Likud MK, is chairman of the Knesset Subcommittee for Defense Planning and
          Policy.)

©2001 - Jerusalem Post

[Scott from the Left Coast]

Well, probably old news, but modern Europes' support for the Palestinians (and by extension, opposition to Israel) has it's seeds in European anti-semitism of the 19th and early 20th centuries.

It is not well-known or discussed these days how much sympathy Hitler's early moves against the Jews received from all over Europe, including Britain. He lost that sympathy later, as his murderous, genocidal intentions became clearer. But the fact that he had, at first, at least a tacit and mild approval from many influential powers throughout Europe shows that there is a base of hatred, or at least distaste, that is long-standing, almost traditional in Europe's old power structure.

[ruthles]

I thought the real reason the Europeans have historically hated the Jews is for their economic success. When did they get our of the schtetls and into the castles? BTW, Belgium courts an Arabic presence. There are many Muslems living there.

[Victoria Delsoul]

Whatever the case, a foreign policy based on a combination of left-wing disillusionment, French opportunism and all-around cravenness cannot yield good results. With the U.S. State Department increasingly leaning toward the European line on Israel, it's well that the basis of that policy be properly understood.

Bump!

[AGAviator]

And here are the results of your sickos, funded by the American taxpayer

[NixNatAVanG InDaBurgh]

Most Europeans hate the Jews because of the old Catholic Church. They hate them now because Israel is a democracy and the Europeans are Socialist, extremely cowardly, and chauvinistic. Europe is not overly friendly to the USA because without us, they would still be spitshining gestapo boots and Great Britain would be a Nazi Island Resort.
They hate Israel because in spite of fifty years of war, their standard of living is as high or higher than most European countries, and their high technology inovations have made them second only to the USA in scope.
The State of Israel has never lost a war or surrendered to their enemies before even being attacked. No European country can quite rightly make such a claim.
Envy usually takes the form of hatred. Add fear of their Muslim populations which they never felt from their Jewish populations who would rather have been left alone, and it is plain that the politics of fear and envy govern the hearts and minds of selfish Socialist governments and contribute to their pettiness in the world.