Posted on 11/29/2001 3:56:50 PM PST by dennisw
Commentary November 29, 2001
Why Europe Hates Israel
By Bret Stephens, an editorial page writer for The Wall Street Journal Europe.
BRUSSELS -- Yesterday, a Belgian court heard arguments from
lawyers representing 23 Palestinians, survivors of the 1982 Sabra and
Chatilla massacres near Beirut, that Israeli Prime Minister Ariel
Sharon should be prosecuted in Belgium for crimes against humanity.
Though Mr. Sharon almost certainly will never sit in a Belgian jail,
the trial could hardly be freighted with more significance.
More than a half-century after the Holocaust, a Europe awakened to
the importance of human rights is looking to sanction the leader of
the world's only Jewish state for a crime that was actually committed
by a Christian Lebanese militiaman, later employed by the Syrian
regime of Hafez Assad. And yet blame for the massacres seems to be
apportioned to Mr. Sharon alone. Why?
Sensational Indictment
The short answer is the Belgian legal system, whose well-meaning
laws lend themselves to this sort of opportunistic and sensational
indictment. A slightly longer answer is that many Europeans are
sincerely convinced that Mr. Sharon really is a war criminal, as a
BBC documentary attempted to show last summer.
But the real answer is that
European governments today are,
by and large, tacit enemies of the
state of Israel, much as they
might protest that they merely
take a more "evenhanded"
approach to the Arab-Israeli
conflict.
Consider a few recent examples.
In April, France voted to censure
Israel at the U.N. Human Rights
Commission in Geneva -- while
abstaining from a vote of censure against China. During his
diplomatic foray to Tehran in September, British Foreign Secretary
Jack Straw offered that "one of the factors which helps breed
terrorism is the anger which many people in this region feel at events
over the years in Palestine." The European Union has so far refused
to follow America's lead by freezing the assets of terrorist groups such
as Hezbollah and Hamas, with the European Commission's external
relations spokesman, Gunnar Wiegand, arguing that "Hezbollah could
play a major role in regional stability."
That Europe today should be hostile to Israel may seem a bit of a
mystery, not least given the usual sympathy of aims between
democratic states. The explanation comes in several parts. First, as
historian Howard Sacher points out, Europe's left sees in Israel's
political evolution a betrayal of its utopian ideals. It's easy to forget
that in the years following the establishment of Israel, many
Europeans looked to it as a model socialist country. They admired its
largely state-run economy and especially its collectivist kibbutzim.
Hundreds of young European leftists, most of them non-Jews, flocked
to these farms in the 1960s, looking for the kind of workers' paradise
they could not find on the other side of the Berlin Wall.
This fondness, however, evaporated after the 1967 war, when Israel
went from being the Middle East's underdog to its Goliath, holding a
colonial-like mandate over the lands that came into its possession.
Partly under the sway of Soviet propaganda, partly in keeping with
the fashion of radical chic, European leftists abruptly transferred their
allegiances to the Palestinians and the PLO, which in the 1970s drew
the likes of current German Foreign Minister Joschka Fischer to their
meetings. Meanwhile, successive Israeli governments veered to the
right. "The era when Yitzhak Rabin or Golda Meir could address their
European counterparts as 'comrades' at gatherings of the Socialist
International had passed," says Mr. Sacher.
There was also a shift of attitudes on the European right. With the
exception of Britain, whose notoriously Arabist Foreign Office has
dominated its Mideast policy under both Conservative and Labour
governments, much of the Continental right had at one time looked
on admiringly at "plucky little Israel." Thus, beginning in 1952, the
conservative German government of Konrad Adenauer provided Israel
with critical financial support in the form of Holocaust reparations,
while Charles de Gaulle's France helped to build its nuclear reactor at
Dimona.
But it was also de Gaulle who, in 1967, slapped an arms embargo on
Israel for firing the first shot in the Six Day War. Thereafter, the
hostility increased, partly because France fancied itself a champion of
its former Arab colonies, partly out of simple anti-Americanism. But
the chief reason, of course, was Europe's dependence on Arab oil. As
French President Georges Pompidou put it to Henry Kissinger during
the 1973 OPEC oil embargo, "You only rely on the Arabs for about a
tenth of your consumption. We are entirely dependent on them."
Since then, Europe's reliance on Mideastern oil has abated, but the
habit of reflexively seeking to appease the Arabs at Israel's expense
has not. In 1974, French Foreign Minister Michel Jobert toured the
Middle East, seeking to earn price concessions on oil for France by
mouthing a hard anti-Israel line. In 1980, the European Community
formally recognized the PLO despite the fact that Yasser Arafat had
neither made peace with Israel nor dropped his overt sponsorship of
terrorism. Currently, the EU supplies the Palestinian Authority with
the bulk of its foreign aid, even as much of that money goes
indirectly to funding textbooks describing Jews as monkeys and
vermin.
Given all this, many Jews have been led to conclude that what's at
work here is a thinly veiled form of anti-Semitism. But while there
might be some truth to this, it's easily exaggerated. Mr. Straw, of
German-Jewish descent, is clearly no anti-Semite, and the one bright
spot of Jacques Chirac's presidency has been his efforts to
acknowledge the sins of France's suppressed Vichy past.
Underlying Guilt
Underlying European policy is an uneasy sense of guilt. In the
immediate postwar period, Europe's guilty conscience worked in
Israel's favor. But in the postcolonial spirit of the '60s, the balance of
guilt switched to the Arab side: It was they who were being oppressed;
and it was Europe that, with its previous support for Israel, had
helped inflict the oppression. So Europe pressures Israel to withdraw
from the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, heedless of the dire security
consequences that such withdrawal would entail. That Israel has so far
refused to accede to this pressure stands as an infuriating rebuke to
modern Europe's fundamental conception of itself as the virtuous
defeated, free to pass judgment while absolved of the moral
responsibilities of wielding actual power.
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.
"Well, considering that most Europeans 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! 5 posted on 11/29/01 5:09 PM Pacific by RANGERAIRBORNE
"Along came the myth of British Israelism..."I Never heard of that. You mean they think the throne of David is in London?
British Israelism's shining moment was in the 1890s when all of the European intelligentsia were so very keen on Darwinianism, and the landed gentry were absolutely appalled that PUBLIC EDUCATION was seriously being considered. 'Educate the peasants? The non-landed, the
c o m m o n e r s??' Teach THEM to read???!! Heaven forbid! LOL! Do remember, if you decide to research this outrageous movement that phrenology was all the rage, concomitantly, okay? *grin*
OKAY, now... British Israelism is based upon this belief:
The lost ten tribes of Israel are Northern Europeans, particularly so the British. There were antecedants to British Israelism, but it was "all the rage" [lol] in the last quarter of the Nineteenth Century. Actually, an interesting place to read about it, would be in a college library containing extensive resources about the history of journalism - textbooks will sometimes have reproductions of some of the original tracts.
Now, British Israelism goes all the way back to the Puritans, but let's contain ourselves to something CLOSER to the topic of this thread...
Did you not know that Chamerblain claimed that JESUS was NOT semetic, that Jesus was an aryan, and that "true" Jews were NOT semetic, they TOO were aryan. That last sentence gives you a tiny bit of the lingering influence into the middle of the 20th Century that these exceptionally outre ideas had. The British, you see, were the TRUE JEWS who were A R Y A N.
It has VERY strange mutations... even unto the Christian Identity movement in modern America which Charles Manson was enraptured with, and which provide the basis for his group murdering Hollywood celebrities, in an attempt to create a race war.
The British Israelites are NOT political, and so their movement is regarded as passive, benign, and eccentric. NOT so their American counterparts, who are virilantly ANTI-SEMETIC and use such terms as "mud people" or "zionist"... these caucasian Americans believe, too, that the "real" Jews are strictly Northern European Aryan, and .... I hope you get the general idea...
I really find CULTS to be so tedious and so almost furiously mundane in their weird coalition of beliefs.
British Israelism gets very complex, as it is all entertwined with their Grail Legend... and also, with the belief that Briton was originally populated by the refugees of Troy. That's about all I know off the top of my head.
NO, YOU B$ST$RD!!! Islamic suicide bombers killed 6000 AMERICANS, AFTER murdering hundreds of Jews. YES!!! They ARE evil incarnate, and for you to say otherwise makes you either the world's biggest idiot or just another psychopath.
Not so fast, dummy.
Before 1948, there were no Islamic suicide bombers. Nada, nothing, zip. There were Jewish and Arab terrorists in about equal proportions. Then, fifty years after the US takes sides in a tribal war, and 12 years after the US leaves a ruined country where 2 million Islamics died for America's geopolitical objectives, some suicide bombers come to this country.
The bombings did not happen instantly. It took several generations of a completely one-sided foreign policy to create (1)A cause for them to rally around, and (2) A country where they could receive basic indoctrination without the least concern that America would take any steps to curtail these activities, because America just couldn't bothered with that part of the world.
Hahahaha.
You must be are a terribly confused individual.
Jews have been waging war against the inabitants of all the Middle Eastern countries for at least 4,000 years.
Islam only came along in 700 AD, 1300 years ago.
This leaves 2,700 years where Jews were attacking any and all Middle Easterners, without there being any Islam whatosever.
Zionists do this because they believe their scriptures give them the right to murder other people and take their land,
This is the exact same thing they accuse Muslims of doing.
They started it, they and their religion.
You can't deal with this simple fact, so instead come up with some delusional psychological projection of your own innner state.
The overall balance is still in favor if Israel, no matter how you cut it. One can argue that Europeans are only being consistent. Besides, if you kill their guilt, they may turn away from both Arabs and Israelis and stop paying attention to multicultaralism and charges of racism and anti-semitism, which are a tool to affect their policies.
The argument that liberals are better than neocons because neocons are the same liberals but less honest and consistent ones and therefore more dangerous is certainly attractive. Neocons are those Israel-firsters who decided that they can lobby for Israeli interests more effectively once principles of liberalism are discarded. Of course, with their being conservatives in name only, their ideology is an inconsistent mix of ideas that favor their agenda only. This is similar to the sentiment that European guilt was once good for the Jews, and now it's not.
Now don't hold back - tell us what you REALLY think of him.
Man, you are out of your freakin' mind. There WAS Islam before there was Mohammed...and guess what. The Muslims and Jews DID live in peace. Then along came Pervoslammed the Psychoprophet. End of all that and the end of a huge number of Muslims too.
Part one of a long story, is that the Hebrews never attacked anyone unless attacked first. They asked permission to pass in peace through different city states or kingdoms, but because they were so many, they were feared. So instead of being allowed to pass through, they were ambushed time after time. That is actual history, written in the Old Testament, and followed up by much archeaological evidence.
I will even go as far as to tell you that when they DID reach Jericho, the city was already abandoned because of an earthquake. Embellishments, much like those in the Illiad, were not uncommon. So facts are at anyone's disposal. You have simply chosen not to avail yourself of them.
European cultures were very diverse. They did not suffer oppression from Jews anymore than India did. They were opressed by dogma and their uniqueness was considered sinful by the RCC. Don't BE blaming the Jews for thousands of years of corrupt and sadistic RCC bullying on every continent under the sun except for maybe Antactica. Jews didn't try to eliminate entire cultures from off the planet, but they certainly suffered because of it, as did Great Britain, Europe, South America, North America, the Orient, Africa, Arabia, AND those Polynesian Islands you seem to have a fondness for.
Do you know who the Luciferians were? Why don't you try to get untwisted instead of burning out your braincells trying to claim the factually impossible?
Your nose is getting longer.
Read Deuteronomy and Judges, and stop insulting my intelligence by expecting me to believe your whoppers.
Seems to me all their problems go to their treatment of the Palestinians and their continued settlement building on the West Bank and Gaza.
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