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.
Actually not a bad deal because Jews are armed this time around. Well armed so stand back is what I advise the Arab (would be) destroyers of Israel the Jewish home.
43 posted on 11/29/01 4:02 PM Pacific by dennisw"
-------------------------------------------------
(I didn't mean to misquote you)
I have often heard the Arabs say this: "Look Europe! After WW2 you dropped your Jewish problem right into our laps and it's not fair!" I don't agree but this has been said many times. You are making the common mistake of thinking Israel is just a Euro-Jewish enterprise. This cannot be when 43% of Israelis are the Jews who were booted from Arab nations (most) after 1948. Some of this 43% came even before 1948, before WW2, due to mistreatment in Arab nations and due to plain old Zionism.
LOL I saw you had Emailed me and I was expecting a reply on whether Youropeans hate Jews or not, not about Church attendance, they are always complaining about church attendance, more bums on seats means more money in the collecting plate.
The Anglican church are doing very well they own at least a third of the city and surrounding west end and the head sky pilot’s always get to go to the best bashes.
Muslims don’t see the Mosque the way we look at a Church its is also a social club where they go to have a natter.
Now if you said that Mosque attendance beat pub attendance then I would be worried.
Cheers for giving me a laugh Tony
Good-oh then, Tony.
Let us know when you're capable of that -- but if you don't mind i shan't, meanwhile, be holding my breath.
And, just so you'll have a place to start, you might be a little less intemperate, scathing and scornful in your slings at My America and at we Americans. Your very own prejudices are showing!
For myself though, for having taken your mate, Britain's self-appointed spruiker and little-Hitler-like online shopkeeper, to task a couple or six times for the arrant stupidity and fundamental dishonesty of some of his more ridiculous [But linked notwithstanding to his online toby-jug, totes and t-shirt shop] assertions as to once great Britain's capabilities and Turd-Way Benn-Blair's motives -- I've had a bit of a flogging in the form of the flinging of obscenities and other forms of personal attack lately around the buy our t-shirts, poofter-bags and toby-jugs sites -- and am not much interested in continuing down that road.
We Americans [Perhaps you've noticed?] once again find ourselves with a world full of bloody nutters to rescue from themselves -- and from Evil bloody pre-medieval monsters of their creation!
Toodle-Oo, Tones.
Cordially
Brian
[PS: Insofar as my remarks vis-a-vis the attendance at mosques and Church of England services in Greater London are concerned,I am comfortable with my source and with my facts. If you would care to refute either or both with other than a taking of my inventory and some empty waffling about a million moslems in a country of sixty millions please give it your best shot. And good luck with the research. Best ones -- Brian]
UK is offshore and is better than the rest of Europe.
I don’t think Europe on the whole is anti Semitic, I agree that the American Government is backing Israel whole heartedly accept when its Arab coalition building time.
But America has more than her fair share of anti Semitics, after all who gave us Zionist Occupation Government. And a lot of the Holohoax material comes from America. Jew watch is an American site which blames Jews for Communism
As for Belgium, the same legal apparatus used to pick on Sharon is also being used against Arafat and Fidel Castro.
Europe is not one country or one people there are many different cultures and groupings.
If I was you I would spend an equal amount of time watching your back as much as your front.
I like Europeans my wife is German and I have some very good mates from various European countries.
I agree that there have been many articles critical of Israel some deserved some not deserved, you should of read the American press on my countries involvement in North Ireland, but not many of us thought of American as being English haters, the press is just the press and politicians are just politicians.
Cheers Tony
Oh go on please you look so sweet jumping up and down with your little red face all screwed up as you scream and shout about those nasty British.
I am glad you are I am comfortable with your source and with your facts, the big bumper book of youropeans and there nasty ways, and its your book and no one else is allowed to see, especially a nasty English man like Tony who just mocks and sneers.
Snigger Tony
Jews from europe. Europeans were really never against
ethnic cleansing of Jews by Hitler.
All the nazi occupied contries (poland, france, italy ...) were
tacitly helping nazies in this regard.
Because bagels blow away baggets and the French are completely indignant about it? *sigh*
Because Israel was never confronted with a struggle to overcome the dark secrets of personal hygeine where continental Europe is still working on the basic theory?
I'm on target with at least one of these, help me out, people.
Cheers Tony
The Jews' time in Europe was roughly as bad as it was in Arab Islamic lands for 12 centuries. And while the Jews achieved for the most part freedom and protection from the modern European states in the 18th century and onward the Arab Islamic lands continued to persecute and abuse their dhimmi Jews and indeed fought against the Ottoman Empire's forced changes on the dhimma issue because of Britain and France. Hence, the Arab Islamic lands have always been oppressive to the dhimmi Jew and of course their lands are largely cleansed of any Jews present day. So don't give me this crap. The "Palestinians"' were a hodge-podge by the twentieth century of Arabs and other Islamics from all over the place. It was the Arab nationalism which started the strife and riots against the Jews. The Jews were merely protecting themselves from the likes of the Grand Mufti and his clan of fascists.
I would never lightly disparrage a country that created my most beloved drought, India Pale Ale. : )
Cheers have a good weekend flame you I mean exchange meaningful dialogue on Monday.
Cheers Tony
creating divits should be a capital crime.
Cheers Tony
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