The Israeli economy is not healthy. EU is trying to economically muscle Israel into a lethal accommodation with the Pallies. One where Pallie Muslims get a Palestinian state to serve as a much better base for continued Jihad.
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Posted on 04/11/2002 2:50:18 PM PDT by knighthawk
MOSCOW - Editorial and political comment and public opinion in Europe are running heavily against Israel at the moment.
There is talk of economic sanctions, recalling ambassadors and severely reducing bilateral relations unless Ariel Sharon, the Israeli Prime Minister, orders the immediate withdrawal of troops from the West Bank and Gaza.
There are many reasons why Europe has long had a much different take on Israel from Canada or the United States. For one thing, the region is far more dependent on oil imports from the Middle East and more vulnerable to price hikes such as those seen in recent days.
Also, because of the Holocaust -- and the subsequent emigration of most of those Jews who survived Hitler's savagery -- Europe no longer has much of a Jewish community. Arguments regarding Israel's plight are more likely to be heard -- and listened to -- in the United States, where Jews have clout in numbers.
France, Britain, Italy and Spain also have their own complicated, often less-than-noble histories of relations with the Arab world.
Because of this and their relative geographic proximity to the Middle East, there is perhaps more willingness to listen to arguments that Israeli settlements in the West Bank and Gaza are a form of neo-colonialism. That Israel gets a lot of its funding and weaponry from the United States also stokes traditional European anti-Americanism.
In addition, Europe has been galled that Israel does not seem to care what it thinks and will accept peace emissaries only from the United States.
Having declared U.S. peace attempts a failure, the European Union recently sent a high-level delegation to Israel, where it was prevented from meeting the Palestinian leadership. Yet U.S. representatives such as Anthony Zinni, the U.S. Middle East peace emissary, and Colin Powell, the U.S. Secretary of State, can go where they please.
The conventional wisdom is that Europe has always been of two minds about Israel.
There have been immense feelings of guilt over how Nazi Germany was allowed to murder millions of European Jews. But there has also been deep unease over the situation the Palestinians have found themselves in since Israel was created in 1948.
Nowhere are these two conflicting opinions more obvious than in Germany. The country's media-savvy left has always had a soft spot for Yasser Arafat and the Palestinians.
Still, since the days of chancellor Konrad Adenauer, Germany has unquestioningly styled itself Israel's best friend in Europe. The country has paid enormous war reparations, willingly put the Holocaust on every school curriculum and has almost always backed Israel internationally.
So it was a shock last week to discover 73% of Germans thought Israel's actions in what Europeans usually call the Occupied Territories were unjustified. Sensing a sudden, perhaps historic shift away from support for Israel, the influential daily newspaper Frankfurter Allgemeine said the "latest offensive has brought about a change of mood in Germany and now the old German reluctance to voice criticism of the Jewish state has melted away."
It also noted the shift comes as Germans begin, for the first time, to examine their own suffering during the Second World War.
There are other signs Israel can no longer always count on Germany. German media barely mentioned the statement by Dore Gold, Mr. Sharon's foreign policy advisor, that Israel had found evidence in Mr. Arafat's compound linking him to recent Palestinian terrorist attacks against Israeli civilians. The German Foreign Ministry was also silent.
At the same time, a former Christian Democrat labour minister wrote to the Israeli ambassador in Berlin, describing Israel's actions in the Territories as "a war of annihilation."
This was significant for two reasons. Christian Democrats have traditionally supported Israel and the words had a special resonance, since Hitler called for "a war of annihilation" when the Nazis set out to crush Stalin and the Red Army in 1941.
Until now, Germany has had little to say about the possibility of EU sanctions against Israel. But other members of the club have been more talkative.
Josep Pique, the Spanish Foreign Minister, said this week that as a prelude to sanctions, EU members might recall their ambassadors from Israel en masse for consultations.
"It is undeniable that the option of sanctions is gaining ground," Mr. Pique said. "We are orienting ourselves towards a harder message to Israel."
Belgium has suggested the threat of sanctions should be tried as a lever to get Israeli forces to withdraw from Palestinian land. However, France, which is arguably more sympathetic to the Palestinians than any other European country, opposes sanctions of any kind on principle.
Such differences, and the fact the EU has not yet even put sanctions on its formal agenda for discussion or got around to formally condemning Israel, suggest that, as with the wars in the Balkans, Europe is once again talking loudly and righteously while carrying a little stick.
For all its bluster and distress about Israel's tough military response to Palestinian terror attacks on Israeli civilians, there is not much Europe can do to solve the crisis. And Europeans know it.
:)
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Oh. Oh. "Galled"? Is that anything like humiliates?
Does that mean Israel "humiliates" the Europeans?
I hope not. "Humiliations" are today's magic word as an all purpose excuse for Arab savagery.
Are Europeans going to don the so fashionable suicide bomb vests soon?
FMCDH!
The "Clash of Civilizations" isn't turning out quite as Huntington described. Europeans and Anglo-Americans seem to be on different sides of the divide. At least, the Eurocrats are on the other side.
That book was published before the Muslim immigration invasion of Europe was so large. Great book though. I started a thread here on it about two years ago.
5 of 9 people found the following review helpful:
Enlightening and thought provoking, November 14, 2001
Reviewer: A reader from New York City
This book does for global politics what Thomas Friedman's book The Lexus and The Olive Tree does for global economics. Prof. Huntington is compelling in his premise, well substantiated with facts and examples, that religious civilizations have supplanted governmental ideologies and national boundaries as the basis worldwide for political and economic alliances, enmities and conflicts. Written in the mid-1990s, the book is surprisingly prescient in some of its speculations regarding subsequent recent events. The author explores clearly and in well-organized fashion the demographic and attitudinal factors underlying current world affairs, including much elucidation of events in the Balkans, Asia and the Arab World.In the early going the book the book tends to be a bit academic and jargony, but readers should give it a chance, because once it gets past the basic definitions - which are interesting and important in laying the groundwork for the rest of the book - it gives way to a much more lucid and free-flowing style. Overall, it is very helpful to the reader in understanding the recent, current and future world picture.
Like an aging person who knows that death is near, the European nations want to be left alone to suck the last few hours of happiness from a life without meaning before darkness envelops. America reminds the Europeans of how weak they are, how brittle their politics, how pagan their theology, how cowardly they are in the face of death.
From My Cold Dead Hands
Do you recall enough of the title that I could run a search? A key phrase would probably suffice.
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