Wed, June 09, 2010
MICHAEL LUCAS: Europe’s Trouble with Israel
It was only a day or two after the Israeli navy stopped the “peace flotilla,” which was trying to break the embargo on Gaza, and Europe was already awash in huge anti-Israeli demonstrations. Look through European newspapers and you will find plenty of photos of demonstrators, faces distorted with fury, carrying pictures of Israeli politicians with swastikas painted on their forehead.
The facts were furiously re-written: Hunting knives, sling shots, and sharpened metal rods are presented as “normal” seafaring equipment. Videos, which show the peaceniks as highly trained hand-to-hand combatants, are ignored. And nobody wonders where naïve peace activists have learned to disable hovering helicopters.
But I am neither surprised nor impressed to once again witness the outburst of anger and dishonesty directed at the state of Israel.
Muslims are killing Muslims (and quite a few non-Muslims) by the thousands — in Iraq, in Afghanistan, in Pakistan, in Iran; in Somalia, Sudan, and Yemen; in mosques, marketplaces, schools, and private homes. Yet in the face of all this slaughter, the world, and Europe in particular, is quiet, as it is in the face of many other outrages that we witness around the world every day and that are much more significant than the deaths of nine Turks. But when Israeli is involved, it becomes the only occasion in which Europe suddenly unites in outrage. I’ll be frank: Europeans care about Palestinians as much as I care about Europeans — which is not at all.
The scope of the outcry has become so ridiculous that the organizers of Madrid’s Gay Pride have disinvited an official Israeli delegation. Security concerns, supposedly, and pressure from some unnamed pro-Palestinian groups. The delegation, mind you, from the only country in the Middle East where LGBT people can live in peace, happiness, and safety.
I think this idea should be taken a step further — Madrid Pride, this rollicking drug, sex, and dance fest, should be taken to another location: Gaza, maybe, or Ramallah? Tehran or Riyadh? With optional excursions to Mogadishu and Sanaa? Once again, Europe mindlessly capitulates before Muslim pressure.
No surprise here. The double standard is long established. Muslims are given a free pass. But Europeans will jump on any opportunity to demonstrate their hate for the state of Israel. The demonstrations against Israel’s stopping of the flotilla have nothing to do with empathy for the victims of a military operation. Their purpose is to leverage the trap the terrorists have so cleverly laid, to pressure politicians, and to escalate to the point of complete destruction of Israel.
Only 60 years ago Europeans collectively murdered 6 million Jews. You don’t need to be an expert in mass psychology to detect in the current vilification of Israel a collective, retroactive attempt to justify the Holocaust. Even at the risk of prompting a second Holocaust, Europeans are using every opportunity to give Muslims the freedom to kill another 6 million Jews, the Jews of Israel. It would create a perfect symmetry.
Why build ghettos, gas chambers, and crematoriums if you can do it through the hands of Muslims, stuck in the Middle Ages?
And to give this new vendetta some sort of respectability, history must be rewritten just like the incident on the Mavi Marmara was rewritten.
The most insidious rewrite is inherent in the frequently used phrase “democratically elected Hamas government in Gaza.” Hamas was indeed the winner in a democratic election in 2006. But it subsequently consolidated its power through a coup d’etat in July of 2007, dismantling the opposition and violently removing the Palestinian Authority’s security forces and civil servants from the Gaza strip. It now holds absolute power in the strip. Hamas’ democratic credentials are about as solid as the Nazis’, who also came to power through a democratic election and, two months later, issued the Enabling Act, abolishing all opposition and assuming absolute power.
The parallel does not end here. The Hamas Charter still calls for replacing the state of Israel with a Palestinian Islamic State in the area now comprised of Israel, the West Bank, and Gaza. Make no mistake: Hamas is a mortal enemy of Israel and the Jews, and Israel must defend itself against Hamas. Whoever doesn’t accept this is abetting Israel’s destruction.
Thank you Michael Lucas! You are correct, and it is sad that most people will not realize it until it is too late. Protests erupted in the USA, too. San Francisco, Los Angeles and New York. The loony Left is alive and well.
Well said Michael ! Has the world lost it’s marbles ? Where are peoples morals & scruples ? Countries like Lybia, Iran, Venezuela, etc… are seated on the UN Human Rights commission. Need i say more ?!?!?
The UN body is busy condemning Israel every single week for biassed nonsense in order to please the Arab world, while ignoring thousands of real needy causes across the globe.
The world is full of double standards when it comes to Israel. Just 24 hrs ago a US border guard shot a Mexican kid who was running across the border. Sure the Mexicans are pissed with the Americans and in a few days we’ll figure out what really happened, and the dust will eventually settle on this matter and all will move on. and barely a word about it i the European press.
But had it been israel who shot a Palestinian kid trying to cross the border with perhaps a suicide bomb attached to it’s chest, the world would have been in uproar, anti israel demonstrations across Europe and the Middle East. And the UN again investigating and another resolution condemning Israel. What is our world coming to ?
To all those left wingers who claim there was never a jewish presence in Israel, read the bible and the Quran and you’ll see we were there waaaaaay before Mohammed and Jesus appeared on the scene.
one last word to the left. When the Muslims are done with the jews, they will start with you. Make no mistake.
If I disagree with Michael on anything in the above column it’s that I think the anti-Israeli bias in Europe today is less a carryover from the Europe that murdered 6 million Jews 65 years ago, and more about the new Islamified Europe that is replacing it. Over the past 30 years, the Muslim population in Europe has doubled. At its current rate, it will double again in less than ten years (or even by 2015, according to some predictions)… Want to know what the top baby names in Brussels these days? Here they are: Mohamed, Adam, Rayan, Ayoub, Mehdi, Amine and Hamza. So if you think Europe is anti-Israeli now, just wait until little Mohamed, Ayoub and Hamza are old enough to vote!
Oh those horrid Europeans, they will stop at nothing to ridicule Israel. I suggest that Michael should make a stand against them and withdraw his movies from sale in Europe. That will teach them.
Times of London, June 17, 2010
“Support Israel : if it goes down, we all go down.”
by : José María Aznar, Prime Minister of Spain, 1996-2004
Anger over Gaza is a distraction. We cannot forget that Israel is the West’s best ally in a turbulent region
For far too long now it has been unfashionable in Europe to speak up for Israel. In the wake of the recent incident on board a ship full of anti-Israeli activists in the Mediterranean, it is hard to think of a more unpopular cause to champion.
In an ideal world, the assault by Israeli commandos on the Mavi Marmara would not have ended up with nine dead and a score wounded. In an ideal world, the soldiers would have been peacefully welcomed on to the ship. In an ideal world, no state, let alone a recent ally of Israel such as Turkey, would have sponsored and organised a flotilla whose sole purpose was to create an impossible situation for Israel: making it choose between giving up its security policy and the naval blockade, or risking the wrath of the world.
In our dealings with Israel, we must blow away the red mists of anger that too often cloud our judgment. A reasonable and balanced approach should encapsulate the following realities: first, the state of Israel was created by a decision of the UN. Its legitimacy, therefore, should not be in question. Israel is a nation with deeply rooted democratic institutions. It is a dynamic and open society that has repeatedly excelled in culture, science and technology.
Second, owing to its roots, history, and values, Israel is a fully fledged Western nation. Indeed, it is a normal Western nation, but one confronted by abnormal circumstances.
Uniquely in the West, it is the only democracy whose very existence has been questioned since its inception. In the first instance, it was attacked by its neighbours using the conventional weapons of war. Then it faced terrorism culminating in wave after wave of suicide attacks. Now, at the behest of radical Islamists and their sympathisers, it faces a campaign of delegitimisation through international law and diplomacy.
Sixty-two years after its creation, Israel is still fighting for its very survival. Punished with missiles raining from north and south, threatened with destruction by an Iran aiming to acquire nuclear weapons and pressed upon by friend and foe, Israel, it seems, is never to have a moment’s peace.
For years, the focus of Western attention has understandably been on the peace process between Israelis and Palestinians. But if Israel is in danger today and the whole region is slipping towards a worryingly problematic future, it is not due to the lack of understanding between the parties on how to solve this conflict. The parameters of any prospective peace agreement are clear, however difficult it may seem for the two sides to make the final push for a settlement.
The real threats to regional stability, however, are to be found in the rise of a radical Islamism which sees Israel’s destruction as the fulfilment of its religious destiny and, simultaneously in the case of Iran, as an expression of its ambitions for regional hegemony. Both phenomena are threats that affect not only Israel, but also the wider West and the world at large.
The core of the problem lies in the ambiguous and often erroneous manner in which too many Western countries are now reacting to this situation. It is easy to blame Israel for all the evils in the Middle East. Some even act and talk as if a new understanding with the Muslim world could be achieved if only we were prepared to sacrifice the Jewish state on the altar. This would be folly.
Israel is our first line of defence in a turbulent region that is constantly at risk of descending into chaos; a region vital to our energy security owing to our overdependence on Middle Eastern oil; a region that forms the front line in the fight against extremism. If Israel goes down, we all go down.
To defend Israel’s right to exist in peace, within secure borders, requires a degree of moral and strategic clarity that too often seems to have disappeared in Europe. The United States shows worrying signs of heading in the same direction.
The West is going through a period of confusion over the shape of the world’s future. To a great extent, this confusion is caused by a kind of masochistic self-doubt over our own identity; by the rule of political correctness; by a multiculturalism that forces us to our knees before others; and by a secularism which, irony of ironies, blinds us even when we are confronted by jihadis promoting the most fanatical incarnation of their faith. To abandon Israel to its fate, at this moment of all moments, would merely serve to illustrate how far we have sunk and how inexorable our decline now appears.
This cannot be allowed to happen. Motivated by the need to rebuild our own Western values, expressing deep concern about the wave of aggression against Israel, and mindful that Israel’s strength is our strength and Israel’s weakness is our weakness, I have decided to promote a new Friends of Israel initiative with the help of some prominent people, including David Trimble, Andrew Roberts, John Bolton, Alejandro Toledo (the former President of Peru), Marcello Pera (philosopher and former President of the Italian Senate), Fiamma Nirenstein (the Italian author and politician), the financier Robert Agostinelli and the Catholic intellectual George Weigel.
It is not our intention to defend any specific policy or any particular Israeli government. The sponsors of this initiative are certain to disagree at times with decisions taken by Jerusalem. We are democrats, and we believe in diversity.
What binds us, however, is our unyielding support for Israel’s right to exist and to defend itself. For Western countries to side with those who question Israel’s legitimacy, for them to play games in international bodies with Israel’s vital security issues, for them to appease those who oppose Western values rather than robustly to stand up in defence of those values, is not only a grave moral mistake, but a strategic error of the first magnitude.
Israel is a fundamental part of the West. The West is what it is thanks to its Judeo-Christian roots. If the Jewish element of those roots is upturned and Israel is lost, then we are lost too. Whether we like it or not, our fate is inextricably intertwined.
José María Aznar was Prime Minister of Spain, 1996-2004