 |
|
|
|
||
|
<% dim printurl
printurl = Request.ServerVariables("URL")%>
|
|
April
23, 2002, 8:45 a.m. By Robert Goldberg |
|
his
weekend in Washington, D.C., crowds seeking to save the "oppressed"
from globalization also marched against Israel's West Bank war against
the campaign of terror launched by Hamas, Hezbollah, and Yasser Arafat's
own Al Aqsa brigade against Jewish civilians. In seeking to impose their
sense of justice on Israel, is the world waging a war against Jews? Let
us consider the actions of their more mature "moral trading partners"
in Europe: U.N. envoy Terje Roed-Larsen criticized the Israeli military
action in Jenin as having caused a human catastrophe "horrifying
beyond belief." And recently, European Union Commissioner for External
Affairs Chris Patten told a BBC radio interviewer that even in democratic
societies it's hard to distinguish terrorism from legitimate political
opposition. This is Europe's point man in brokering a peace between Israel
and Arab states.
A week ago, the European parliament — which is directly elected by Europeans — decided to slap billions of dollars worth of economic sanctions on Israel because it believes "the military escalation pursued by the Sharon government ... violates international and humanitarian law and will provide no effective solution to the terrorist attacks." The resolution failed to include a direct appeal to Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat to call — in Arabic — for a halt to suicide bombings and other attacks on Israeli civilians. (The EU has declined to impose sanctions — for now.) Meanwhile, on the same day the parliament voted not to impose economic sanctions on Russia for their alleged violation of human rights in their treatment of the mostly Muslim Chechen rebels and surrounding populations.
French Foreign Minister Hubert Verne told the Arabic daily Al-Hayat that sanctions against Iraq have become "cruel, inefficient and dangerous." In April 2000, the European parliament passed a resolution on Iraq in which it noted that "the Iraqi people are in a tragic situation as a result of the imposition of sanctions" and called upon the Security Council for "the lifting of Sanctions as a matter of urgency."
No, Europe — and the Left — seem to muster all their moral courage when it comes to the Jewish state. EU foreign ministers decided not hold an extraordinary meeting of the Association Council, which oversees the agreement with Israel, to put pressure on Israel to halt its West Bank incursion. But the fact that they continue to talk about them — the threat of sanctions because of Israeli military action were also raised last year — is still revealing. The European community feels that sanctions are not cruel, inefficient, and dangerous when applied against a Jewish state but are when applied to Iraq, Russia, and other evil regimes.
Indeed, it appears that the many of Europe's leaders are itching to go after Israel. They are sickened by the vision of a Jewish state at war. Europe considers Israel's actions against terrorism to be more inhumane than the behavior of Iraq. More to the point, either the Europeans' sanctions threshold for Jews is very low or else their tolerance for collective Jewish defensive action is paper-thin.
Europe hates it when Jews fight back. Maybe that explains why Germany is halting shipment of parts for Israel's Merkava tank, even as it supplies Iran with parts for its long-range missile program. Maybe it explains the beatings and desecrations and riots against Jews in France this time around. Sixty years ago, Jews were in denial and in fear and in shock. This time we are ready, determined, and not surprised. We had hoped far better from Europe but did not expect anything different than what we have seen and experienced.
Europe may not want its Jews dead, as it did a half-century ago, but it does wants them supplicants at best. Israel is a defiant reminder that Jews will not forfeit (despite our best efforts to assimilate) our status as a nation or nation-state. The Palestinian solution to the Middle East conflict — Jews living as "citizens" in a democratic and secular Palestine — fits the formula for Jewish existence Europe is comfortable with: for Jews as individuals, everything; for Jews as a group, nothing.
It is from this specific perspective that both protests and sanctions against Israel in its war against terror constitute part of a war against the Jewish state. So too are efforts to apply sanctions against a largely Jewish state fighting terror, while at the same time withdrawing sanctions against a brutal regime that subsidizes terror. The French foreign minister to England may have been speaking for all of Europe when he described Israel as "that shitty little country" which threatens world peace. That he couldn't generate that level of hatred towards Iraq or Iran or Hamas speaks volumes about the anti-Semitism of Europe's political class. Europe's Jewish war and worry render it useless and impotent against terror around the world. My survival as a Jew will never depend on that continent of cowards. It depends on the courage of Israel and America.
In this regard, it is sad that despite its forcefulness in other respects, the Bush administration has failed to restate in the Middle East the demand it made at the beginning of America's war against terror: Either dismantle the apparatus of terror against Israel or be considered a terrorist. I can understand why it's hard for Europe to issue and implement that ultimatum — they have a problem with the concept of Jewish survival. It is time for America to regain its moral clarity and implement that ultimatum in the Middle East. There is no other way to end the Arabs', the Left's — and the Europeans' — war against Israel.
— Mr. Goldberg is a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute.