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Jewish World Review May 15, 2009 / 21 Iyar 5769
The myth of Europe curiously prevails
By Caroline B. Glick
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This poll's most obvious message is that as far Europe is concerned,
Israelis suffer from unrequited love. A 2003 Pew survey of 15 EU countries
showed that 59 percent of Europeans consider Israel the greatest threat to
world peace. A poll taken in Germany the following year showed that 68
percent of Germans believe that Israel is pursuing a war of extermination
against the Palestinians and 51 percent said that there is no difference in
principle between Israel's treatment of the Palestinians and German
treatment of Jews during the Holocaust.
And it isn't simply Israel that they hate. They don't like Jews very much
either. In an empirical study published in 2006, Professors Edward Kaplan
and Charles Small of Yale University demonstrated a direct link between
hatred for Jews and extreme anti-Israel positions. A recent poll bears out
the fact that levels of hostility towards Israel rise with levels of
anti-Semitism.
According to a 2008 Pew survey, anti-Semitic feelings in five EU countries —
Spain, England, France, Germany, and Poland — rose nearly 50 percent
between 2005 and 2008. Whereas in 2005, some 21 percent of people polled
acknowledged they harbor negative feelings towards Jews, by last year the
percent of self-proclaimed anti-Semites in these countries had risen to 30
percent. In Spain levels of anti-Semitism more than doubled from 21 percent
in 2005 to 46 percent in 2008.
Not surprisingly, increased hatred of Jews has been accompanied by increased
violence against Jews. Just last week for instance, three men assaulted
Israel's ambassador in Spain Rafi Shotz as he and his wife walked home from
a soccer game. They followed after him and called out, "dirty Jew," "Jew
bastard," and "Jew murderer." A crowd of people witnessed the assault, but
no one rose to their defense.
Shotz was lucky. As Israel's ambassador he had two policemen escorting him
and so he was not physically threatened. The same was not the fate of
Holocaust survivors who assembled at Mauthausen death camp in Austria last
week to commemorate the 64th anniversary of the camp's liberation by
American forces.
As Jewish survivors of the camp where 340,000 people were murdered mourned
the dead, a gang of Austrian teenagers wearing masks taunted them screaming
"Heil Hitler," and "This way for the gas!" They opened fire with plastic
rifles at French Jewish survivors, wounding one in the head and another in
the neck.
And Austria is not alone. From Germany to France, Belgium, England, Holland,
Sweden, Norway and beyond, Jewish kindergartens and day schools, restaurants
and groceries have been firebombed and vandalized. The desecration of Jewish
cemeteries and synagogues has become an almost routine occurrence. Jewish
leaders from Norway to Germany to Britain to France have warned community
members not to wear kippot or Stars of David in public. Rabbis have been
beaten all over the continent.
There is no state sanction for anti-Jewish violence in Europe. But in many
places it is either brushed off as insignificant, or justified as a natural
byproduct of the Palestinian conflict with Israel. In at least one case, the
official downplaying of the significance of anti-Jewish sentiments and
violence has had murderous consequences.
In January 2006 Ilan Halimi, a French Jew was kidnapped by a gang of Muslim
sadists. For an entire week, the police ignored the anti-Semitic nature of
the attack — and hence the imminent danger to Halimi's life — in spite of
the fact that his kidnappers made threatening phone calls to Halimi's
parents where they recited verses from the Koran while Ilan was heard
screaming out in pain from his torture in the background.
In the end, Halimi was tortured continuously for 20 days before he was
dumped at a railhead naked, with burns and cuts over eighty percent of his
battered body and died of his wounds shortly after he was found.
Some have attributed the rise in European anti-Semitism to the rapid growth
of Muslim minorities throughout the continent. This explanation has much to
recommend it. Levels of anti-Semitism among most Muslim minority populations
in Europe are exceedingly high. According to Kaplan and Small's study,
European Muslims are eight times more likely than non-Muslims to be openly
anti-Semitic. And Franco Frattini, the EU official responsible for combating
anti-Semitism told the Jerusalem Post last year that some 50 percent of
anti-Jewish attacks in Europe are conducted by Muslims.
But while European Muslims are a major factor in the rise of anti-Jewish
violence, they are a bit player when it comes to the overall prevalence of
anti-Jewish attitudes. For example, with 46 percent of Spaniards negatively
disposed towards Jews, and with Muslims making up only 3-5 percent of
Spaniards, we learn that nearly half of Christian Spaniards are
anti-Semitic. And as the 2008 Pew survey shows, European hatred of Jews is
growing at a fast clip. Indeed, it is growing two and a half times faster
than European hatred of Muslims.
In all likelihood, these negative trends for Jews are only going to escalate
in the coming years. Politicians interested in being elected have already
begun exploiting the rise in anti-Jewish sentiments to increase their
electoral prospects. In the 2005 British elections for instance, the Labor
Party under Tony Blair depicted then Conservative Party leader Michael
Howard as the hateful anti-Semitic icon Fagin from *Oliver Twist *in a
campaign poster. Another Labor poster depicted Howard and fellow politician
Oliver Letwin as flying pigs.
This state of affairs bodes ill for Israel's future relations with Europe.
In most cases, European politicians pander to the growing constituency of
anti-Semites by adopting hostile policies towards Israel. These policies
then serve to further justify anti-Semitic attitudes and so the number of
European anti-Semites continues to grow, and in turn, European hostility to
Israel increases.
All of this brings us back to Europhilic Israel. If the majority of Israelis
were to get their way, and Israel joined the EU, we would find ourselves
subsumed into a transnational political entity that increasingly rejects
Israel's right to exist.
No doubt recognizing the political advantage to be garnered by attacking
Israel, last year Spanish investigative magistrate Judge Fernando Andreu
Merellesis decided to use a specious complaint submitted by the discredited
Palestinian Center for Human Rights to launch a war crimes investigation
against Israel's top political and military leaders. Against the stated will
of Spain's state prosecution, Merellesis announced last week that he is
proceeding with his investigation into claims that a dozen senior Israeli
leaders committed a war crime when they approved the 2002 decision to target
Hamas terror master Salah Shehadah.
As a non-member of the EU, EU courts have no power to enforce their rulings
against Israelis. Today the only thing Israelis need to worry about is that
we will be arrested if we visit Europe. This is inconvenient, but not
impossible to live with. Were Israel to join the EU however, EU laws would
supersede Israeli laws. European courts could compel Israeli courts to
enforce their rulings. Israel, in short would find itself subsumed in a
hostile political entity that could simply adjudicate and legislate it out
of existence.
So what explains Israel's unrequited love affair with Europe?
There is no all-encompassing explanation for the EU's popularity in Israel.
It is a function of a number of complementary causes. The most important
among them is the abject failure of the Israeli media to examine European
anti-Semitism and its implications for European policy towards Israel in any
coherent fashion. Rather than recognize that European anti-Semitism and its
concomitant hostility towards Israel is the consequence of internal European
dynamics, the Israeli media tend to cast both as a function of Israel's
actions. Doing so certainly makes for neat, easily digestible news stories,
but it also trivializes the situation. Moreover, by acting as though
Israel's actual behavior is at all relevant to European treatment of Jews
and the Jewish state, the local media effectively buy into cynical European
moves to belittle the significance of anti-Jewish violence. They give
credence to false European claims that the firebombing of synagogues is
simply the regrettable consequence of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict.
Then there is the issue of Israel's constant quest to end its international
isolation. For many Israelis, it is tantalizing to think that we can end our
international isolation by joining the EU. The EU is seen as a club of rich
and cultured countries with which Israel would benefit from merging. This
view again is nurtured by the media which have failed to report on the
failure of the European welfare state model.
In light of the media's refusal to tell the story of Europe's hostility
towards Jews and the Jewish state, or the story of the EU's severe economic
problems, it is not surprising that precious few Israeli politicians have a
clear understanding of Europe. Successive foreign ministers — from Shimon
Peres to Silvan Shalom to Tzipi Livni to Avigdor Lieberman have all voiced
varying degrees of support for Israeli membership in the EU. Their
statements have never been challenged in debate.
Finally, there is the nostalgia that many Israelis feel towards the old
pre-war Europe from their grandparents' stories. That long gone Europe,
where young women and men would walk along the promenades in Berlin, Paris,
Antwerp and Prague holding hands and eating ice cream, breathing in the air
of Heinrich Heine and Franz Kafka has been kept alive in the imaginations of
generations of Israelis. Many of them work today as leading journalists,
movie directors and actors. For many Israelis then, the myth of Europe is
more familiar than the real Europe.
Looking to a future of an increasingly Jew-hating Europe it is clear that
Israel and Israelis must quickly divest ourselves of our delusions about
Europe. For Israel to competently contend with Europe in the coming years,
it will be essential that both our political leaders and Israeli society as
a whole gain a firm grasp of where Europe stands in relation to both the
Jewish people and the Jewish state.
With a burgeoning and deeply anti-Semitic Muslim minority, and with a
Christian majority increasingly comfortable with flaunting traditional
anti-Semitic attitudes, dispensing with anti-Jewish myths ranks low on the
priority list for most European leaders. In contrast, for Israel, gazing at
this unfolding European state of affairs, it is clear that abandoning our
adoration for a mythological Europe is one of the most urgent items on our
national agenda.
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Israelis are wild about Europe. A poll carried out by the Konrad Adenauer
foundation last month showed that a whopping 69 percent of Israelis, and 76
percent of Israeli Jews would like for Israel to join the European Union.
Sixty percent to Israelis have a favorable view of the EU.
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JWR contributor Caroline B. Glick is the senior Middle East Fellow at the Center for Security Policy in Washington, DC and the deputy managing editor of The Jerusalem Post. Comment by clicking here.