{Originally posted to the MIDA website}
After centuries of colonialism and the devastating Second World War, Europe emerged as a self-appointed superpower of peace and human rights. However, instead of supporting peaceful sister democracies like Israel, the EU has increasingly sided with despotic terrorist regimes like Iran and PLO. By betraying Israel, Europe is ultimately betraying itself and its own fundamental values.
The European Union and the Foreign Ministers of Germany, Britain and France recently declared their opposition to renewed US sanctions against Iran as a result of Tehran’s imperial aggression. This follows an all too predictable pattern where European declarations and deeds do not match.
For a variety of reasons, Europe has devoted more resources and focus on the Arab-Israeli conflict than to any other conflict in the world. In an era when the so-called Arab Spring quickly transformed into a lethal Islamist Winter, Europe continues clinging to the debunked myth of the Arab-Israeli conflict as the mother of all conflicts.
After the Islamist terrorist attacks in Paris in 2015, Sweden’s Foreign Minister Margot Wallström linked the ISIS attacks to the Arab-Israeli conflict. Throughout the years, numerous European officials have declared that solving the Arab-Israeli conflict is a strategic European interest. However, in practice, European policies have systematically undermined any prospects of genuine peace between Arabs and Israelis. Instead of promoting a conclusion of the conflict, Europe has perpetuated it for ideological and commercial reasons.
Europe has painfully experienced the staggering costs of lethal propaganda through Nazism and Communism. Instead of learning from its own violent history, Europe decided to abolish history and reason. The Arab-Israeli conflict was never about particular borders but about Arab rejection of Israel’s right to exist within any boundaries.
Instead of demanding an end to Arab aggression against Israel’s existence, the European Union has embraced PLO propaganda of Arab victimhood and vilification of Israel. As far as Brussels is concerned, widespread Middle Eastern violence and extremism is somehow linked to the presence of Jews living beyond the green line since 1967. The fact that the terrorist organization PLO was established three years before any Jews lived in Judea and Samaria, does not concern Europe.
The European Union does not merely support Arab claims against Israel. Brussels has emerged as the chief bankroller of Arab and Islamist terrorism and propaganda against Israel. The Arab population in Judea, Samaria and Gaza has received more aid per capita than anyone else in the world. While claiming concern about the well-being of Arab civilians, Europe has willfully disregarded the Abbas regime’s despotism and flagrant violation of fundamental human rights. Brussels has also largely ignored Hamas’ cynical abuse of Arab civilians as human shields against Israel. Instead of condemning PLO and Hamas terrorism against Israel, the European Union has systematically criticized the Jewish state for defending itself.
Few parts of the world have more experience with refugees than Europe. After the Second World War, millions of refugees were resettled within Europe and beyond. Instead of seeking a similar solution in the Middle East, the European Union continues to finance UNWRA, which cynically fuels the Arab-Israeli conflict. Unlike any other refugee organization, UNWRA is tasked to perpetuate rather than solving the Arab refugee issue. In an Orwellian fashion, millions of alien Arabs that have never set foot in Israel are counted as “refugees” of the Arab-Israeli conflict. By contrast, Israel has absorbed and successfully integrated millions of Jewish refugees from Europe, the Middle East and beyond.
Disagreements between democracies are common. However, the growing gulf between Brussels and Jerusalem runs much deeper. On most crucial issues pertaining to the Middle East, Europe sides against Israel. The European Union refuses to recognize Jerusalem as Israel’s capital. Brussels joined the Muslim world in condemning President Trump for moving the American embassy to Jerusalem.
The European Union opposes sanctions against Iran and largely ignores Tehran’s genocidal threats against Israel. Europe continues to treat the despotic Holocaust denier Abbas as a “moderate” statesman. Instead of demanding that Ramallah and Gaza use European funds for peace and progress, Brussels indirectly finances PLO’s and Hamas’ terrorist war against Israel.
Instead of demanding an end to Middle Eastern antisemitism, Brussels ignores or excuses Muslim and Arab genocidal Jew-hatred. In 2005, Israel left the Gaza Strip and evacuated thousands of Jews living there. According to European logic, this move should have led to peace. However, it led to an unprecedented explosion of aggression against Israel. Instead of demanding an unconditional end to Hamas terrorism against Israel, Brussels fabricates a moral equivalence between the democratic Jewish state and the Islamists.
The same EU that claims to support a two-state solution to the Arab-Jewish conflict, recently criticized Israel for legally declaring itself a Jewish nation-state. Brussels even absurdly claimed that the new Jewish nation-state law could “complicate or prevent” the two-state solution. It appears that Europe retroactively opposes the UN Partition Plan to establish an Arab and a Jewish state in the former British Palestine Mandate. Jewish national homelessness enabled the Holocaust.
Seven decades after the reestablishment of the Jewish nation-state, Europe continues to wage its ideological war against the Jewish people in the name of “human rights”.