European Anti-Semitism and the Jewish State

European Anti-Semitism and the Jewish State

By Joseph Puder

In Europe of the 1930’s the graffiti on the walls and the cry of the anti-Semites was “Jews – Go to Palestine!” Last week the walls were filled with graffiti that read “Jews, Get out of Palestine!”  The Europeans have demonstrated once again not only how short their memories are but how endemic anti-Semitism is in their culture.

Austria, the homeland of Adolf Hitler and Adolf Eichmann, the world’s most notorious Nazis and, the birthplace of Karl Lueger’s anti-Semitic party, voted Yes on U.N. Resolution 67/19 granting “Palestine” Non-Member Observer State status.  A majority of the European Union countries including Belgium, Cyprus, Denmark, Finland, France, Greece, Ireland, Italy, Luxembourg, Malta, Norway, Portugal, and Sweden also voted yes.  The Czech Republic stood tall and was the only European country to vote against the resolution.  The Czechs vividly remember how Britain and France betrayed them to the Nazis in 1939 and caused the dismemberment of their country.

For Israel, this latest gambit by the Palestinians for increased recognition by the UN, pre-empts final-status peace talks and violates prior commitments (Oslo Accords) to resolve outstanding issues through direct negotiations with Israel.  By dint of this resolution, the Palestinians are now be able to join U.N. agencies, most importantly, the International Criminal Court, where they could use their newfound status to press for “war crimes” charges against Israel for military operations and construction of Jewish settlements in the Israeli administered territories.

Fourteen of the 27 E.U. countries effectively endorsed the Palestinian maneuver which defied the U.S. and Israel.  In so doing, they put their imprimatur on Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas’ statements at the UN, “The moment has arrived for the world to say clearly: enough of aggression, settlements, and occupation.” And, that Palestine is “still tending its wounds from the latest Israeli aggression in the Gaza Strip, which had wiped out entire families, murdering men, women, and children along with their dreams, their hopes, their future and their longing to live an ordinary life in freedom and peace. It [Palestine] came before the Assembly because it believed in peace, and because its people were in desperate need of it.”

The Nazi propagandist Josef Goebbels is repeatedly quoted because his words have proved to be so true: “If you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it.”  Mahmoud Abbas and the Palestinians have perfected the art of big lying and the Europeans -motivated by latent anti-Semitism, cowardice, and an eagerness to appease their violent and growing Muslim minorities have shown themselves to be more than willing to buy the lie despite the existence of readily available evidence that disproves the Palestinian lies.

Suffice it to say that responsibility for the recent confrontation in Gaza rests with Hamas whose constant firing of rockets into areas populated by Israeli civilians was a clear case of provocation.   Defensive and retaliatory actions taken by Israel were justified both morally and legally under the guidelines of international law and were supported by the U.S.  Israel, unlike the Palestinian terrorists Fatah or the Islamist Hamas, did not target civilians.  On the contrary, Israeli soldiers took great pains to insure the safety of non-combatants.  Had Israel’s intentions been to inflict maximum pain it could easily have killed thousands of Palestinians.  Moreover, while Palestinian terrorists in Jenin or Gaza (Hezbollah in Lebanon) fired rockets from schools and hospitals and deliberately exposed civilians to the danger of retaliation, Israel retrained its attacks on Hamas operatives in order to avoid civilian casualties.

Then there is the lie about wanting peace.  The Oslo Accords of 1993 brought Yasser Arafat to the West Bank and gave his PA full control over Arab-Palestinian cities and towns.  At the July 2000 Camp David Summit, Arafat, in the presence of President Bill Clinton, was offered by Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak a Palestinian state in 95% of the West Bank and all of Gaza plus additional land that would have been ceded to the PA from Israel proper, and East Jerusalem as the capital.  At the moment of truth, he refused to sign an End the Conflict agreement and chose instead to launch the bloody intifada against civilian Israeli-Jews.  Palestinian terrorists murdered over 1000 Israeli civilians from 2000 to 2004.  Faisal-al-Husseini, a leading Palestinian politician was quoted in 2001, at the height of the intifada, as saying: “The Oslo Accords Were a Trojan Horse; The Strategic Goal is the Liberation of Palestine from the [Jordan] River to the [Mediterranean] Sea.”

Mahmoud Abbas (Abu Mazen) likewise chose to abandon direct negotiations with Israel under the most concession-prone Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, who was ready to go even further than Barak.  Yet Abbas has the audacity to cry “Occupation” when it was he who decided to unilaterally to walk away from the negotiations.

Israel President Shimon Peres once said about the Palestinians that they “try to bring the maternity ward to the cemetery,” referring to the Palestinians having rejected the Partition plan on November 29, 1947, thus throwing the resolution into the ash bin of history.  Instead, the Palestinian sought to liquidate the Jewish state by war, and now, after 65 years, they seek to give birth to a state only as a ploy to create borders closer to the heart of Israel’s cities with the aim of destroying the Jewish State.  The question Europeans and others should be asking the Palestinians is why they did not scramble for a state between the years of 1948-1967, when Jordan held the West Bank and Egypt occupied Gaza?

While Mahmoud Abbas adopted Goebbles’ knack for the big lie, the European hypocrites who have for some decades now ended the moratorium on anti-Semitism that resulted in the murder of Six-Million European Jews, are once again displaying their visceral hatred of Jews, now cleverly cloaked as anti-Zionism.  Last week Britain, France, Germany, Italy, Spain and Sweden summoned the Israeli ambassadors stationed in each of their countries for a dressing-down with regard to Israel’s planned construction of 3000 housing units.  Israel’s building plans, resulting from natural growth and security considerations (clearly a domestic Israeli affair) are condemned, while the horrifying human rights violations which regularly occur in Iran and the Arab-Muslim world have not merited the summoning of Arab ambassadors or the Palestinian representatives.  This contradictory double standard is glaring and vicious.  In Egypt, protests against President Morsi’s emerging dictatorship have resulted in the loss of life, yet the murderous actions taken by his government have not merited a dressing-down, nor, for that matter, has the persecution and killing of Coptic-Christians.  Israel’s building of housing units, however, does!  And, while more than 40,000 Syrians have been killed by Syrian Pres. Assad’s forces, the European media is busy vilifying Israel.

Recent European polls resolved that “Israel is the greatest threat to global peace” and not Iran, North Korea or Syria.  Are the Europeans still hanging on to the same racist and anti-Semitic attitudes of their grandparents?  The combination of an extreme leftist ideology that is pervasive in the European media and academia, coupled with residual and extreme right-wing Nazi attitude and combined with obscene and murderous Islamic propaganda against Jews have resulted in the resurgence of European anti-Semitism, using the excuse of Jewish settlements to justify their “anti-Zionism.”

Mark Steyn, in his column “The Oldest Hatred,” pointed out that “Once upon a time on the (European) Continent, Jews were hated as rootless cosmopolitan figures who owed no national allegiance to any country.  So they became a conventional nation state (Israel), and now they’re hated for that.  And, if Hamas get their way and destroys the Jewish state, the few who survive will be hated for something else.  So it goes.”

 http://frontpagemag.com/2012/joseph-puder/european-anti-semitism-and-the-jewish-state/