Coming soon after Sweden’s recognition of a non-existent state of Palestine, the British Parliament’s 274-to-12 resolution to recognize “Palestine” flags a sea-change in European sentiment towards Israel. France is thinking of following suit. The European Community bureaucracy, meanwhile, has readied sanctions against Israel. One remonstrates in vain. The Gaza War should have taught the world that Israel cannot cede territory to Mahmoud Abbas, now in the 10th year of a 4-year term. Hamas has the support of 55% of West Bank Palestinians vs. just 38% for Abbas, and Hamas openly brags that it could destroy Israel more easily from firing positions in the West Bank. Only the Israeli military keeps Abbas in power; without the Israelis Hamas would displace Abbas in the West Bank as easily as it did in Gaza; and a Hamas government in the West Bank would make war on Israel, with horrifying consequences.
To propose immediate Palestinian statehood under these circumstances is psychotic, to call the matter by its right name. The Europeans, along with the United Nations and the Obama administration on most working days, refuse to take reality into account. When someone tells you that Martians are transmitting radio waves into his brain, or that Elvis Presley really is the pope rather than an Argentine Jesuit, one doesn’t enquire into the merits of the argument. Rather, one considers the cause of the insanity.
The Europeans hate Israel with the passion of derangement. Why? Well, one might argue that the Europeans always have hated Jews; they were sorry they hated Jews for a while after the Holocaust, but they have gotten over that and hate us again. Some analysts used to cite Arab commercial influence in European capitals, but today Egypt and implicitly Saudi Arabia are closer to Jerusalem’s point of view than Ramallah’s. Large Muslim populations in Europe constitute a pressure group for anti-Israel policies, but that does not explain the utter incapacity of the European elite to absorb the most elementary facts of the situation.
Europe’s derangement has deeper roots. Post-nationalist Europeans, to be sure, distrust and despise all forms of nationalism. But Israeli nationalism does not offend Europe merely because it is one more kind of nationalism. From its founding, Europe has been haunted by the idea of Israel. Its first states emerged as an attempt to appropriate the election of Israel. As I wrote in my 2011 book How Civilizations Die (and Why Islam is Dying, Too):
The unquiet urge of each nation to be chosen in its own skin began with the first conversion of Europe’s pagans; it was embedded in European Christendom at its founding. Christian chroniclers cast the newly-baptized European monarchs in the role of biblical kings, and their nations in the role of the biblical Israel. The first claims to national election came at the crest of the early Dark Ages, from the sixth-century chronicler St Gregory of Tours (538-594), and the seventh-century Iberian churchman St Isidore of Seville.
As I observed on the First World War anniversary, Saints Isidore of Seville and Gregory of Tours were in the Bialystock and Bloom of the Dark Ages, the Producers of the European founding: they sold each petty monarch 100% of the show. Europe’s nationalisms were not simply an expansion of tribal impulses, but a nationalism refined and shaped by Christianity into a ghastly caricature of Israel’s Chosenness. In turn, each European country asserted its status as God’s new people: France under Richelieu during the 17th century, England under the Tudors, Russia (“The Third Rome”) from the time of Ivan the Terrible, and ultimately the Germans, who substituted the concept of “master race” for the Chosen People.
The flowering of Jewish national life in Israel makes the Europeans crazy. It is not simply envy: it is a terrible reminder of the vanity of European national aspirations over the centuries, of the continent’s ultimate failure as a civilization. Just as the Europeans (most emphatically the Scandinavians) would prefer to dissolve into the post-national stew of European identity, they demand that Israel do the same. Never mind that Israel lacks the option to do so, and would be destroyed were it to try, for reasons that should be obvious to any casual consumer of news media.
Europeans cannot live with their past. They cannot live with their present, and do not plan to have a future, for they do not bear enough children to forestall demographic ruin at the hundred-year horizon. With its high fertility, national spirit, religiosity and unabashed national self-assertion, Israel reminds the Europeans of everything that they are not. Much worse: it reminds them of what they once desired to become. The idea of Israel as well as the fact of Israel are equally intolerable to them.
It remains to be seen whether Germany-the one European country that has made a vigorous effort to come to grips with its dreadful past-will allow anti-Israel sentiment to turn into diplomatic isolation. One hopes that Angela Merkel, Germany’s talented and well-intentioned chancellor, will stand in the way of this. Europe may not be quite a lost cause for Israel, but it is at grave risk of becoming one.
@ yamit82:
When that reality occurs, they blame you for making it happen
— because while they may have never shared your view of reality, they always shared your paranoia. . . . whose contagion is never very hard to tap. . . . or promote.
“In action, be primitive; in foresight, a strategist.” -Rend Char
(Also a good boxing axiom, hey, Yamit.)
“It’s just too bad that ironically, someday Israel may have to kill hundreds of millions of people with nukes in order to save those ideals.”
I think of this every day, Eric R. I see it coming down the pipe.
“When written in Chinese, the word crisis is composed of two characters. One represents danger and the other represents opportunity.” -John F. Kennedy
yamit82 Said:
Yamit, Israel has between 200 and 400 reasons that Europe will regret working with Iran to bring about a second Shoah. That is, unless Europe feels it is more important to exterminate Jews and finish the work of its Lord — Adolf Hitler — than it is for Europe to physically survive. And that might very well be the case.
dweller Said:
Paranoid? Who me?
dweller Said:
Don’t look, but I am following you Sweetie.
http://photobucket.com/images/zombie?page=1
@ yamit82:
“Pa-ra-noia strikes deep; into your heart it will creep. It starts when you’re always afraid…”
@ yamit82:
What ‘christian’ country? — Contemporary Europe isn’t even nominally any longer Xtn.
Nor does it subscribe to the concept of “Evil” (except in the sense of the negation of whatever it sees at the moment as “politically correct”).
USA is a lot more “Christian” than any Euro country. Can you seriously suggest, then, that Holo Revisionism is correspondingly more advanced STATESIDE than in Europe???
There is NOTHING ‘christian’ about cockamamie notions like “damnation of innocence”
— or “unrepentant forgiveness.”
People who subscribe to such propositions may call themselves ‘christian,’ but are in substance no more ‘christian’ (even conventionally christian) than the hunter who decks himself out in camou to expedite his approach to the game he’s stalking.
— If he wears elk antlers and douses himself in doe scent, would you identify him as a ‘buck’???
The Jews are the witness people.
Not at all plausible. People aren’t moved FIRST by what they think. Thinking isn’t at the head of the list.
First you react.
Then you feel.
THEN you think.
— in that order.
What you’ve been induced to think, at that point, may then reinforce what you felt, and in turn COMPOUND your reaction — which then repeats the cycle anew. But it always begins with a mindless (viz., thought-bypassing) reaction. Doesn’t begin with thought.
What’s more, Jew-hatred is NOT peculiar to christians. Even in something as ‘civilized’ as a campus demonstration against Israel, it’s clear that the comportment of Muslims toward Jews is no less vicious. These people are nutzoid, totally out of control.
Think your attempt to lay Judeopathy at the door of farkakte theology is simply barking up the wrong tree.
@ bernard ross:
The Jews are the witness people.
A very plausible explanation for how and why Jews became so hated by believers in the jeezus-god of love-your-neighbor-as-yourself. It’s not because the Jews killed jeezus as the Gospels – mainly that of John – say. It’s because the theology of evangelical/fundamentalist christianity holds that Jews know perfectly well that jeezus was the messiah but they deny him anyway. And how else can this be seen but as a deliberate act of choosing evil? Who else could do such a thing but Satan and his servants? Only in a christian country can Holocaust Revisionism [the idea that the Nazis never tried to exterminate the Jews] be taken seriously. Because only christians could believe that Jews are so wholly evil and so supernaturally-empowered by evil forces that they could successfully perpetrate the monumental conspiracy that would be necessary to get people to believe such a thing if it weren’t true. And even of those people who accept the reality of the Nazi genocide of the Jews, only a christian could believe that innocent and harmless Jews were dispatched to hell while the Nazis who killed them were forgiven by G-d and admitted to heaven. There are no people who are more despised than Jews!
@ bernard ross:
I have a theory that Christian support for Zionism is partly predicated as a means of ridding Europe of Jews first and then finishing them off once they have us all together here in Israel either directly or by proxy as it appears to be today.
The way of the Almighty is measure for measure, what they planned for us will happen to them instead.
yamit82 Said:
It was the euros who declared the historic rights of jews to return to Israel and settle the land, they enshrined this in internationally binding legal documents to facilitate and encourage that settlement. Now they declare it illegal: they are truly schizoid and dangerous psychotics.
yamit82 Said:
another way of warning Jews not to be in Europe as their arab spring advances. the europeans have become insane and transparent in their resolve to see the Jews slaughtered or bowing to their will. I hope the whole place devolves into a war between the euros and the muslim.
As usual, Spengler nails his subject — incisively & elegantly.
A good article.
The barren land of 2000 years NOW blossoms for the ingathered Jews and NOT the supersessionist christian self declared, replacement Jews.
this is a current fact, not a prediction to be argued, and this fact demonstrates the lie of their very essence and being. therefore, they are frantically and hysterically trying to reverse the act of G_D so as to be able to claim that it was a false start. If the Jews fail in Israel they can reclaim their very essence but if the current indisputable fact remains in place they are proven to be liars, idolaters and enemies of G_D. Their entire culture is demonstrated to be based on lies and that they have been slaughtering G-D’s chosen for 2000 years.
The Blacklist
“The Jewish people were never Just a religious and ethic designation, We are the carriers of an elevated ideal. Israel is not just a name on a map or a name on a passport, it is the supreme embodiment that every nation should have it’s own state and every people should have it’s place. We are not just a random set of individuals who just happen to hold that passport, we are the inheritors and guardians of a sublime ideal.”
Well said, Yamit. Wrote this down on my quotations page.
‘Ride or Die’: ISIS Terrorists Have Motivated A Biker Gang to Take Action Against the Global Scourge
Mladen Andrijasevic Said:
A- History
B- actions by Europe towards Jews and Israel since the end of WW2.
I would proffer that any non-anti Jewish and anti-Israel actions by Europeans towards Jews and Israel is anomalous.
C- If it walks, talks and acts like an antisemite then why jump through unnecessary hoops and mental gymnastics in-order not to state the obvious. Europeans Hate Jews ergo they hate the “Jewish State” doubly!!
Europe is Sick – but we first have to establish from what?!
http://www.madisdead.blogspot.co.il/2014/10/europe-is-sick-but-we-first-have-to.html
There is an upside to boycotts and embargoes:
Israel may shift to domestic production after US halted supplies
Israel may shift to domestic production after US halted supplies during
Operation Protective Edge
Dr. Aaron Lerner – IMRA 17 October 2014
Amir Rappaport reports in today’s edition of Makor Rishon that during
Operation Protective Edge orders came from Washington (assume the White
House) not to process any Israeli weapons/ammunition orders.
This was a blanket halt rather than just a halt on supply of Hellfire
missiles.
As a result of this move, Israel is considering a shift to domestic
production of various critical weapons and ammunition to reduce the impact
of a possible future American freezes.
For example, replacing the Hellfire with an Israeli missile while precision
bombs produced by Rafael would replace American made guided bombs.
Rappaport emphasizes that while Washington froze supplies to Israel during
Operation Protective Edge that the U.S. at the very same time continued with
broad security and intelligence cooperation.
Goldman is right on the money. So is Yamit.
Israel is going to be a net energy exporter in a year or two.
Do I care what Sweden and the UK think of Israel? Let ’em freeze.
It is no coincidence that Israel is the most thorough democracy in a region devoid of such a concept and is the most oppressive towards basic human rights and ideals.
The Jewish people were never Just a religious and ethic designation, We are the carriers of an elevated ideal. Israel is not just a name on a map or a name on a passport, it is the supreme embodiment that every nation should have it’s own state and every people should have it’s place. We are not just a random set of individuals who just happen to hold that passport, we are the inheritors and guardians of a sublime ideal.
Our challenge by the EU and most of the world is how we can hold fast to that ideal, which is the antithesis of what Europe and even America seek to impose on us. A world moving in the opposite direction of the ideal we hold so sacred.
Esau hates Jacob and Edom has always been resentful of his brother.
Its an iron rule of Jewish history and the Jews are fated to endure his fury and never find themselves free from his whiplash.
Edom and Ishmael are truly birds of a feather flocking together.