Europe prioritizes our conflict over wars that are not only much bloodier, but also do far more harm to its own welfare
By Evelyn Gordon
The media have recently been full of horror stories from around the globe. The terror attacks that killed over 100 people on three continents last Friday got the most press, but they were far from the worst. In Sudan, the government isdeliberately bombing civilians in the Nuba Mountains. In South Sudan, a civil war has displaced more than 1.5 million people, left over half the country in danger of going hungry and produced endless atrocities, like boys who are castrated and left to bleed to death. In Myanmar, stateless Rohingya Muslims have effectively been put into concentration camps. Worldwide, the number of displaced people hit a record high of 59.5 million last year, with almost a fifth of this total coming from the Syrian civil war alone. And all this is just the tip of the iceberg.
With so many atrocities happening right this minute, it might seem hypocritical that the West’s moral outrage last week focused primarily on a very minor war in Gaza that ended 10 months ago, sent no destabilizing influx of refugees into other countries and produced total casualties equal to a mere 1% of those produced by Syria’s ongoing bloodbath. But since, for all their moralizing, Western countries usually put self-interest first, morally warped priorities aren’t necessarily surprising; they can often be explained as attempts to put a moral facade over national interests.
What is surprising, and genuinely frightening, however, is the degree to which the anti-Israel obsession can even trump national self-interest. As exhibit A, consider Europe.
Thanks to the above-mentioned horrors and many others, Europe faces a major refugee crisis, which German Chancellor Angela Merkel last week termed “the biggest challenge for the European Union that I have seen during my term in office.” Last year, 626,000 people sought asylum in the EU, an increase of almost 200,000 over 2013; this year’s influx is so far running much higher.
This refugee crisis has given a huge boost to fringe anti-immigrant parties; most recently, the Danish People’s Party placed second in Denmark’s June election. And this reflects a genuine public concern. In one recent poll, for instance, when Germans were asked to name the continent’s top 10 challenges, immigration ranked number one.
In a frantic effort to cope, the EU abandoned it normal aversion to military action and announced plans for a military operation targeting migrant smugglers at one of their main sources, war-torn Libya. But since the operation was conditioned on UN Security Council approval, it will probably never happen. It also proposed a plan to distribute refugees more fairly among its member states, since currently, they are heavily concentrated in certain countries. But following a rancorous debate that severely exacerbated the bloc’s internal tensions, the mandatory quota plan was killed last week.
Given all this, you might expect the crises producing this refugee influx to be top EU foreign-policy concerns. These include the Syrian civil war, responsible for fully 20 percent of all EU asylum seekers last year; the Libyan civil war, which has turned Libya into the main gateway for African migration to Europe by creating a governance void in which human traffickers operate freely; or the ongoing problems in the EU’s own backyard of Serbia and Kosovo, both of which made the top five on the list of countries sending the most asylum seekers to the EU.
Instead, Europe’s top foreign-policy priority appears to be a conflict that doesn’t even make the top 30 on this list, and whose solution would do nothing to ameliorate any of those other crises.
The consensus position of the EU’s foreign policy elite, as enunciated in anopen letter from 19 European elder statesmen in May, is that the Palestinian-Israeli conflict “remains high on the list of the world’s worst crises” – and never mind that so many others are producing so many more deaths, displacements and atrocities. A senior French diplomat even declared recently that “inertia is deadly,” because it might lead ISIS to adopt the Palestinian cause. Has he somehow not noticed that ISIS is already perpetrating Mideast mayhem?
The EU’s big three – France, Germany and Britain – have consequently been working for months, at France’s initiative, to draft a UN Security Council resolution dictating the outline of a final-status solution to the conflict and setting a deadline for its achievement (or more accurately, dictating what concessions the EU wants Israel to make; the drafts have been remarkably coy about any Palestinian concessions). Similarly, 16 European foreign ministers demanded in April that the EU adopt binding guidelines on labeling settlement produce.
But the EU’s obsession with Israel doesn’t just trump other foreign-policy concerns; it even trumps domestic problems, as Czech Foreign Minister Lubomir Zaoralek inadvertently revealed in early June. In a diatribe threatening Israel with various harsh consequences if it didn’t immediately take steps to create a Palestinian state (while also, naturally, proclaiming his deep love for Israel), Zaoralek inter alia demanded Israeli action to fix the “catastrophe” he observed in Gaza.
“I met young people with no future and no hope,” he said in an interview with Walla, a Hebrew-language news site. “The youth unemployment rate there is inconceivable. It reminded me of meetings with young people in Greece.”
Greece, lest anyone has forgotten, is still an EU member state. Thus one might think solving the disaster in Greece – where hospital budgets have fallen by 93% and surgeons are working 20-hour days for weeks on end – is slightly more important to Europe’s well-being than solving Gaza’s problems. But despite endless negotiations that finally collapsed entirely this weekend, there’s been no discernible improvement in Greece’s situation for years.
In short, the EU is quite content to ignore foreign-policy crises that flood it with refugees and foment domestic unrest, and it’s even prepared to let one of its own member states go bankrupt. But it’s hell-bent on resolving an unimportant little foreign conflict that isn’t affecting it at all.
You can’t explain that by rational self-interest, or by any conceivable standard of morality. And the only explanation left isn’t a pretty one. The old-fashioned word for it is anti-Semitism.
Originally published in The Jerusalem Post on July 1, 2015
It is the nature of the beast. Jew hatred is an immutable characteristic of Europeans. Europe cannot be reformed, which makes the Israeli desire to join the EU all the more irrational. Boarding a sinking ship is unwise, and so is seeking fraternity with those who want you dead.
babushka Said:
My own pet theory is that the brave, courageous and adventurous euro genes went to the “new world” and the colonies, after all only the courageous cold have embarked on such journeys. All that was left behind were the cowardly, appeasement bent and the chinless wonder privileged elite. Their knee jerk reaction in general is usually cowardly and deceitful, and their “culture” is that of clones parroting PC mantras. they have relied on the military welfare of the US for their own protection and all they have is their economic strength, their euro….. and that appears to be headed for trouble too.
That they can continue to engage collectively in their despicable libels of the Jewish people after 2000 years of libel, torture and slaughter should be the main focus of Israeli and Jewish leadership, rather than covering up their pathological obsession to kill Jews with rationalizations.
Europe was given a chance to purge itself of its filthy habits and has instead returned to them with disguised enthusiasm. The Jews must be warned of this continuing existential danger as most Jews think the euros have reformed.
babushka Said:
sounds to me like a rewrite of the covenant: blessings and curses.
Which proves yet again that, in addition to being gutless and foul-smelling, the French are stupid. French culture topped out on May 30, 1778 when Voltaire died. Since that time, France has been inexorably grinding towards a halt. It has taken awhile, but the point of critical mass is nearing, and our Islamic buddies will apply the finishing touch. Or is that touché?
Since the early 60ties, France has worked feverishly and intensely at the construction of Eurabia. Bat Ye’or was the first to discover this anti Israel/Jews cabal. She is probably the most expert individual on this topic.
Of course France thought that the Europeans would be on top!!!!
Muslims are 1.6 bil. Imagine if another few millions move to Europe. This will result either in the definitive Islamization of Europe or a multifocal and prolonged conflicts. This is the reason why Europe tries desperately to focus their attention on the Israelis in the hope that Muslims will be satisfy to refocus their attention on the Jews. In vain. G-D makes the Jews-haters crazy.
Hitler probably would have won World War II had he not expelled German nuclear scientists. The anti-Semites never learn that Jew hatred is ultimately self-defeating, and it is immensely gratifying to witness them suffer for their malice. I suppose our Christian friends would recoil at such vindictiveness – turn the other cheek and all – but it wasn’t the Hebrews who invented the word “schadenfreude”.
@ babushka:
The Divine Justice is already well underway with the Euros trading 6 million loyal, productive Jews for 20 million and counting 7th century, sum bags that will utterly destroy all remnants of Euro culture. Europe is now in its death throws! 6 million Jews get the last laugh!
Europe is deteriorating faster than Nancy Pelosi’s face, and as it disintegrates European malice towards Jews only intensifies. There is an evangelical Christian doctrine called premillennial dispensationalism, which posits that God ultimately treats Gentiles as they treat His Chosen. If so, the Euros have a lot of suffering yet to do, and their agony will represent Divine Justice.
the collape of europe is in the best interest of the jews and Israel. europe is the perennial existential enemy of the Jews and they have shown no abatement of their penchant for swindling, libeling and killing Jews. They only don a disguise and pay others to kill Jews while openly libeling and swindling Jews. The euros demonstrate, according to their behavior, that they have no legitimacy to exist.
The best approach to europe for Israel is clandestine which is how the euros deal with the jews now. Israel must find ways of improving and expanding the smuggling networks from gaza. Israel should aid the honor killers in bringing the arab spring to europe. It is only when europe is decimated and fragmented like the arab spring of the ME that the Jews will get any hiatus from the lunatic obsessions of the euros. It does not matter whether it is the BDS supersessionist euro churches who fund any possible attack on the Jews or the euro govs who fund the same and spread their lies of jewish illegitimacy no differently than the last 2000 years. Putin should be aided and encouraged in his attacks on europe.
Peace for the Jews lies in the destruction of europe.
The more boatloads of “immigrants” that IS send to europe the more they will be embroiled in civil strife and the less energy and funding they will have to stalk and murder the jews. The same principle has been demonstrated in the arab spring, the threats of hezbullah, hamas, and assad are diminished with their wars against each other.
the euro girly boys do not respect, and cannot even take care of, their own women… they are a pathetic laughing stock
Lt. eisnor had it right when he rifle butted the stinking dane in his jew stalking face.