With her unbridled hostility towards Israel, the EU’s foreign policy chief Catherine Ashton provides us with an abject lesson in what happens when a government places its emotional aspirations above its national interests.
Since the establishment of the State of Israel, many of Israel’s elite have aspired to be embraced by Europe. In recent years, nearly every government has voiced the hope of one day seeing Israel join the EU.
To a significant degree, Israel’s decision to recognize the PLO in 1993 and negotiate with Yasser Arafat and his deputies was an attempt by Israel’s political class to win acceptance from the likes of Ashton and her continental comrades. For years the EU had criticized Israel for refusing to recognize the PLO.
Until 1993, Israel’s leaders defied Europe because they could tell the difference between a national interest and an emotional aspiration and preferred the former over the latter. And now, Israel’s reward for preferring European love to our national interest and embracing our sworn enemy is Catherine Ashton.
To put it mildly, Ashton is not a friend of Israel. Indeed, she is so ill-disposed against Israel that she seems unable to focus for long on anything other than bashing it. Her obsession was prominently displayed in March when she was unable to give an unqualified condemnation of the massacre of French Jewish children by a French Muslim. Ashton simply had to use her condemnation as yet another opportunity to bash Israel.
Her preoccupation with Israel was again on display on Tuesday. During a boilerplate, vacuous speech about President Bashar Assad’s slaughter of his fellow Syrians, apropos of nothing the baroness launched into an unhinged, impassioned, and deeply dishonest frontal assault against Israel.
The woman US President Barack Obama has empowered to lead the West’s negotiations with Iran regarding its illicit nuclear weapons program stood at the podium in the European Parliament and threw an anti-Israel temper tantrum.
The same woman who couldn’t be bothered to finish her speech about Assad’s massacre of children, the same woman who is so excited about her Iranian negotiating partners’ body language that she doesn’t think it is necessary to give them an ultimatum about ending their quest for a nuclear bomb, seemed to lack a sufficiently harsh vocabulary to express her revulsion with Jewish “settlers.”
As she put it, “We are also seriously concerned by recent and increasing incidents of settler violence which we all condemn.”
It’s not clear what “recent and increasing incidents of settler violence” she was referring to. But in all likelihood, she didn’t have a specific incident in mind. She probably just figured that those sneaky Jews are always up to no good.
ASIDE FROM condemning imaginary Israeli crimes more emphatically than real Syrian crimes, Ashton’s speech involved a presentation of the EU’s policy on Israel and the Palestinians.
That policy is based on three premises: The EU falsely claims that all Israeli communities beyond the 1949 armistice lines are illegal.
It rejects Israel’s legal right to assert its authority over Area C – the area of Judea and Samaria that is empty of Palestinian population centers.
And it will only soften its anti-Israel positions if the Palestinians do so first.
Aside from its jaw-dropping animosity towards Israel, what is notable about the EU’s position is that it is actually far more hostile to Israel than the Palestinians’ position towards Israel as that position was revealed in the agreements that the Palestinians signed with Israel in the past. In those agreements, the Palestinians accepted continued sole Israeli control over Area C. They did not require Israel to end the construction of Jewish communities outside the 1949 armistice lines. The peace process ended when the Palestinians moved closer to the EU’s position.
The EU’s antipathy towards Israel as personified in Ashton’s behavior teaches us two important lessons. First, it is often hard to tell our friends from our foes. Israelis – particularly those born to families that emigrated from Europe – have traditionally viewed Europe as the last word in enlightened democracy and sophistication and style. We wanted to be like them. We wanted to be accepted by them.
Indeed we were so swept away by the thought that they might one day love us back that we adopted policies that were inimical to our national interest and so weakened us tremendously.
It never occurred to us that the fact that Europe insisted that we adopt policies that undercut our national survival meant that the Europeans wished us ill.
They seemed so nice.
The second thing we learn from Ashton’s anti-Israel mania is that when we engage in foreign policy, we need to base our judgments about our ability to influence the behavior of our foreign counterparts on a sober-minded assessment of two separate things: our interlocutor’s ideology and his interests. In Ashton’s case, both parameters make clear that there is no way to win her over to Israel’s side. She is ideologically opposed to Israel. And the citizens of Europe are becoming more and more hostile to Israel and to Jews.
These twin parameters for judging foreign leaders and representatives came to mind on Wednesday with the publication of State Comptroller Micha Lindenstrauss’s critical report on the government’s handling of the Turkish-government supported, pro-Hamas flotilla in May 2010. Perhaps the most remarkable revelation in the report is that up until a week before the flotilla set sail, led by the infamous Mavi Marmara, Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu was under the impression that he had reached a deal with Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan. Netanyahu believed that through third parties, including the US government and then-Egyptian president Hosni Mubarak, he had convinced Erdogan to cancel the flotilla. He had a deal.
The fact that Netanyahu thought he had a deal with Erdogan is startling and unnerving. It means that Netanyahu was willing to ignore the basic facts of Erdogan’s nature and the way that Erdogan perceives his interests, in favor of a fiction.
By May 2010 it was abundantly clear that Erdogan was not a friend of Israel. He had been in power for eight years. He had already ended Turkey’s strategic alliance with Israel. In 2006, Erdogan was the first major international leader and NATO member to host Hamas terror chief Ismail Haniyeh. His embrace of Hamas and the Muslim Brotherhood made clear that he was Israel’s enemy. It is a simple fact that you cannot be allied with Israel and with the Muslim Brotherhood at the same time. The same year he allowed Iran to use Turkish territory to transfer weaponry to Hezbollah during the Second Lebanon War.
In 2008, Erdogan openly sided with Hamas against Israel in Operation Cast Lead. In 2009, he called President Shimon Peres a murderer to his face.
By the time the flotilla was organized, Erdogan had used Turkey’s position as a NATO member to effectively end the US-led alliance’s cooperative relationship with Israel, by refusing to participate in military exercises with Israel.
THE NATURE OF the flotilla organizers was also known in the months ahead of its departure for Gaza. The IHH’s ties to al-Qaida had been documented. Netanyahu’s staff knew that the IHH was so extreme that the previous Turkish government had barred its operatives from participating in humanitarian relief efforts after the devastating 1999 earthquake. They feared the group would use its relief efforts to radicalize the local population.
In and of itself, the fact that Erdogan was openly supporting IHH’s leading role in the flotilla told Israel everything it needed to know about the Turkish leader’s intentions. And yet, up until a week before the flotilla set sail, Netanyahu was operating under the impression that he had struck a deal with Erdogan.
It is likely that Netanyahu was led to believe that a deal had been crafted by the Americans.
Obama is not the only American leader that has been seduced into believing that Erdogan and his Islamist AKP Party are trustworthy strategic partners for the US. Many key members of Congress share this delusional view.
According to a senior congressional source, Turkey’s success in winning over the US Congress is the result of a massive Turkish lobbying effort. Through two or three front groups, the Turkish government has become one of the most active lobbying bodies in Washington. It brings US lawmakers and their aides on luxury trips to Turkey and hosts glittering, glamorous receptions and parties in Washington on a regular basis. And these efforts have paid off.
Turkey’s bellicosity towards Israel as well as Greece and Cyprus has caused it no harm in Washington. Its request to purchase a hundred F-35 Joint Strike Fighters faced little serious opposition. The US continues to bow to its demands to disinvite Israel from international forum after international forum – most recently the upcoming US-hosted counter-terrorism summit in Istanbul.
Certainly Turkey’s strategic transformation under Erdogan’s leadership from a pro-Western democracy into an anti-Western Islamist police state has dire implications for American national interests. And the Americans would be well-served to look beyond the silken invitations to Turkish formal events at five-star hotels and see what is actually happening in the sole Muslim NATO member-state. But whether the US comes to its senses or not is its business.
Israel had no business buying into the fiction in 2010 that Erdogan could be reasoned with.
True, today no one in Israel operates under that delusion anymore. But the basic phenomenon of our leaders failing to distinguish between what they want to happen and what can happen continues to exist.
Ours is a dangerous world and an even more dangerous neighborhood. Everywhere we look we see cauldrons of radicalism and sophisticated weaponry waiting to explode. The threat environment Israel faces today is unprecedented.
At this time we cannot afford to be seduced by our dreams that things were different than they are. They are what they are.
We do have options in this contest. To maximize those options we need to ground our actions and assessments in clear-headed analyses and judgments of the people we are faced with. Their actions will be determined by their beliefs and their perception of their interests – not by our pretty face.
@ yamit82:
By all means, Yamit! The Basque people should be as deserving.
Whether it is the Kurds (to bug Turkey) of the Basques (to irritate the EU) of the Chechens (to annoy Russia), aall means are good to bring up the silly UNGA Resolution 3236 to light.
@ Salomon Benzimra:
Try this: “Euskadi!”
By Michelle Nevada
Euskadi is the name of the Basque homeland.
“The Basque homeland is currently split in two and ruled by France and Spain. Most Basque people live in what is known as a “semi-autonomous region” of the Pyrennes mountains, where they struggle to keep their culture, language, and religious observances intact. This is an amazingly old culture: their language is unrelated to any other language on the planet, their culture is unrelated to any other culture, and scientists, through DNA analysis and archeological evidence, have determined that the Basque people have lived in the same area at least since the Stone-Age. The Basque people have been fighting for their own homeland for a long time, but France and Spain refuse to give up the land.”
The Basque are a determined people, and, clearly, the Basque people have a much more commanding argument for an independent nation than the so-called “Palestinian people” do. Yet, France and Spain will not give them independence.
Why is that?
How can representatives of the European Union keep a straight face when they stand before the United Nations and argue for the autonomy of the so-called “Palestinian people”, while denying autonomy to the much more deserving Basque nation in their own back yards? How can they stand the shame? What can they say in their own defense?
there is a big difference between the arguments of France and Spain against allowing a homeland for the Basque, and Israel’s arguments against allowing a “homeland” for the “Palestinians”: the Basque people really do have a history, a language, and a culture that is significantly different from all other nations in Europe. The “Palestinians” have no such differentiation from other peoples in the Middle East. The so-called “Palestinian people” have no specific cultural, religious, or linguistic differentiation from other Arabic people in Jordan, Syria, Egypt and Lebanon; they have a made-up name taken from the Roman conquerors; and they have only existed, at most, for the last 40 or 50 years.
So, I say: “France and Spain, you go first! When you give Euskadi to the well-deserving Basque people, then, maybe, Israel will begin to listen to your drivel!”
Until then, let’s provide an adequate response for Israel.
Read whole article
@ BlandOatmeal:
The Rumors in the blogsphere all say America has no Gold and that even poison gas is now being stored at Ft Knox. America has not disclosed her Gold holdings since Nixon.
A modest proposal for Israel to take proactive action against Turkey:
A few weeks ago the Turkish Government condemned four former Israeli military commanders to some 10,000 life sentences each (!) for the killing of nine terrorists on board the Mavi Marmara. This shows a despicable disrespect for Israel and also for the several Conventions dealing with terrorism, let alone the conclusions of the UN Palmer Commission.
If Israel considers the present Turkish government irredeemably hostile, one thing it can do is to raise the Kurdish issue (as Jerry Gordon recently wrote in Israpundit, in a different context) and demand that the UN extend to the Kurds (a REAL people) the same rights that the UN bestowed to the Palestinians (a FICTITIOUS people) in the 1970s through UNGA Resolution 3236: inalienable rights; self-determination; struggle against their Turkish colonizers “by all available means”; sovereignty and independence in Kurdistan; fighting the “racist” Turkish oppression, etc.
And why not creating another “Committee on the Exercise of the Inalienable Rights of the KURDISH People” (CEIRKP), mimicking the infamous CEIRPP.
Of course, that won’t happen. But it will bring the shameful edifice that culminated in Resolution 3236 to light and that, in itself, will be a positive move to demolish a hoax, even if we can’t restore the legitimate rights of the Kurds, which were specifically mentioned in the Treaty of Sèvres (1920), and which, unfortunately, disappeared in the ratified Treaty of Lausanne (1924).
@ yamit82:
Nobody ever rules the world for long with mere paper money or precious metals such as gold or silver. The well-organized, frugal, industrially productive and culturally well-organized societies tend to rise in terms of power relationships. Other societies that lack or or have lost those qualities fall behind.
Germany, Japan and China are excellent examples the kinds of winning societies according to the standards I have outlined above.
In the case of Germany and Japan, they learned through the most thorough and smashing national defeats that have taken place in many centuries, that good business practices build empires much better than militarism and totalitarianism. Hitler dreamed of fulfillment of bloodlust, and could hardly wait for the guns to begin firing. The Japanese military leadership dreamed the dreams of bushido warriors in an age of 50,000 ton aircraft carriers, electronic signals intelligence, and ultimately, nuclear city-destroying bombs.
I would not write off China. They are just about the smartest businessmen on the planet.
Arnold Harris
Mount Horeb WI
Oatmeal – I am from Canada but so what? Our currency is also worthless.
Maybe maybe we have 3.4 tons of gold. But I do not believe that.
Aging society, interest on our federal debt is 1,000 dollars a second and the debt is growing; relative to yours it is much less but bankrupt is bankrupt and having a worthless currency means that we are toast.
Bland Oatmeal – I do not believe that the USA “freely owns” 1 ounce of gold.
Assuming that Fort Knox is not empty ( it could be that the only precious metals on site are in the ultra high tech surveillance systems), the gold that is there – no “audit” of the gold since 1953 – is being held in collateral for the “swaps” from the gold from other countries, lent to the USA.
What is a “swap”? Borrowing a country’s gold for the purposes of lending or other purposes, while holding its own gold as collateral. This is not official and maybe even not correct. But the CFTC refuses to define and their investigation into silver manipulation is in its 4th year!!.
USA most likely borrowed gold from ( Germany, France, UK,,,,), tacitly sold it to most likely Chinese, Arab, Russian and Indian parties to finance never ending wars and your great military machine that will be in Afghanistan and Iraq for years, pensions, welfare and your bloated government, salaries, printing, Library of Congress, pensions, infrastructure repairs, secret service parties in Colombia, Brazil and Guatemala, pensions,golden handshakes, pensions,,
For the US to sell its own gold, it can only do so by an act of Congress. Even if I am wrong, why awake the people? They have more important things on their minds: Kim Kardashian, Lohan, “winning”, Tebow, Dancing with the Stars,, 1 direction,, much easier and expeditious.
CONCLUSION (maybe)NO freely held GOLD. The gold that is there, 8,000 tons, is held as collateral – USA is most likely paying rent on gold it already sold LOL!!!!.
We do not know. US government refuses to discuss. Worthless US media refuses to question. Even right wing radio refuses to discuss. Germans are pissed.
DO you really believe that Fort Knox, Fed Reserve, are holding 8,000 tons of gold? Then you are an excellent citizen.
@ yamit82:
Rank Owner……………………………………….. Tonnes Share of Foreign Reserves
6 SPDR Gold Shares ETF………….. 1,120.6 n/a
3 International Monetary Fund….. 3,217.3 n/a
1 United States…………………………… 8,133.5 78.3%
5 France……………………………………… 2,450.7 72.6%
2 Germany………………………………….. 3,412.6 69.5%
4 Italy…………………………………………… 2,451.8 66.5%
10 Netherlands…………………………….. 612.5 61.4%
8 Switzerland …………………………….. 1040.1 37.1%
9 Japan……………………………………….. 765.2 2.1%
7 China……………………………………….. 1054.0 1.8%
— http://www.wealthdaily.com/articles/who-owns-worlds-gold/2491
It looks as though the US is in better shape, goldwise, than any other country
@ James B – Montreal:
The coming GLOBAL FINANCIAL COLLAPSE will wipe out all national currencies including the Euro. Only Gold Silver and commodities will have any value. Whoever controls the most Gold and Silver will rule the world. Germany and their surrogate the IMF have been over the years, first creating the EU and the Euro and allowing any and all European countries membership, knowing full well that virtually none of them would remain viable economic entities. They insured that they would be the main holders of European debt and part of the trade-off when each country in turn faces defaulting on their debt, Germany then demands among other assets all those countries stockpiles of gold and Silver.
Germany is in the process of actualizing Hitlers Dream, German hegemony over an impoverished Europe owing their existence to Germany without having to fire a shot. Germany will own Europe and Challenge America and China for Global supremacy.
Caroline Glick has it right about Israel’s dreamy foreign policies regarding Europe and the European Union. Instead of bothering with that “gesindel” (a German word that describes a bunch of feckless riffraff), Israel should pursue mutual defense alliances with the Kurdish and Azerbaijani nations. My comment below was posted earlier this morning on Israpundit:
Arnold Harris
Mount Horeb WI
Europe, except Germany, is becoming more and more irrelevant when it comes to their financial value of total exports and imports worldwide.
Europe has little gold, silver, rare earth metals to concern us. What keeps them alive is North Sea oil and GAZPROM.
Without soccer, beer and Jew hatred, they would commit suicide.
Ignore them. Nothing good will ever come from Europe.
When can we expect the walt and mearsheimer book about the Turkish lobby?
The bottom line is that Israel needs to become far too powerful to be messed with and its sovereignty disrespected. No one tells China to get out of Tibet, which is a real occupation and in which the Chinese are moving settlements in and replacing the native Tibetans. This in contrast to the false accusation of Israel being an occupying power and Jews living in Judea, Samaria and eastern Jerusalem as “illegal settlements”. No one tells France and Spain to give the Basques their own state. And no one is demanding Iran, Syria, Turkey and Iraq to stop occupying Kurdish territory and allow them statehood.