By Evelyn Gordon, Contentions, COMMENTARY
In what is becoming a standard trope for Israeli leftists, Haaretz columnist Ari Shavit today decries the “savagery” of Israel’s “rising political forces,” who are “alien to the new West’s values.” To which my response is, “thank God”–because the “new West’s values” are antithetical to the very existence of a Jewish state. And if that sounds far-fetched, just consider European Commission President Manuel Barroso’s speech last week when he accepted the Nobel Peace Prize on the European Union’s behalf.
Quoting the commission’s first president, Walter Hallstein, Barroso declared that 20th-century history showed “The system of sovereign nation-states has failed,” because “through two world wars it has proved itself unable to preserve peace.” Therefore, Barroso said, “nations needed to think beyond the nation-state” and create “supranational institutions.” Later, he reiterated this point by quoting one of the EU’s founding fathers, Jean Monnet: “The sovereign nations of the past can no longer solve the problems of the present,” Monnet said, and even the EU itself “is only a stage on the way to the organized world of the future.”
Nor is Barroso alone. Norwegian Nobel Committee chairman Thorbjorn Jagland echoed this idea in his presentation speech. “After the two world wars in the last century, the world had to turn away from nationalism,” he declared. And though Europe is currently experiencing a crisis, “the solution now as then is not for the countries to act on their own at the expense of others.”
Barroso and Jagland obviously don’t speak for every European, but they do represent the dominant worldview of the European elite. And a worldview that believes “The system of sovereign nation-states has failed” clearly has no use for a country that defiantly proclaims itself a Jewish nation-state and insists on pursuing vital interests–like protecting its citizens from rocket fire–even “at the expense of” the Palestinians who are launching the rockets. Nor, incidentally, does this worldview have much use for an America that similarly insists on preserving its sovereignty and refuses to sacrifices its interests to the global collective’s whims. The Barroso-Jagland worldview thus goes a long way toward explaining European hostility to both Israel and America.
Nor does the growing popularity of European separatist movements contradict this worldview. Even in Scotland and Catalonia, where pro-independence parties recently won clear majorities, most voters’ support for “independence” is conditional on their new country receiving automatic EU membership. In other words, they want “independence” only on condition that they not actually have to exist for even a day as a fully independent country. The unavoidable conclusion is that even among ordinary Europeans, this worldview remains alive and well.
Hence for the foreseeable future, understanding it will remain vital for understanding Europe. To that end, I recommend two important essays published by Yoram Hazony in 2010. The first, drawing on Thomas Kuhn’s book The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, explains the paradigm shift that created this worldview and its implications for Israel. The second uses Immanuel Kant’s philosophy to explain why this view doesn’t contradict Europe’s ardent support for, say, a Palestinian nation-state (here’s the two-sentence, vastly dumbed-down version: European post-nationalists view the nation-state as a stage primitive peoples must go through en route to enlightened supra-nationalism, so for tribal Arab societies, becoming nation-states would be a step forward. But it’s unconscionable for Israel, having achieved this stage, to want to stay there instead of moving on to the next).
The bottom line, however, is clear: Israel’s survival as a Jewish state depends on its very willingness to reject “the new West’s values.” And European antipathy is the unavoidable price it will have to pay for that choice.
@ Ted Belman:
Zionists and the cold, long winter nights
@ terrence:
From the article which you apparently didn’t read:
@ Canadian Otter:
@ Laura:
Thoughts for the Season
“Men must endure / Their going hence, even as their coming hither;
Ripeness is all. Come on.” [King Lear 5.2.9-11]
“Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned. The best
Lack all conviction while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.” [Yeats, “The Second Coming”]
What about universalism the Jewish way! The only way!
Europeans believe they represent the elite!!! Is that true!!!Elite of what?
Will “HUMANITY” enslave “MAN” for the benefit of all? He will be deprived off his FREEDOM.
Europe elite can be the elite of Europe. Nothing else.
@ Laura:
This type of loopy thinking has been discredited by the recent American elections.Nevertheless paranoia of this nature is always prevalent among the nutcase fringe.
@ Michael Ejercito:
The loss of memory re time-tested values spelled out in the Torah causes the same type of risks as the ones indicated by Laura: loss of memory of the US Constitution enfeebles the US dangerously. The lucidity to recognize tyrannies and battle them, is dimming.
Before Sinai, God gave us the Sheva Mitzvot B’Nei Noach.
Conservatives in America have been warning about the creation of a global government to replace American sovereignty for a long time. They have been regarded as paranoid. Yet these European officials are now explicitly saying this is their aim, no longer hiding in the shadows. Hence the recent attacks on the constitutional rights of Americans freedom of speech, the right to bear arms etc. Recent crises are being exploited to that end. The American constitution conflicts with the elites goal of a one-world government.
@ Jerry:
Nationalism is alive and kicking, just see this year’s Olympics with 140+ countries. The swindle by very powerful families, organizations is to build a One World Order to amass more riches for themselves. For example, the world warming scare was initiated when a UN report was altered to contradict the scientits’ conclusions, little bearing on humans of the current climate change. The man at the UN that did this, now lives in China after leaving the UN problematically, and among other activities, is parftner producing Chinese Chery cars, pollutants.
@ Michael Ejercito:
I concur. The weakness of the current world is mainly because the values esposused in the Torah, universal values, not sectarian at all, have been forgotten and replaced by wrongheaded social utopias devised by very unwise men/women who think of themselves as prophets.
Supranationalism is just a stepping stone to chaos and the annihilation of humankind. Per Nassim Nicholas Taleb in “Antifragility”, without built-in redundancies complex systems like one-world government will ruin the world. One-world government ensures that with a single mistake billions of people will be effected. That companies like PanAm, TWA, Westinghouse, etc no longer exist speaks to the weakness of complex corporate entities whose only goal was to survive and prosper. When a company goes under, its employees are devastated, but there are other companies from whom to seek employment. When a one-world government fails – which it must without any rational doubt – where the hell are all the people in the world going to go to find work, security, and simple continued existence?
Don’t take it too personal.
Barrosso is just calling for One World Government,like he does every week,this is how he got to this position anyway.
The article mentiones “European Elite”.
I wonder what the writer sees as “European Elite”.
Haaretz journalist trying to make eggs out of an omelet,is just to show the moral bankrupcy of the “Left” in Israel.
There’s no Left and Right in Israel,just Wrong and Suicidal.
Israel will have to prepare itself for a confrontation with most of it’s opponents,and the US and Europe will do nothing ,besides giving lipservice.
US and Europe have dropped Israel,
The question is not why or why now?
The question is “why not much earlier”?
But that kind of stuff is being decided in the “European Elite”,and as long as you don’t figure out who this Elite is,you won’t understand why Israel is being dropped.
1) Europe is dyihg and increasingly powerless.
2)The future belongs to Asia, and that is to whom Israel must direct its future diplomacy.
Lieberman was a great FM because he recognized both of the above. I hope he clears his name and returns to the job.
What Israel needs to do is to return to the values of Sinai.
NOTICE how Europeans’ very laudable desire for peace has been used to achieve nefarious ends – just as in Israel!
– The elite used Peace through an European Union to rob individual countries of their sovereignty – handing over much decision making to the Brussels bureaucracy and opening borders for Muslims to settle anywhere they want.
– Israel’s Dismantling Process – AKA Peace Process – used Israelis’ need for peace and security to rob them of their land AND of peace and security.
I have long argued that we shouldn’t embrace the values of the West. Firstly, because they are not working and secondly, because we don’t exist in the West.
Though the Europeans reject nationalism, they don’t reject sectarianism which pits Islam against seculars, Christians or Jews. Out of the frying pan into the fire.