Lynching Israel in Europe

By P. David Hornik, FrontPageMagazine

A few weeks ago when an Israeli army officer who had strayed into the town of Jenin was almost lynched by a Palestinian mob, it did nothing to dampen the popularity of the Palestinian cause.

Last week the European Parliament got into the lynching act itself by hosting in Brussels the UN’s “International Conference of Civil Society in Support of Israeli-Palestinian Peace.” With speaker after speaker calling for boycotting Israel, the event, said Shimon Samuel of the Simon Wiesenthal Centre in Paris, “was only about Israel as war criminal and devil.”

In the same week Europe lent its auspices, in Geneva, to the UN’s first preparatory meeting for the 2009 Durban “World Conference against Racism.” That event is planned as a follow-up to the first Durban conference in 2001, which U.S. congressman and Holocaust survivor Tom Lantos called “the most sickening and unabashed display of hate for Jews I had seen since the Nazi period.”

Last week’s Geneva meeting was relatively tame only because it was preparatory and not the anticipated “Durban II” itself. Conducted by a twenty-country committee that was chaired by Libya, included Iran, and elected Cuba as its vice-chair, the “tameness” was only that of sharks circling their prey before they strike.
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