Mrs. Euro's Mideast Adventure

BERLINSKI, CLAIRE

Mrs. Euro's Mideast Adventure The "face of Europe" is awfully unattractive. BY CLAIRE BERLINSKI WIM DUISENBERG, the president of the European Central Bank, is the most powerful man in Europe, at...

...If this is acceptable behavior in a president of the European Central Bank, then the new Europe is appallingly similar to the old...
...they are holding hands...
...For good measure she added that the Palestinians suffer more under Israeli rule than blacks under Apartheid...
...Oddly, he is not...
...It is much higher and goes over land that was taken from the Palestinians...
...These days, Wim Duisen-berg's number would be as good as any...
...And it is dismaying that Mrs...
...It is terrible...
...She placed responsibility for the attack firmly on Ariel Sharon: He has to "stop all that violence...
...De Telegraaf reports that "Gretta was a confidante of Philip Agee...
...In a letter to the Dutch foreign minister, the face of Europe wrote, "As my position requires, I have stayed out of my wife's affairs...
...Six million," she replied, chuckling heartily at her own joke...
...As for her husband—surely he is cringing in embarrassment, scrambling to distance himself at any cost from this millstone around his neck...
...In January, she toured the West Bank and Gaza, beginning her trip on the very day 23 people were killed in simultaneous suicide bombings in Tel Aviv...
...Duisenberg refused...
...Wim Duisenberg's wife, Gretta, is a woman of profound conviction, especially where israel and the Jews are concerned...
...Speaking in Jenin, she remarked that "this wall that Israel is building, is many times worse than the Berlin wall...
...Which is perhaps to be expected, as her politics were no less loathsome when he married her in 1987 than they are today...
...Euro hung a PLO flag from the balcony of her house in Amsterdam...
...But I can tell you I support her 100 percent...
...BY CLAIRE BERLINSKI WIM DUISENBERG, the president of the European Central Bank, is the most powerful man in Europe, at least among men without troops...
...She had "understanding" for the action, she told Dutch television...
...Subsequently, she denied the comment's obvious implication: The number six million, she said, just popped unbidden into her head...
...Indeed, "with the exception of the Holocaust," she told a Dutch paper, the Israeli occupation "is worse than the Nazi occupation of the Netherlands...
...Before Agee was deported from the Netherlands, he "asked Gretta to be a witness at his wedding...
...A pillar of the European establishment, he is the public face of the euro and, by virtue of this role, the public face of Europe...
...the Palestinian leader is "absolutely against" suicide bombings: "He even told me that yesterday he prevented two attempts...
...20 percent of the world's goods and services are produced in the currency zone over which he presides...
...Euro harangued her with a lecture: Israel victimizes the Palestinians because it receives support from "rich American Jews...
...You must hold me responsible for the flag and not Wim," she told journalists...
...Henry Kissinger once asked, "If I want to speak to Europe, what number do I call...
...She has dismissed criticism of this abuse of her status as "ludicrous," an attempt to deflect attention from the real issue, Israeli cruelty that "knows no bounds...
...Wim may be the most powerful man in Europe, but it seems he is not the master of his own house...
...In Ramallah, she met Yasser Arafat...
...the European Central Bank is independent and non-political...
...The neighbor reports that Mrs...
...Duisen-berg how many signatures she hoped to collect on a petition of support for the group...
...Duisenberg—"Her Excellency," as Arafat obligingly refers to her—used the Dutch diplomatic passport granted to her thanks to her husband's position, provoking a rebuke from the Dutch Ministry of Foreign Affairs, since diplomatic passports issued to civil servants and their spouses are to be used only on official business...
...A Dutch radio interviewer asked Mrs...
...Duisenberg founded "Stop the Occupation," an organization that calls for the imposition of economic sanctions on Israel...
...A kind of discourse that has been rightfully taboo in Europe since the Second World War is apparently now accepted as a commonplace...
...The Duisenbergs' neighbor, a Jewish physician and member of the city council, asked her to remove the banner...
...In June, Mrs...
...Some of them were then liquidated...
...strators in Amsterdam took to the streets in support of the Palestinians...
...This ex-CIA agent became public enemy number one after he'd betrayed the identity of American secret agents in the Soviet Bloc...
...American presidents, under the thrall of a powerful Jewish lobby, "have to do whatever the Jews want...
...This elicited concern...
...It is therefore of more than passing concern that the most powerful man in Europe not only failed to repudiate his wife's behavior but stood behind her...
...Duisenberg's remarks have scarcely been reported in the press, in Europe or the United States...
...He is responsible for the success or failure of Europe's monetary union, a project that is at once the essence and the emblem of Europe's renunciation of fratricide and its reinvention as a continent united in peaceful cooperation...
...After marching in the demonstration, Mrs...
...They appear to be rapturously in love...
...Wim Duisenberg may want to shrug his shoulders and intimate with a wink that women will be women...
...Duisenberg announced to the attendant press corps that Arafat "hates killing...
...On April 13, 2001, demonClaire Berlinski's novel Loose Lips will be published by Random House in June...
...To enter the territories, Mrs...
...At that time, as the Dutch paper De Telegraaf reported last June, her social circle centered around a left-wing think tank in Amsterdam peopled by activists of various bloodthirsty Marxist liberation fronts, Trotskyites, apologists for Castro, and suspected terrorists such as Eqbal Ahmad...
...Carrying signs equating Ariel sharon with Hitler, members of the mob— clad as Hamas militants—brandished swastikas, burned Israeli flags, beat a Jewish bystander, and howled for the return of the gas chambers...
...His nickname, in fact, is Mr...
...Photographs depict them staring dreamily into each other's eyes...
...His decisions affect the economic future of 300 million Europeans...

Vol. 8 • February 2003 • No. 20


 
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