LETTER FROM EUROPE: More Hated Than America
Gedmin, Jeffrey
LE TER FROM EUROPE JEFFREY GEC HN More Hated Than America 1 VEN THE AMERICANS" are doing something, exclaimed the Berlin daily Tagesspiegel, when it became known that relief workers from the...
...A photograph showed two small (unmistakably Palestinian) children, cowering in a corner, looking up at some menacing presence just "off camera"—no doubt an Israeli storm trooper, dressed in full battle gear and ready to kill again...
...The Israelis offered to help in Barn, too...
...When other EU countries a couple years ago wanted to endorse a resolution at the UN Human Rights Commission supporting the Palestinians' rights to fight for their state "with any means necessary"—code words for blowing up teenagers and pregnant women in malls and pizzerias—Germany refused to go along...
...You'll be treated to endless stories about Palestinian hardship ("the experience of Palestinians who pass through the roadblocks and Israelis who guard them...
...Remember at the UN Racism conference in Durbin a few years ago, building Israeli apartments in disputed territories was deemed akin to slavery and genocide...
...Americans admire tenacity, democracy and a free society," wrote Sullivan...
...Foreign Minister Joschka Fischer is considered in Israel, by Labor and Likud, a reliable partner of the Jewish state and rightfully so...
...There on page one above the fold was a large color photograph of a grandfatherly Palestinian farmer, tears streaking down his face...
...So what exactly do our European friends admire...
...The mullahs said forget it...
...It's always useful to be in solidarity with "movements of national liberation" when these movements are far from home...
...It's hard to see how Germany, endless denials to the contrary, breaks from the broader European mold...
...Palestinian leadership was on the wrong side of two world wars, the Cold War, and the first Gulf War...
...No matter how long you live in Europe, though, it is hard to fathom ever getting "Europeanized" on certain things...
...That may be nothing new, but it's still troubling that it never seems to fade...
...The only thing that surprises European elites more than Americans doing the right thing is Israel doing the same...
...Said a key diplomatic adviser to French President Jacques Chirac at the time: "If we find that Hamas and Islamic Jihad are indeed terror groups opposed to peace, we may have to change the EU's stand...
...I guess that's clear enough...
...The BBC's coverage of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict has been so notoriously bad that in November of last year BBC executives felt compelled to address complaints by appointing a special "senior editorial adviser" to monitor the service's Middle East reporting...
...Not that anyone seemed to notice...
...were headed to Iran to help 411 after the December earthquake that killed more than 30,000 in the southern city of Bam...
...It's the enemy of my enemy is my friend sort of thing...
...LE TER FROM EUROPE JEFFREY GEC HN More Hated Than America 1 VEN THE AMERICANS" are doing something, exclaimed the Berlin daily Tagesspiegel, when it became known that relief workers from the U.S...
...To be fair, Israel has friends in Germany...
...As in, saving for your own retirement or worrying about being fired if you're not up to the job...
...Patten has been watching too much BBC...
...And EU leaders still find excuses for ruthless and corrupt Palestinian leaders...
...Today it stands squarely against us in the war on terror...
...I remember a few months ago mentioning to a prominent German professor that a difference between America and Europe on the Middle East was that Americans tend to be pro-Israeli, while Europeans tend to be proPalestinian...
...Psychoanalysts might posit that for some Germans, demonizing Israel is a handy way to ease the burden of their own guilt...
...Last spring BBC 2 aired a documentary comparing Israel's nuclear program with Iraq's interest in weapons of mass destruction...
...And for their own failed policies to boot...
...Good luck...
...The hall erupted, however, when in the same section of his speech Gerhardt denounced Israel for its settlement policy...
...I remember picking up a copy of the prestigious daily, the Sueddeustche Zeitung, not so long ago, just after Palestinian suicide-bombers had struck again...
...For EU types maybe this is all part of rivalry with the U.S and good old-fashioned antiAmericanism...
...Then, just before Christmas a majority of Europeans was telling pollsters that they see Israel as the greatest threat to world peace (the U.S...
...Jeffrey Gedmin is director of the Aspen Institute Berlin...
...At a party Congress of the Free Democratic Party last year, foreign policy spokesman Wolfgang Gerhardt got perfunctory applause when he condemned suicide bombings...
...Chris Patten, one of the 44 THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR FEBRUARY 2004 JEFFRL1 GEDMIN EU's two top foreign policy gurus, adamantly denies to this day any link between EU funding of the Palestinian Authority and Palestinian terror...
...But most ordinary Germans would find it nearly impossible to escape the steady stream of distortion and slander that shapes things here...
...I saw a poster in a Berlin subway recently advertising the work of a humanitarian relief group in the Middle East...
...One German columnist, fearful of economic reform, was recently hyperventilating about "radikaler Selbstverantwortung"— radical self-reliance...
...Maybe Mr...
...You'll seldom encounter coverage of how Palestinian killers regularly and systematically use civilians as cover for their murderous activities...
...You'll seldom encounter coverage of how Palestinian killers regularly and systematically use civilians as cover for their murderous activities...
...Andrew Sullivan argued a couple of years ago in the Sunday Times of London that the root of Americans' sympathy for Israel is largely a cultural one...
...At one point during the most recent intifada, Palestinian violence was so bad that Italy's national airline, Alitalia, decided it would be safer if its flight crews stayed overnight in Larnaca, rather than in Israel...
...Last summer France opposed placing Hamas and Islamic Jihad on the EU's list of terror organizations...
...Was I questioning the pro-Israeli credentials of the European Union, and Germany above all...
...See what I mean...
...Mark Twain once remarked that short visits to Europe are preferable to longer stays, as they "preserve us from becoming Europeanized...
...Another persistent mystery for us Americans abroad is Europe's unrelenting anti-Israel bias, accompanied by denial that any bias exists...
...British columnist Polly Toynbee writes, for example, that "ugly Israel is the Middle East representative of ugly America...
...This is in piece with the popular "Israel-asrogue-state" theme that plays well nearly everywhere...
...It seems that Israeli bulldozers razed the fellow's grapefruit field (never mind that Israeli defense forces had found that terrorists were using his property to slink through on their way to fresh attacks...
...I was being polite and understated, I thought, but the goo(' professor was ready to throttle me...
...However, we mustn't limit ourselves to one, clear-cut, position...
...In reference to Iraq, Gerald Kaufmann, writing in the London Spectator last fall, asked, "If the United States is keen to invade countries that disrupt international standards or order, should not Israel, for example, be considered as a candidate...
...Imagine Noam Chomsky as the mainstream and you get a sense of what much of what Europe's Middle East debate is like...
...being a close second...
...Yasser Arafat's top aides have openly called for increased resistance by the "freedom fighters" struggling against American occupation in Iraq...
...This was about the same time that Israel's response to Palestinian violence was considered so inappropriate that a Norwegian grocery chain announced a boycott of Israeli products...
...FEBRUARY 2004 THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR 45...
...Follow the BBC's coverage and you'll know the terrorists are really "militants...
...One of those things is Europe's never-ending love affair with the Nanny State and a cozy Hobbit-like existence...
Vol. 37 • February 2004 • No. 1
