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Europeâs Arab gambit:

EFL
The poll conducted recently by the EU which found that Europeans consider Israel to be the single greatest threat to world peace shocked many and caused the EUâs political leadership to cringe with embarrassment. And yet, according to Geneva-based historian Bat Yeor, the results are the culmination of a European policy now three decades old. "After the [1962] French withdrawal from Algeria, [French President Charles] De Gaulle, who up to that point favored Israel, completely changed Franceâs policy toward the Arab and Muslim world. There was a convergence between Franceâs embrace of the Arabs and its attempt to weaken the Atlantic alliance with America. The Arabs were to give France strategic independence from the US. Franceâs attempt, first through the European Economic Community and now through the European Union to create a unified European foreign policy, in competition with the US and led by France, sees European alliance with the Arab world as one of the primary sources of this strategic independence."

While, in Yeorâs view, "De Gaulleâs strategy was in the abstract," the European embrace of the Islamic and Arab at the expense of Israel and the US became a concrete policy in the wake of the 1973 Yom Kippur War and the subsequent OPEC oil embargo of the West. In November 1973, French president George Pompidou and German chancellor Willy Brandt met in Paris and proclaimed a joint resolution aligning EC policy with the Arab demands against Israel. This, according to Yeor was the first official European declaration of a unified foreign policy. "After this proclamation, the Arab League opened a formal dialogue with the EC. It was not a simple exchange between elites from the two sides. It established three bodies that would regulate European-Arab relations regarding the US, Israel and Arab immigration to Europe."

The Arab League's been going downhill ever since. I wonder if they've noticed that?

THE AIM of these joint policies was to force an Israeli withdrawal to the 1949 armistice lines, to enable free immigration of Arabs to European countries and to apply consistent pressure on the US to end its support for Israel, she says. The main organ of this new framework was the European-Arab Dialogue, or EAD. The EAD encompassed political, parliamentary and cultural dialogues and also oversaw the European agreement to allow unimpeded immigration of millions of Arabs to Europe. According to Yeor, "the volume of this population flow was unprecedented in the history of European colonialization. And also unprecedented was the European decision to allow and encourage the new immigrants to maintain their ties to their countries of origin and thus prevent their integration into European society."

Has "unprecedented" become a synonym for "stoopid"?

In a continuous flow of joint resolutions, Arab and European officials called for the diffusion of Arabic and Islamic culture in Europe through European universities. A pinnacle of these efforts, Yeor argues came during French President Jacques Chiracâs 1996 visit to Cairo. "During that visit Chirac proclaimed that Europe and Muslims should write history together."

As to Arab cultural autonomy in Europe, the resolution of the 1975 conference of the Parliamentary Association for Euro-Arab Cooperation anchored this effort by calling for the European governments to facilitate "the creation of generous means to enable immigrant workers and their families to participate in Arab cultural and religious life." The results of these policies on Europe have, according to Yeor, been nothing short of disastrous. "What the Europeans did not realize at the time was that their embrace of the Arab and Muslim world did not simply involve their abandonment of Israel. What they were actually destroying was themselves. Europe is a continent built on the roots of Judeo-Christian traditions and history and values. By allowing unlimited Arab immigration and the Islamization of their universities, they were destroying their own culture. The new culture that has taken form in Europe is one of subservience to Islam. The new religion, in the post-Christian Europe is âPalestinianismâ whose core belief is the need to destroy Israel and replace it with a Palestinian state. Palestinianism replaces a Jewish Jesus with a Muslim Jesus."

Or perhaps simply pure hatred...

FOR ISRAEL, the European decision to merge its foreign policy with the Arab world has led to diplomatic isolation and demonization, according to Yeâor. It was in the wake of the Yom Kippur War and the increased European cooperation with the Arab League that European countries began voting against Israel in the UN and seeking to isolate it in international bodies. The 1975 UN General Assembly Resolution that equated Zionism with racism was a capstone of these efforts. "Since the intifada broke out in 2000, the rejection of Israel and the embrace of Palestinians has taken on cult-like attributes," Yeor notes. "Every manifestation of public and political life must take up the Palestinian cause. In a very real way, the embrace of the Palestinians provides a mask for the expression of traditional European anti-Semitism."

Europeâs embrace of the Arab political agenda for Israel lies, according to Yeor, at the root of European unwillingness to cooperate with the US on the war on terror. "Until September 11, Chirac and Villepin always said that the root cause of terrorism is the Israel-Arab conflict. This is of course the Arab-Islamic view. Like the Nazi vision of the centrality of Jews as the root of all evil, it is a vision long developed and adopted by Europeans. When George Bush said, after September 11 that âyouâre either with us or with the terrorists,â he didnât understand what was going on in Europe. The truth is that for 30 years the Europeans were with the terrorists. They canât fight the Arabs; they have allowed the Arabs to dictate their policy since 1974. It is a huge problem. Part of the reason is also that they are terrified of terrorism. Their decision was to be subservient, not to fight and that has been their policy for 30 years. By attacking Israel, they believe they are saving themselves, but really, they are destroying themselves... Increasingly, the European-Arabian alliance has led to the increase in European anti-Americanism. For the Arabs, President Bushâs quotations from the Bible and allusion to the Judeo-Christian roots of America is anathema."
Posted by: tipper 2004-01-09

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