I attach an article by Bret Stephens an editorial writer for the Wall Street Journal Europe.
-- Tom Gross
MORE THAN HALF A CENTURY AFTER THE HOLOCAUST...
Why Europe Hates Israel
By Bret Stephens
The Wall Street Journal Europe
November 29, 2001
Yesterday, a Belgian court heard arguments from lawyers representing 23 Palestinians, survivors of the 1982 Sabra and Chatilla massacres near Beirut, that Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon should be prosecuted in Belgium for crimes against humanity. Though Mr. Sharon almost certainly will never sit in a Belgian jail, the trial could hardly be freighted with more significance.
More than a half-century after the Holocaust, a Europe awakened to the importance of human rights is looking to sanction the leader of the world's only Jewish state for a crime that was actually committed by a Christian Lebanese militiaman, later employed by the Syrian regime of Hafez Assad. And yet blame for the massacres seems to be apportioned to Mr. Sharon alone. Why?
Sensational Indictment
The short answer is the Belgian legal system, whose well-meaning laws lend themselves to this sort of opportunistic and sensational indictment. A slightly longer answer is that many Europeans are sincerely convinced that Mr. Sharon really is a war criminal, as a BBC documentary attempted to show last summer.
But the real answer is that European governments today are, by and large, tacit enemies of the state of Israel, much as they might protest that they merely take a more "evenhanded" approach to the Arab-Israeli conflict.
Consider a few recent examples. In April, France voted to censure Israel at the U.N. Human Rights Commission in Geneva – while abstaining from a vote of censure against China. During his diplomatic foray to Tehran in September, British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw offered that "one of the factors which helps breed terrorism is the anger which many people in this region feel at events over the years in Palestine."
The European Union has so far refused to follow America's lead by freezing the assets of terrorist groups such as Hezbollah and Hamas, with the European Commission's external relations spokesman, Gunnar Wiegand, arguing that "Hezbollah could play a major role in regional stability."
That Europe today should be hostile to Israel may seem a bit of a mystery, not least given the usual sympathy of aims between democratic states. The explanation comes in several parts. First, as historian Howard Sacher points out, Europe's left sees in Israel's political evolution a betrayal of its utopian ideals. It's easy to forget that in the years following the establishment of Israel, many Europeans looked to it as a model socialist country. They admired its largely state-run economy and especially its collectivist kibbutzim. Hundreds of young European leftists, most of them non-Jews, flocked to these farms in the 1960s, looking for the kind of workers' paradise they could not find on the other side of the Berlin Wall.
This fondness, however, evaporated after the 1967 war, when Israel went from being the Middle East's underdog to its Goliath, holding a colonial-like mandate over the lands that came into its possession. Partly under the sway of Soviet propaganda, partly in keeping with the fashion of radical chic, European leftists abruptly transferred their allegiances to the Palestinians and the PLO, which in the 1970s drew the likes of current German Foreign Minister Joschka Fischer to their meetings. Meanwhile, successive Israeli governments veered to the right. "The era when Yitzhak Rabin or Golda Meir could address their European counterparts as 'comrades' at gatherings of the Socialist International had passed," says Mr. Sacher.
There was also a shift of attitudes on the European right. With the exception of Britain, whose notoriously Arabist Foreign Office has dominated its Mideast policy under both Conservative and Labour governments, much of the Continental right had at one time looked on admiringly at "plucky little Israel." Thus, beginning in 1952, the conservative German government of Konrad Adenauer provided Israel with critical financial support in the form of Holocaust reparations, while Charles de Gaulle's France helped to build its nuclear reactor at Dimona.
But it was also de Gaulle who, in 1967, slapped an arms embargo on Israel for firing the first shot in the Six Day War. Thereafter, the hostility increased, partly because France fancied itself a champion of its former Arab colonies, partly out of simple anti-Americanism. But the chief reason, of course, was Europe's dependence on Arab oil. As French President Georges Pompidou put it to Henry Kissinger during the 1973 OPEC oil embargo, "You only rely on the Arabs for about a tenth of your consumption. We are entirely dependent on them."
Since then, Europe's reliance on Mideastern oil has abated, but the habit of reflexively seeking to appease the Arabs at Israel's expense has not. In 1974, French Foreign Minister Michel Jobert toured the Middle East, seeking to earn price concessions on oil for France by mouthing a hard anti-Israel line. In 1980, the European Community formally recognized the PLO despite the fact that Yasser Arafat had neither made peace with Israel nor dropped his overt sponsorship of terrorism. Currently, the EU supplies the Palestinian Authority with the bulk of its foreign aid, even as much of that money goes indirectly to funding textbooks describing Jews as monkeys and vermin.
Given all this, many Jews have been led to conclude that what's at work here is a thinly veiled form of anti-Semitism. But while there might be some truth to this, it's easily exaggerated. Mr. Straw, of German-Jewish descent, is clearly no anti-Semite, and the one bright spot of Jacques Chirac's presidency has been his efforts to acknowledge the sins of France's suppressed Vichy past.
Underlying Guilt
Underlying European policy is an uneasy sense of guilt. In the immediate postwar period, Europe's guilty conscience worked in Israel's favor. But in the postcolonial spirit of the '60s, the balance of guilt switched to the Arab side: It was they who were being oppressed; and it was Europe that, with its previous support for Israel, had helped inflict the oppression. So Europe pressures Israel to withdraw from the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, heedless of the dire security consequences that such withdrawal would entail. That Israel has so far refused to accede to this pressure stands as an infuriating rebuke to modern Europe's fundamental conception of itself as the virtuous defeated, free to pass judgment while absolved of the moral responsibilities of wielding actual power.
Whatever the case, a foreign policy based on a combination of left-wing disillusionment, French opportunism and all-around cravenness cannot yield good results. With the U.S. State Department increasingly leaning toward the European line on Israel, it's well that the basis of that policy be properly understood.
JEWISH LEADERS PROTEST "UNBEARABLE" BERLIN MARCH PLANS
Jewish leaders protest 'unbearable' Berlin march plans
Associated Press
November 30, 2001
Jewish leaders yesterday urged Berlin authorities to thwart "unbearable" plans for thousands of right-wing extremists to march through the capital's former Jewish quarter this weekend.
A far-right political party has permission for some 4,000 marchers to protest an exhibition on Nazi-era crimes by the German army – described as the biggest extreme-right rally in Berlin since the end of World War II.
The organizers want to march past an art gallery where the exhibit, which they denounce as "anti-German," opened Wednesday. But the route takes them close to the restored synagogue in the heart of the former Jewish district.
"It's an unbearable thought that, on the Sabbath of all days, right-wing extremists could march through this Jewish-influence area," Michel Friedman, the deputy leader of Germany's Jewish community, told the Sueddeutsche Zeitung newspaper.
He called for tomorrow's march to be rerouted.
Letting the far-right protest go ahead would be "ill-advised," Rabbi Abraham Cooper of the Simon Wiesenthal Center in Los Angeles said in a letter to the German ambassador in Washington released yesterday.
Berlin's interior ministry insists it cannot prevent the march and has not imposed an alternative route, though it has insisted that the far-right protesters not carry flags or drums and has banned three planned speakers from addressing the rally.
Mainstream political parties, churches and labor unions have announced counter-demonstrations, and militant left-wing groups are also calling for a big turnout to block the march.
Police plan to deploy about 3,500 officers to protect the demonstrators and prevent the violent clashes between anarchists and neo-Nazis that regularly accompany demonstrations by Germany's resurgent far-right scene.
The exhibition showing how regular German troops – not just the Nazi SS or special commandos – were involved in wartime atrocities against Jews, civilians and prisoners of war reopened this week after a two-year pause.
(Note by TG - This was a follow-up article sent out on the email list two days later)
"MY GRANFATHER WAS NO CRIMINAL" THE NEO-NAZIS CHANTED
Thousands of neo-Nazis protest war crimes exhibit in Berlin
By Geir Moulson,
The Associated Press
December 2, 2001
More than 3,000 neo-Nazis marched through central Berlin Saturday to protest an exhibition on Nazi-era crimes committed by the German army, but police kept them well away from the capital's former Jewish quarter after the proposed route drew outraged objections from the German government and Jewish groups at home and abroad.
Ahead of one of the biggest far-right marches in Berlin since World War II - police estimated 3,300 people participated – stone-throwing counter-demonstrators who tried to put up barricades clashed with police nearby.
Police responded with water cannons and tear gas, and said some 30 people were detained and eight officers slightly injured.
Brandishing banners including "My grandfather was no criminal," the neo-Nazis chanted slogans such as "German soldiers – heroic deeds" and "Glory and honor to German soldiers" as they marched from Berlin's Friedrichstrasse station.
But police with riot shields and armored cars blocked off streets leading to the former Jewish quarter, where the gallery hosting the army exhibition is situated – a block away from Berlin's restored synagogue. Several downtown streets were closed.
The prospect of a march through that area on the Sabbath outraged Jewish groups. The Simon Wiesenthal Center, in a statement issued in Los Angeles, called it "intolerable."
"Far-right extremists marching past monuments or in centers of Jewish life is a provocation of outrageous proportions," Germany's main Jewish leader, Paul Spiegel, wrote in the Berliner Morgenpost newspaper. The German government condemned the plan and backed peaceful protests.
The march was organized by the National Democratic Party, which the government has asked the country's highest court to ban, blaming it for encouraging a big increase last year in hate crimes.
City authorities insisted they couldn't ban the march outright. While demonstrations can be banned over fears of potential violence, the National Democratic Party has kept protests orderly with skinheads listening to rhetoric that skirts a fine line avoiding openly pro-Nazi epithets that are banned in Germany. Saturday's march ended without incidents, police said.
Berlin Mayor Klaus Wowereit pointedly visited the army exhibition during the march, and organizers said severa thousand people followed suit.
"It's outrageous for neo-Nazis to demonstrate here," Wowereit said. But, he stressed, "we must make our point peacefully."
"They should have a look at the exhibit," added gallery director Klaus Biesenbach. "I don't think any of them have been here. They don't even know what it's about."
About 4,000 police officers were in place to prevent violent clashes between anarchists and neo-Nazis that regularly accompany far-right demonstrations.
Some 1,500 people, carrying placards such as "No tolerance for Nazis," earlier gathered for a counter-demonstration organized by left-wing groups to protest the march.
That ended with police forcibly dispersing demonstrators who had tried to break through police lines, spokesman Uwe Kozelnik said, adding that "people were throwing stones and police were attacked." Three police cars were overturned and some shop windows broken.
The exhibition showing how regular German troops – not just the Nazi SS or special commandos – were involved in wartime atrocities against Jews, civilians and prisoners of war has been reopened after a two-year pause.
Historians complained that the original was inaccurate and superficial, though they supported its premise. The exhibit has been extensively overhauled.
Waiting outside, Berlin resident Ernst Sachse, 43, said he and his wife had made a point of visiting during Saturday's protest because "it's important that others turn out and show that, thank God, they're just a minority."
Attached below is some breaking news about a terrorist attack in Jerusalem, which has not been covered yet by the international media. The celebrations in Jenin have not been covered at all.
-- Tom Gross
NEW SUICIDE BOMB; CELEBRATIONS IN JENIN
Three dead in suicide bus bombing near Pardess Hanna
By The Jerusalem Post Internet Staff
Breaking news
November 29, 2001, 21:15
A suicide bomber blew himself up on Egged bus No. 823 en route from Nazareth to Tel Aviv near Pardess Hanna, not far from an army base, a short while ago.
Three Israelis were killed and six wounded in the terrorist attack.
The bomb was carried by a suicide bomber, who apparently boarded the bus at Umm el-Fahm junction, according to Northern Region police chief Cmdr Ya'acov Borovsky.
The explosion took place in the back of the bus, which had few passengers.
Security forces and ambulances rushed to the scene.
Six victims were taken to Hillel Yaffe Hospital in Hadera, one of them in moderate condition, and the rest lightly wounded.
Palestinian residents of a Jenin-area refugee camp spilled out into the streets to celebrate and fire shots into the air when they heard of the attack, Israel Radio reported.
Meanwhile, Prime Minister Ariel Sharon was informed of the attack as he arrived at Ben-Gurion Airport. He is scheduled to fly to the United States tonight.
Sharon is scheduled to visit New York and Washington and meet with US President George W. Bush.
Terrorists murder Israeli motorist in drive-by shooting
By The Jerusalem Post Internet Staff
Breaking News
November 29, 2001, 19:05
An Israeli motorist, wounded by Palestinian terrorists in a drive-by shooting near Baka a-Sharkiya in Samaria shortly after 5:00 p.m., has died of his wounds, Army Radio reported.
Another Israeli suffered moderate wounds to his shoulder and leg.
Medics treated the victims at the scene and transferred them to Hillel Yaffe Hospital in Hadera, the mortally wounded victim by helicopter.
Security forces pursued the terrorists, but they escaped to Tulkarm, Israel Radio reported.
With this mailing, I am adding a number of recent acquaintances to my “Middle East mailing list”. This list, originally began for friends and family some three years ago, now extends to hundreds of people throughout the world, including government officials, ambassadors, other diplomats and numerous journalists and commentators. Everyone on the list is included only at their own request.
-- Tom Gross
BBC JOINS REUTERS IN REFUSING TO LABEL 9/11 TERRORISM
BBC: September 11 attacks “not terrorism”
By Rusty Pugh and Chad Groening
AgapePress
November 27, 2001
Another major news service has announced it will stop using a word that might offend those who crash airplanes into buildings.
According to The Guardian newspaper, the British Broadcasting Corporation has joined Reuters News in refusing to label the September 11 attacks on America as acts of terrorism. Mark Damazer, the BBC’s deputy director of news, said the service would lose its reputation for impartiality around the world if it were seen to use such a subjective term. He says guests on the company’s various networks may continue to use the term, but news correspondents must use more neutral terms, such as “attack.”
Speaking at an international convention of broadcasters, Damazer and others also criticized American coverage of the war on terror. Tony Burman, executive director at the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, said U.S. coverage failed to take into account the international perspective.