Jose Maria Aznar, one of the last non-dhimmis in Europe, speaks out: "Spain's ex-PM to Israel: Ignore Europe," from the Jerusalem Post, with thanks to Andrew Bostom:
Israel need not pay much attention to Europe, which is using its Middle East policy to separate itself from the US, has a tendency toward appeasement and is largely pro-Palestinian, former Spanish prime minister Jose Maria Aznar told The Jerusalem Post Monday."Europe likes appeasement very much; this is one of the most important differences between us and the States," Aznar said in an interview on the Bar-Ilan University campus. "Europeans don't like any problems. They prefer appeasement."
The strongly pro-American Aznar, who bucked public sentiment in Spain and backed US President George W. Bush's war in Iraq, served as prime minister from 1996-2004. He is currently in the country for Bar-Ilan's jubilee celebration, at which he will receive an honorary doctorate on Tuesday.
Aznar said Europe had no chance of independently impacting on the situation in the Middle East and would be wise to work closely with the US. "Do we Europeans have the capacity to change the situation and influence this area? The answer is no," he said.
Aznar said that European policy was "not favorable to Israel," and that different political leaders in Europe used the Middle East question as a way to establish a different identity from the US.
"In Europe, Israel is not very popular, not only this government, all governments," he said. "Most Europeans support the Palestinian cause. Europeans sincerely wish for a peace agreement and support the peace process, but the reality is that the peace process is closed. At this moment I think that Europe should work closely with the States, because that is the only opportunity to change the region."
Asked if Israel should, as a result, pay attention to the US, but not necessarily to Europe, Aznar succinctly replied: "Certainly." He said that the French and Dutch rejection of the EU constitution last week provided the EU a good opportunity to reform its polices and move away from the isolationist, anti-Americanism that he said defined much of its foreign policy....
"For me Hamas has always been a terrorist group," he said, adding that it is the Palestinian Authority's responsibility to deal with the organization.
BRAVO.....
Bring this guy to America and put him to work here.
This would be the guy to run the State Department and put Condi out of a job.
Now contrast the above JPost article with this JPost article about Israel's "friends" in the US:
There were only a couple of television sets in the Resnick dorms on the Hebrew University's Mount Scopus campus when I was studying there in the early 1980s. And since there wasn't much to watch in those days, that didn't really matter.
But a few times a year, for events of particular moment, we'd gather around the TV in the "club" on the basement floor of one of the Resnick buildings. And few events drew bigger TV crowds than the Eurovision Song Contest. This annual exhibition of generally trite songwriting and frequently outrageously camp performance was, nonetheless, an opportunity to cheer for our heroic performers in a rare appearance on the international stage. Most years, we hailed them for striving so valiantly when the participating European juries' voting patterns, influenced by realpolitik we were convinced, meant they had no chance of actually prevailing. And some years, incredibly – and rather denting our paranoia – Israel actually won.
Every year, though, at one stage or another of the absurdly elongated proceedings, I found myself wondering what Israel, not noticeably part of Europe, was actually doing in the competition in the first place.
I'd be surprised if Bruce Jackson, the president of the Project on Transitional Democracies, has ever watched the Eurovision Song Contest. But on a visit to Israel this week, Jackson, a longtime key player in Republican foreign policy strategizing, suggested that Israel, rather than an unlikely presence in a dubious Euro songfest, might want to become an integral European player. In short, that it might reconsider its relatively isolationist policy with regard to the European Union and, for that matter, to other weighty international institutions like NATO.
Along with the presumption that the EU is inimically hostile to Israel, other Israeli concerns over formal membership in such organizations include some of the same arguments that preclude more formal security and defense agreements with our single reliable ally, the United States. Full pacts and memberships, while potentially offering greater support and security, come at the cost of constrained independence and freedom of action.
The quintessential Republican insider, founder of the Committee for the Liberation of Iraq and member of the US's Council on Foreign Relations, Jackson is also emphatic in his support for Israel, and in seeking to guarantee the well-being of the Jewish state.
And he lists a whole register of arguments as to why that cause might best be served by a reassessment of Israeli attitudes to the likes of the EU and NATO, why that reassessment should be mutual, and why the time for it might well be now.
IN TWO lengthy conversations this week, Jackson fondly recalled how the Israel of the late 1960s and early 1970s was regarded with beloved awe by US governments, how doors opened and presidents melted when Golda Meir came to town, and how Israeli interests were automatically taken into account at any forum, or in any discussion, where they might be impacted.
He contrasted that with today's reality. Israel is barely a player, he said, in a Washington where the relationship with Europe is paramount, and where Britain, France and Germany are the heavyweights.
This sorry state of affairs, said Jackson, is partly a reflection of Israel's familiar and pitiful inability to effectively promote its interests – as currently evidenced in the pathetic imbroglio pitching our foreign minister against his own US ambassador. And whereas, until recently, Israel could at least rely on the professionalism of the AIPAC juggernaut for its essential lobbying, AIPAC is hamstrung today by the Larry Franklin affair and its long-term clout potentially reduced.
Aside from all this, however, Jackson makes the unarguable point that Israel suffers greatly from being a subject not, as might reasonably be expected, of US-European consensus, but rather of frequently bitter dispute.
It should be axiomatic that the US and Europe would be encouraging – even pleading – with Israel to join their various international country clubs in a natural alliance of democracies with shared trade and security interests and shared values. As arguably the world's gutsiest democracy, in the single region on earth that has proved stubbornly unsusceptible to democratization, it belongs in a place of honor at the head table, its protection and development a consensual assumption for those clubs' other admiring and less threatened democratic regimes.
Instead, says Jackson, "Israel is the only democracy laboring in diplomatic isolation," blackballed at the clubs. And along the world's key US-European power axis, Israel is something of a sore point. "There's no intimacy between the US and Europe on Israel," says Jackson. "It's one of The Three 'I's, along with Iran and Iraq. A subject of mistrust. And that's deeply unhealthy.
"This Israel suspicion violates the US-EU marriage. If the EU shared the same commitment to the defense of Israel as the US, valued Israel in the same way, that would remove a huge obstacle to the American-European relationship" – to Israel's immense benefit.
Much of old Europe regards Israel as an irritant to Arab regimes and thus a cause of fundamentalist terror. President Bush tends to the view of Israel as prime victim of Islamic extremism, and the American alliance with Israel is holding firm; but a significant body of American public opinion argues that it was this alliance that exposed the US to 9/11.
Jackson's argument is that now is the moment for Israel to try to change some of the adverse dynamics, by deepening its relationship with US-European institutions and thus widening its existential insurance policy.
WHY NOW? Because Bush is declaring himself increasingly committed to the spread of democracy, especially in the Middle East. Because Bush rejects the old Europe argument that posits progress toward Middle East democracy as contingent on first solving the Israeli-Palestinian dispute, regarding this as an excuse raised by Arab tyrannical regimes. Because Europe, more torn than ever this week in the wake of French and Dutch rejection of the EU constitution, has little desire to pick a fight with Washington over the best path to democracy. And because the expansion of the EU, to include Eastern European nations, is shifting that forum to one fundamentally more sympathetic than in the past to Israeli concerns.
Since the EU is continually widening its reach in this direction anyway, with Turkey a central case in point, Jackson argues that Israel would do well to strive for a more significant associate role in it rather than remaining a relative EU outsider subject to attempted dictates.
And the same goes for NATO – an organization increasingly active in the Middle East, potentially more so, and eminently wooable by Israel. Jackson says Israel can help itself by determining the nature of any future relationship with NATO today, widening the scope of its current associate ties, or risk having to defend itself from unwelcome, even if well-intentioned, attentions tomorrow. Tellingly, the Palestinians have assiduously sought to boost their NATO standing, and were this week rewarded with observer status.
Presented effectively, Israel's democratic credentials should enable it to campaign for the access it seeks on acceptable terms. Moreover, Jackson suggests, as an insider in these forums Israel could help formulate the standards for other regimes in the region aspiring to attain international legitimacy. As an outsider, by contrast, it is acutely vulnerable to other players misrepresenting and skewing its values, and seeking to impose untenable change.
"Israel is just not in the room," says Jackson, while other international players are taking decisions that affect it all the time. "I'd like to hear those players saying, 'We can't do this. Israel doesn't approve.' That's what they're saying in the EU about Turkey."
Incidentally, Jackson adds, an Israel following this non-isolationist route would also chart a course for nascent would-be Middle Eastern democracies. Where, otherwise, he asks, are the forums for would-be democratizers in Lebanon, Egypt, Jordan, Syria and elsewhere to aspire to join? Where are their avuncular support groups?
Jackson's is an intriguing vision, and one which elicited interested murmuring when I put it to a senior Foreign Ministry official. This diplomat stressed again the constraints of overly formal relationships, but saw possible merit in trying to set viable terms for the kinds of deepened associate partnerships Jackson recommends.
At the very least, Israel's participation in the Eurovision Song Contest might be less perplexing. Rather more ambitiously and symbolically, Lebanon, which this year withdrew from that contest rather than have its entrant perform alongside our own Shiri Maimon, could be there too.
Posted by: ShyGuy on June 7, 2005 05:24 AM
2. Sara said:
It is tragic and heartbreaking to observe how Israeli try to cling to the straw of hope for peace with the Europeans. Mr. Aznar is utterly diplomatic when he admits the European's animosity towards Israel by describing them as "not favorable to Israel," and that different political leaders in Europe used the question of the Middle East as a way to establish a different identity from the US. "In Europe, Israel is not very popular, not only this government, all governments," Aznar said.
A "peace process" on European terms would surely imply the demise of the State of Israel. The Europeans not only want appeasement: - they want the "final solution" which they have already promised their Arab partners in the Euro-Arab Dialogue, EAD.
If the US, as an act of appeasement, succeeds in selling Israel to the Europeans, which is actually what Mr. Jackson argues in favour of, the second Holocaust may be closer than any of us had thought.
The inadvertantly pasted "Sara said" comments at the bottom of the article I posted above is not part of the article but rather a comment on it from someone on the IsraPundit blog.
This unfortunate condition is the result of The Euro-Arab Dialogue or EAD. Decades ago elites in Europe sold out their populations in order to form a political and economic block that would counter that of the United States. Cleverly the Arab (Muslim) part of the block created conditions that favored them and they moved millions of Muslims into Europe at the expense of the indigenous Europeans. The initial hook was an uninterrupted energy supply.
For a sobering look at how this happened to one of the cultured and educated of the world's populations, see Bat Ye'or, Eurabia: The Euro-Arab Axis. You might notice some ominous parallel signs looming on our horizon here in the United States. If we don't want this to happen here in the States, we better get moving.
On another note: Think about the enormous numbers of other immigrant populations that have been rapidly spreading throughout the United States over the southern border. The effect could be the same: cultural annihilation.
Aznar not a dhimmi? Well, I'm not sure about that. Directly after the terrorist attacks in Madrid he accused the ETA for the attacks... if he wasn't a dhimmi he would not have said so. It a classical form of dhimmitude to say non-Muslims might did those terrorist attacks, even if all facts pointed to Al Qaeda. The same in the Netherlands. The dhimmi's will always try to state after an 'incident' with Muslims it could also have been a non-Muslim, like they did in the case with the Van Gogh murder. I think it is naive to think there are non-dhimmi European or American leaders, since they are all dhimmi's. The only difference between them is some are a bit less dhimmi, but that does not make them a non-dhimmi.
This post seems to me to have lost touch with reality. Of course Europe is going to weigh infinitely more than Israel in American counsels. Israel is a tiny country of barely five million. Europe is an economic colossus of getting on for five hundred million, which, when it moves together, has far more wealth and resources than the US; it is a point of reference like Russia, China and Japan. Even counted in separation, the eighty million Germans, sixty million each Britons, Italians and French, forty million each Spanish and Poles, are of far greater weight on the world stage than Israel. The notion that Israel's influence in Washington ought to outweigh London's, Berlin's, Paris', or Rome's, let alone Brussels', is nonsense. And the Mediterranean is an European lake, not an American area of interest. What kind of idiot would advise a country abutting on the Gulf of Mexico to ignore American interests and concentrate on, say, China? This is the kind of nonsense we are talking here.
This is not to defend or attack or critize American or European or Israeli policy; it is simply to remind everyone of a few brute basic facts. Facts, as an American statesman said, are stubborn things. That Israel is more often on nespaper front pages than Europe does not mean that it has a greater weight in the world. And given the increasing European involvement in places such as Turkey, only Israel's worst enemy would give them Aznar stupid and sour-grapeish advice - ignore Europe and cultivate the US. Europe is the nearest major power to Israel; Israel is already tied to it by a number of informal bonds - its athletes take part in European competition, its tourist industry caters for Europeans, etc. Aznar has a reputation for not being very intelligent - the British satirical magazine used to call him by the name of a British comedy character, Tim Nice-but-dim - and the nonsense he spouted here shows just how distant from any appreciation of reality he is.
Sure, Israel is not liked in European capitals. And your point is? Does even Bat Ye'or, with her dreadful prejudice against anything and everything European, really imagine that Europe would prefer to see Israel destroyed? Don't be ridiculous. That is the attitude of a few lunatics on the far left, no more representative of Europe than they are of America and Israel. The vast majority of Europeans feels that Israel is doing its own interests no good by an expensive occupation of territories it cannot hope to colonize, and that it is brutalizing its own democratic system by the means it uses to keep the Palestinians down. This may be a superficial or mistaken assessment, but it is a million miles from wanting Israel destroyed.
Any friend of Israel, with their mind on the ultimate good of Israel (and of Europe), would tell them: work on the Europeans. Do everything in your power to enlighten both the elites and the electorate to your plight. Seek their friendship. And reckon on the inevitable long-term effect of Islamic social and political behaviour, which is sure to alienate Europeans and Europe from Islam in the long run. Europe does not want Israel destroyed, and only the enemies of both imagine otherwise.
Whoops... in the previous post, I meant "the British satyrical magazine PRIVATE EYE".
Paolo,
I don't believe that Aznar is saying cut off ties. I think he is saying keep trying, but don't get your hopes up. Put your money where you have your best rate of return.
There are many in Europe that would like to see Israel fall. Now, what they would do once that occured, I don't think they have thought that far.
Take a look at these countries of Europe and see what trade restrictions, boycotts, restricted research and developement they have against Israel. Even Britian.
No one keeps the Palestians down but theirselves. No one is restricting them from life.
I found it interesting recently that Israel released almost 400 PA prisoners. Two stayed behind because they were getting a high school education in prison, and they wanted to complete their education. At the same time of the release of the prisoners the PA stated that they were going to kill 49 of the prisoners for sharing information with Israel. They have not stood trial but the Prime Minister of PA says they will die in the next several weeks.
Guess who is fighting for their civil rights, a fair trial and the right to live......Isreal.
Paolo:
Your advice is far more astute than Aznar's.
To put it mildly, the US seems to be turning a blind eye to the continued provocations from the Palestinians and thinks they can pay Abbas to be a good boy.
Israel's one card with the Europeans is that I am sure the Europeans are feeling more than a little touchy themselves about Islamist attacks within their own borders and don't think much of the Palestinian tactic of killing unarmed civilians, especially as the Israelis are in the process of withdrawing from Gaza.
Mr.Berlusconi, Italy's current PM, actually spoke of Israel as a possible member of the EU. This is not at present a popular idea, but I am sure that more Europeans would find Israel an acceptable EU member than Turkey. Israeli politicians should work on that, build up the sort of pressure that Turkey itself has; even if the EU were against it, this would immediately change the political status of Israel from an essentially strange country to a potential member. And the point is that membership of the EU would carry with it an informal but nevertheless very serious protection; it is unimaginable that a member country of the EU should be allowed to suffer threats to its existence. It is for that reason that the Baltic countries, tiny underpopulated parcels of forest land on the edge of enormous Russia, have rushed into the EU, accepting practically any price for the privilege of dealing with Brussels rather than with Moscow. In some areas, the power of the EU is greater than people understand: its economic and financial clout is formidable, and its members are particularly active and successful in an area that concerns Israel deeply - international law enforcement and the struggle against terrorism.
(It was not always so. Well into the seventies and eighties, most European police forces did not understand international crime and terrorism as serious problem. Time was when a Mafia murderer wanted by the Italian police could simply cross the border, open a pizzeria in Germany (staffed by cheap Egyptian labour) and live an easy life, in the certainty that the German police would never pay him any attention. The rise of efficient international policing contacts has been due mainly to Italian policemen hammering away again and again at complacent transalpine ears about the international menace of the Mafia, until even the most self-satisfied Germans and French had to do something simply to pacify them. These arrangements have been very useful in the struggle against Islamic terrorism; it is no coincidence that Judge Baltazar Garzon made his important speech, reported here a couple of days ago, at an international conference in Florence, Italy.)
Anyone read Melanie's post
"Into the sewers with Hamas"
http://www.melaniephillips.com/diary/archives/001249.html
"Thus the BBC stumbled across Britain's dirty little secret -- that despite the fact that it has declared Hamas to be a proscribed terrorist organisation, it has quietly started to treat it as a legitimate political party and deal with its representatives.
It is Britain, along with France, that is apparently behind the decision by the Bush administration to abandon the Bush doctrine and talk to Hamas. Later on the programme (0810) Foreign Secretary Jack Straw produced a set of ludicrous justifications for the fact that British diplomats had now had two such meetings with Hamas mayors."
They learned nothing from Gerry Adams and the two wings of the IRA?
It's not what Aznar says but what Tony and George are doing.
After all the tough talk "you're either with us, or you're against us" Bush's spokesperson McClellan was on about talking to Hamas because they are now businessmen in suits.
"The Bush doctrine cracks"
http://www.melaniephillips.com/diary/archives/001248.html
"As has been pointed out in previous posts, something is going very badly wrong with the Bush administration. First, the President fawned over Mahmoud Abbas even though he has done nothing to eradicate the infrastructure of Palestinian terror and incitement. Now, we learn that the US is preparing to deal with Hamas, despite its being on its own list of proscribed terror organisations. "
There is no consistency in the WoT especially now that Foggy Bottom is into "moisturizing Arabs and turning them into Metrosexuals
http://www.townhall.com/columnists/monacharen/mc20050603.shtml
Paolo:
Progressive, democratic, liberal and highly technologically developed, Israel would certainly be a more appropriate candidate for EU membership than Turkey if only the moral equivalency bigots who equate Israel with apartheid South Africa could be dealt with as they so richly deserve.
SR: "Even more worrisome is the fact that no one can post a dissenting point of view without charges of being "a muslim," or having their heads buried in the sand. Look, no one here is debating that this jihad garbage needs to be dealt with and stopped - but lately it seems that a once intelligent site full of interesting discourse has become a ranting ground for preaching to the chior. King Tolerance makes a VERY valid point about how restricting the rights of Muslim-Americans (and he is correct that the very term implies that they are American) is way too similar to the internment of Japanese-Americans during WWII and he is immeddiately called a troll."
I just want to say: amen to that.
KT: "I've learned that conditions have arisen that have in turn bred a radical form of Islam that is most certainly corrupt and volitile and must be dealt with, but I reject that it is the religion, the religion and only the religion. To insist on this while ignoring the policial and cultural facets to why extreme Islam exists is simply making a straw man argument."
No religion exists in a vacuum, and Islam is certainly no exception. I don't think that anyone could credibly suggest that terrorists are motivated solely by Islam, when there are so many Muslims who do not participate in terrorist activities. But the existence of peaceful Muslims does not imply that Islam itself is peaceful. As you so rightly point out, people are complex, and mostly don't blindly follow religion. That said, a minority of people are very strongly influenced by religion, and the jihadists seek out and recruit those people. Therefore we desperately need an interpretation of Islam that will allow the young and the zealous to feel close to Allah without having resort to violence.
Your claim that "conditions have arisen that have in turn bred a radical form of Islam" suggests that there was a time before this "radical Islam" existed, and the peaceful intepretation was dominant. When was this?
I have alternative suggestion: the jihadists are acting in line with the traditional literal intepretation of the Qur'an and Hadith. The "moderates" of today are in fact the radicals. I'm not counting the millions of nominal Muslims who have little interest in either peaceful or violent theology, I'm just talking about the people who regularly practice the religion. Amina Wadud, the woman who recently led a Muslim prayer service (and received death threats for her troubles) is what I would call a radical. The Madrid mosque, in issuing a fatwa condemning Bin Laden, was radical. I feel safe in calling these people radicals because they both claimed to be the first to do what they did. If they weren't radical, then why did it take 12 years since the first attack on the World Trade Centre for a fatwa to appear condemning Bin Laden? Why was the Madrid fatwa not just one of hundreds?
"Aznar not a dhimmi? Well, I'm not sure about that. Directly after the terrorist attacks in Madrid he accused the ETA for the attacks... if he wasn't a dhimmi he would not have said so"
Could he not have been mistaken? Does everything have to be about dhimmitude?
"King Tolerance makes a VERY valid point about how restricting the rights of Muslim-Americans (and he is correct that the very term implies that they are American) is way too similar to the internment of Japanese-Americans during WWII and he is immeddiately called a troll"
The internment of Japanese-Americans during WWII was signed by one of the greatest liberal American Presidents of the USA; it was defended as Constitutional by the Supreme Court; and its Constitutionality has never been legally overturned.
Furthermore, the overwhelming popular opinion against the internment of Japanese-Americans during WWII is more of a result of the increasing dominance of PC thought(lessness) since the early 60s to the present, than to any rational appraisal of measures we need to take to ensure national security.