'The Big Lie'

national | miscellaneous | news report Thursday May 09, 2002 05:02 by David Horvitz - Jerusalem Report

the new form anti semitism and double standards

What a disheartening, sobering month April was for those who believed that Europe’s opinion-shaping circles overwhelmingly comprised fair-minded politicians and writers -- that no "Big Lie" could ever triumph there again, not in the ultra-sophisticated new millennium.

First the European Parliament voted to impose trade sanctions against Israel -- a declarative vote that EU foreign ministers chose not to turn into practical policy for the time being. The Council of Europe, representing 44 nations on the continent, is now also calling for sanctions. And all manner of academic petitions are circulating, demanding boycotts of Israelis. No reasonable mind can even begin to grapple with an EU stance that would punish Israel for trying to thwart bombing attacks while

its taxpayers’ money is siphoned off by the Palestinian Authority head Yasser Arafat to buy the explosives and pay the bombers. There simply are no words.

Next, the U.N. Human Rights Commission passed a resolution that advocates the use of "all available means, including armed struggle" [my italics] to establish a Palestinian state. Now, this Commission is a bitter joke in any case -- it being the body from which the U.S. was excluded last May, to be replaced by Sudan, where the government kills Christians and abducts people into slavery. But among the 40 nations on the 53-member commission approving the resolution were Austria, Belgium, France, Portugal, Spain and Sweden: A resolution that encourages the slaughter of Israeli civilians, shamefully backed by some of Europe’s supposed leading democracies. The Belgian ambassador to the U.N. has, laughably, asserted that the resolution "could be seen as a call for peace." Again, there are no words.

Then came news that the members of the Nobel committee who awarded the peace prize in 1994 to Yitzhak Rabin, Shimon Peres and Arafat now regret its bestowal on one of the trio. But no, it is not Arafat -- patron of the televised imams, with their calls to "murder Jews everywhere" -- who is chastised for "threatening to bring the prize into disrepute," but Peres, the man who did more than any other to maintain a partnership with the Palestinian leader. One can only quake in horrified admiration at a Big Lie so potent as to see Peres’s credentials assaulted while Arafat milks the myth that he is championing heroic resistance.

The question of Israel’s very legitimacy is now a subject of earnest debate in a Europe where Israel’s absolute culpability in the current conflict is a given. Europe has chosen to ignore the fact that the Palestinians were carrying out suicide bombings even in the first heady days of the Oslo process, and that most recent attacks have taken place deep inside Israel. It plays deaf even when its own EU Commission President, Romana Prodi, acknowledges that Arafat was "clearly wrong" to reject Israel’s peace offer at Camp David, and when U.S. envoy Dennis Ross states that the Clinton formula rejected by Arafat was not for disconnected cantons in the West Bank but, rather, almost the entire, contiguous territory.

No, Ariel Sharon would not willingly partner the Palestinians to viable statehood, nor willingly dismantle settlements. But it was Arafat’s terrorism that got Sharon elected. And since a strong majority of Israelis tell pollsters they support an international peace conference based on the Saudi initiative, with its call for a full withdrawal, it seems likely Israel would abandon Sharon, as it abandoned Benjamin Netanyahu for Ehud Barak, at the first hint of a Palestinian leadership committed to coexistence. That’s what Europe, and all those who want to halt the bloodshed, should be pressing for. That is the true path to alleviating the suffering of civilians.

Why is Europe acting as it is? In some countries, anti-Semitism was always an undertone; it has merely surfaced now and been focused on the Jewish state. Then there is the blinding anti-Sharon mindset of some European journalists who, by presenting falsehoods and partial truths, are misleading fair-minded people and their governments. And, of course, there is the fact that Europe has yet to be heavily targeted by the Islamic bombers -- and is being tempted toward appeasement, World War II lessons unlearned.

America is not entirely immune. Not when Arab and European governments are screaming to the White House about Israeli oppression. Not when American newsmagazines offer sensitive profiles of suicide bombers, feature writers hail the brave Hamas gunmen of the Jenin camp, and television anchors are seen to inquire of U.N. envoy Terje Roed-Larsen as to whether he has found any evidence of Israel’s claim that the camp was a hotbed of Islamic militancy. Twenty-three suicide bombings, proudly charted by the terrorists themselves, evidently constitutes insufficient proof for Paula Zahn, presenter of CNN’s flagship morning news show.

But the U.S. has felt this murderous war on its own flesh, on September 11, and thus, while the administration may wobble, it will not likely be deflected. President Bush has hitherto publicly pressed Israel to absorb bombings harder than he has pressed Arafat to renounce them, despite Arafat’s rejection of Secretary of State Powell’s pathetically undemanding plea that he voice even disingenuous displeasure at the attacks. But tougher demands will presumably be made of an Arafat freed from Ramallah. And crucially, on Capitol Hill, in the Defense Department and at the Vice President’s Office, no distinction is drawn between the victims of September 11 and of intifada terrorism. In Washington in late April, indeed, the powerhouse AIPAC pro-Israel lobby headlined its conference "America and Israel Standing Together Against Terrorism," and a large proportion of Washington’s legislators comfortably bonded under that banner.

In the most stirring address of the three-day AIPAC program, Dr. Bernadine Healy detailed how she became the "former president" of the American Red Cross by campaigning for Israel’s Red Shield (Magen David Adom) to be included in the International Red Cross and Red Crescent movement. She had to fight her losing battle, she said gently, because to have stayed silent would have been to acquiesce. In Europe, too, there are those who refuse to stay silent, to extraordinary effect -- witness how a single, morally uncompromising article by journalist Oriana Fallaci has prompted widespread soul-searching in her native Italy. If more men and women of good conscience made their voices heard, they might help Europe regain its bearings.