By David Cronin
-- -Diplomatic pressure from the European Union has been credited
as being partly responsible for how Israel allowed some deliveries
of food, medicine and fuel to Gaza over the past few days.
But you would never guess that senior EU officials had been flexing
their metaphorical muscles if you saw one particular document
distributed to the Brussels press corps.
This was a transcript of a speech given by the European
commission's vice-president, Franco Frattini,
during a visit to Israel.
In a week when the UN berated Israel for violating
international law by blockading Gaza, it seems extraordinary
that Frattini should indulge in some flagrant fawning
towards his hosts.
According to his prepared script for a conference
entitled Israel at 60: test of endurance, Frattini did not
allude once to the blockade imposed on Gaza, even
though the UN considers it to be an illegal act of
"collective punishment".
Instead, he insinuated that opponents of Israel in
Europe were guilty of antisemitism. "This prejudice, this
stance against Israel and Jews, has no place in today's
Europe," he said.
Read those words again:
"This stance against Israel and Jews".
How can opposition to a country's government be equated
with hostility towards adherents of a religion?
When Frattini was serving as Italy's foreign minister,
there was no shortage of people appalled at the
buffoonery of his boss, Silvio Berlusconi. Nobody,
though, could seriously have suggested that taking
issue with Italy's then premier was synonymous with
an antipathy towards Catholics.
Of course, genuine bias against Jews - or people of
any other faith - is deplorable. But European
policymakers are not helping to promote tolerance
when they accept facile reasoning from the
Israeli government.
Depressingly, we have been
down this road before.
In 2003, an EU-financed opinion poll found that
Europeans regarded Israel as the number one threat to
world peace. Rather than examining why that was the case,
a number of European politicians made it plain they were
embarrassed by the findings.
Also during his visit, Frattini told the Jerusalem Post
that Europe "cannot leave Israel alone" in its efforts to
prevent Iran from obtaining a nuclear bomb.
He omitted to mention that if Iran was hoping to join
the nuclear club, it would be emulating Israel, which
finally confessed in December 2006 to having weapons
of mass destruction.
Never shying away from some self-congratulation,
Frattini took credit for how Hamas was placed on the
EU's list of proscribed organisations when he chaired the
union's council of foreign ministers in 2003. He claimed, too,
that Hamas had provoked "Israel's armed response" in the
Palestinian territories and that "Israel lives and exists
according to the same traditions and values as
European citizens".
Whatever one thinks of Hamas, this is clearly hogwash.
Anybody who looks seriously at the Middle East conflict would
conclude that Palestinian violence is a reaction to the
relentless brutality and provocation of Israeli forces.
That doesn't excuse for a second the horrific consequences
of suicide bombing. But it does help explain them.
As for the argument about "European values", I assume
these refer to the principles on which the EU is nominally based:
"liberty, democracy, respect for human rights and the rule of law".
But the Israeli human rights organisation B'Tselem
has calculated that of the 810 Palestinians killed by the
occupying forces in Gaza in 2006 and 2007, just 360
belonged to an armed organisation.
By what logic - other than a very twisted one - can Israel's
state-approved slaughter of civilians be considered as proof
that it upholds values we are supposed to cherish?
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