The EU's position on the ME conflict is anti-Israel/antisemitic ?

[Adam Smith]

Roland:

I don't think the George F Will column, which appears on the last page of Newsweek every other week, was the source I had in mind. I think it was a short (one paragraph) item near the front of the magazine. I will look tonight.

[Heresson]

The EU's position on the ME conflict is anti-Israel/antisemitic ?

Yes. Of course. Poor Israel.

[Jaakko]

I'm not sure there's a very good comparison to be made there Natan, except for the Pals themselves. It may very well be the case that the Pals need to crack down on the terrorism for it to go away (which I admit I didn't really take into account in my last post), but it's still my opinion Israel can't do the job for them.

[Roland]

AS:

"The fact that the French foreign minister..."
I think I found it. Daniel Bernard, French Ambassador to Britain, supposedly said that in December in private. And later said "I can't remember" - which one could safely count as an admission....

[Roland]

Maybe it is no longer antisemitic to see Sharon's "war" as counterproductive?

Weakness of power, power of weakness By Yoel Marcus

Summing up Operation Defensive Shield now that it's officially over is a tough proposition. Since no clear objective was ever established, it's hard to say exactly what constitutes a victory. So we destroyed X amount of infrastructure and caught X number of wanted men. So we showed them who they were stupid enough to mess with. So we taught them a lesson. Maybe so, but is this the victory we prayed for?

Fuad Ben-Eliezer says the significance of the operation is that now we

know how much power the Palestinians had amassed to maim and kill. True, we have demolished infrastructure and delivered a mighty blow to their leadership and their "engineers," but the minister of defense believes we are not done with terror yet - "Infrastructure has been smashed, but the problem of suicide bombers remains. We can bask in our achievements, but the reds lights are still flashing. Their desire for revenge has not subsided, and may have grown even stronger."

To put it another way, if the goal was to halt terror, and not just take revenge on the Palestinians, we have not achieved our goal.

Operation Defensive Shield, the largest military operation ever launched against the Palestinian Authority, has demonstrated the weakness of Israel's power and the power of the Palestinians' weakness. Within days of entering the cities of West Bank with an oversized force of tanks, helicopters and elite combat units, the whole world rose up against us with a ferocity we didn't expect. This time we got it all - threats of economic sanctions, orders to pull back immediately, a torrent of spontaneous and organized anti-Israeli demonstrations.

The public soon forgot the gruesome sights of the Seder night massacre and the other fatal attacks on Israeli citizens. All they saw was the suffering of the Palestinians. From the moment the IDF entered the refugee camps, the script was clear - Israel would be accused of a massacre (that never happened) and an international "investigation committee" would be established to prove our guilt. Because of the wreckage, the stench of death and the testimony of old people, women, and children mixing fact and fiction, but mainly because "they are weak" and "we are strong."

And over all of this hovers Sharon's colossal blunder of isolating Arafat. Instead of trapping Arafat, the state has set a trap for itself, turning Arafat into the stuff of myth, a holy martyr whom the whole world defends and feels compassion for.

Power of deterrence is a valuable asset as long as no one puts it to the test. In breaking that Ben-Gurionesque rule, we have shot ourselves in the foot. We have inflicted a blow on the offices of the Palestinian Authority and its terrorist capabilities, but we have not made so much as a dent in Palestinian motivation, except maybe to increase it.

The main lesson to be learned from this operation is that if terror returns, which is not unlikely, a war of this size is out of the question. Because the world (which is to say, America) will not let us finish it. The international community will impose sanctions with some very sharp claws, and that includes the U.S. administration, which will never forgive us if we ruin its plans to knock off Saddam Hussein.

Fortunately for Israel, the September 11 attacks on America were not linked to Israel. In time, however, with the unrest in the Arab world, Iraq's manipulations and European incitement, the blame for any further attacks on American targets may fall on us. Israel's commitment to world Jewry also obligates it to avoid strong-arm tactics that could intensify the current wave of anti-Semitism now spreading like wildfire. The Palestinians have turned their weakness into a destructive force, whereas our overuse of power has solved nothing and left the problem in our lap.

The Palestinian Authority, as the initiator of terror attacks, came by Operation Defensive Shield honestly. But even the minister of defense says that terror is a pus-filled abscess that cannot be cured by military action or by building a fence to hide behind. The only solution is political. As long as Sharon chooses force, and lacks the courage to dismantle two or three isolated settlements that hang around our necks like deadweight, in order to demonstrate to ourselves and the other side that there is an alternative to violence, we have not won, and will never win.

http://www.haaretzdaily.com/hasen/pages/ShArt.jhtml?itemNo=154733&contrassID=2&subContrassID=4&sbSubContrassID=0&listSrc=Y

As far as it refers to the operation, is this really so much different from what Solana said ?

[Adam Smith]

Roland:

It is entirely possible that I misremembered and it was the French Ambassador to Britain.

Any difference between his political views and those of the Foreign Minister (Aside from the possibility that, as with the US, London is a luxury assignment, often held down by well-connected donors, not trained diplomats)?

[Ned]

Roland, Israel was attacked by Jordan in 1967. It took the West Bank from them in a defensive war. That territory is Israel's to do with as it pleases, and no one else's. Their "occupation" is not "illegal."

To the extent the Arabs and their Europeans allies would continue to make war on Israel until it withdraws from these territories is simply a continuation of the 6-day war and its predecessors. This is Arab aggression.

To accept Arab aggression as "law" would be to would make all settled borders in Europe and the New World "illegal." Poland would have to give back German lands it occuppied at the end of WWII. The U.S. would have to give back California to the Mexicans. The United States as a whole would have to surrender to the Native Americans. Etc., etc., etc. This is ludicrous.

Palestine has never in history been an independent state. It was born as a province in the Roman Empire in 135 on the graves of the Jewish people who were slaughtered, not merely defeated, by the Roman army. The people the Romans settled there came mainly from the Roman province of Syria. They are not "Arabs" by race. They are Arabs because of Arab conquest in the mid 600's.

In subsequent history, the Arabs lost Palestine to the Turks of Egypt. Later it was conquered by European Crusaders, and then retaken by Egypt. Later it fell to the Ottoman Turks who held it for 400 years. The Arabs did not regain control of the West Bank until Trans Jordan "took it" as the British army left in 1948.

Now the Jews have returned to their native land. They want to live in peace with the Arabs. But the Arabs have never agreed to this. They have been the aggressors since 1936. Their goal is kill as many Jews as they can and extinquish Israel. This would be a repeat of the events of 131-135.

Incredibly, Europe has now sided with aggression. The Arabs continue to make war on Israel and the Europeans have joined their camp.

In order for there to be peace in the region, the Arabs have to be pressured to stop their aggression. Europe is on the wrong side in this conflict.

Ned

[Chris 62]

Your wasting your time, Ned, I have said exactly that a number of times.

Roland, I'm not trolling.

Face facts.

Just this morning, a synagoge in Brussels was sprayed with machine gun fire.

Your doing a fine job of ignoring the truth and skirting reality, but I'm telling you, your attitude is a chilling parall to the 1930s.

You keep insisting that all is fine, yet attacks continue.

This is the defination of Zionism:

http://www.us-israel.org/jsource/Zionism/zionism.html

Zionism was condemed by the UN as Racist.

The desire for Jews to return to their homeland, and it's called racist!
Your bull about me Trolling is getting really old.
It's not a troll to question these European acts of barbarism.

Answer.

Explain the attacks on jews throughtout Europe.

I hear nonsense about it's "anger over Israel's actions".

Crowds in Paris yelled "Death to Jews" (not Israelis).

Stop being an appologist and address this.

[Sirotnikov]

Originally posted by Urban Ranger
Since old lies are being rehashed, I respectfully submit this link that contains a lot of information to counter Israeli propaganda, particularly about Barak's Camp David offer.

Electronic intifada is filled with lies, made up after the fact, to make better show.

The (Revised) Palestinian Account of Camp David Part I: The Refugee Issue

The (Revised) Palestinian Account of Camp David Part II: Jerusalem and Territorial Withdrawal

The (Revised) Palestinian Account of Camp David Part III: The Palestinian Strategic Goals

[Sirotnikov]

dp

[Jaakko]

Then what of the Palestinians living in the territories Ned? It's pretty much political reality that there's an ethnic group with their own identity and a very strong nationalist tendency on the territories.
What solution, other than an uncompromising ideological standpoint, support of Israel against the Arabs based on historical rationalisation, do you offer for the Euros who are so wrong? Anything?

And who exactly are those "Arabs" you accuse of trying to destroy Israel? Most Arab countries have effectively washed their hands of the Pal mess long ago, only making noises to appear as caring about the Pals. The Pals themselves are never going to threaten Israel's existence, as proved quite amply by operation Defensive Shield.

[DinoDoc]

Originally posted by Jaakko
Then what of the Palestinians living in the territories Ned? It's What solution, other than an uncompromising ideological standpoint, support of Israel against the Arabs based on historical rationalisation, do you offer for the Euros who are so wrong? Anything?

I think that the best thing that the EU could do at this point would be to use the leverage that being the single largest monetary backer of the PA rightly gives them in order to put real pressure upon Arafat to completely sever his ties with terrorist organizations in addition to thier pressure on Sharon to do his part. Something which I haven't seen them doing.

[Natan]

Well, the issue then Jaako is whether terrorism is best defeated by fighting ir or not - I think defeating something generally involves fighting it. Obviously, it would be better if Israel could do normal police work - but it can't because it doesn't rule the PA territories.

[Adam Smith]

Originally posted by Jaakko
And who exactly are those "Arabs" you accuse of trying to destroy Israel?

As I mentioned above, most Arab countries are still signatory to the 1973 Khartoum resolution which calls for the destruction of Israel. Repudiating this resolution may help restore some measure of trust.

[Jaakko]

Dino - that's something I've been thinking about myself, but it's a bit problematic IMO. Most importantly, how do you make Arafat feel the pressure and not just those whom the aid was intended for? Further destabilisation of the situation through economic strife could quickly negate any advantages gained.

Natan - I'm all for fighting terrorism, it's just the methods I'm skeptic about. To me it's the intelligence elements that are needed instead of a show of force.

AS - That is a stumbling block to be sure, but how much does it affect the relations today? I don't think it can be used as proof of an ongoing Arab agenda to destroy Israel, especially considering later developments (not that I'm saying you'd do that).