|
« Bush frets
Main |
February 08, 2004
The EU and the axis of evil
Absolutely riveting speech by a German Green MEP, Ilke Schroder, which lifts the lid on the attitude of the European Union towards Israel. Schroder goes far beyond the observation that the EU is both prejudiced against Israel and motivated by anti-Jewish feeling. She also makes the explosive claim that the EU is backing Palestinian terror in order to position itself as a rival power base to the US. Key passage: 'The primary goal of the EU is the internationalisation of the conflict in order to underline the need for its own mediating role. Here is the prevailing European view: The longer the conflict continues and the deeper it gets, the more evident is the incapability of the US to moderate a peace process. The EU thus concludes that both sides are in need of - ironically speaking - the good uncle from Europe to resolve this conflict with European democratic and ecological values, its welfare state and civil society. How good for both sides that there is Europe and how bad for the world that one side, and this is Israel, is affording a wild west type of policy in the style of the US. 'The need for a solution only exists as long as the war continues. This is why the EU does not want the conflict to end before it gains a major role. And this is why the EU does not wish the PA to give up too early and why the EU is strengthening the PA. The EU is getting up to the cynicism of stirring up a conflict that it supposedly wants to see resolved by financing one side. This is the inherently inhuman purpose of EU humanitarian aid in the region. The Palestinians are playing the ugly role of being the cannon fodder for Europe's hidden war against the US.' To such geopoliitcal cynicism is added -- of course -- the oldest hatred: 'A peace process of the sort that the European Union would like to create includes European soldiers stationed in Israel. Mr. Poettering, the chairman of the biggest political group in the European Parliament, the Conservatives, said on October 9th 2003 in Parliament "that we need an international peacekeeping force“ and he did not hesitate to stress that these forces should include European soldiers. He added: "We Europeans should start an initiative, especially now when our American friends are taken up by the presidential election campaign — and we all know how important the support from some groups is in order to get elected in America“. It is quite clear whom this gentleman means.This is just one of many examples how anti-Semitic stereotypes affect the perception of the Middle-East conflict by high-ranking EU politicians.' As she adds: 'European policy in the Middle East is an important link of European anti-Zionism and Arab anti-Semitism which is as disastrous as it is effective; a coalition that is all the more effective because it is accompanied by an emancipation of the EU from the US. The relationship between foreign policy and mass consciousness is particularly important in the case of growing, openly expressed anti-Semitism...The greatest danger today is that the globalisation critique, anti-Americanism and anti-Zionism which exist in the heads of millions of people is amalgamated into a common sense that is supported and used by European policy. There is no difference in the consciousness of an average Member of the European Parliament and an average German peace demonstrator and I consider this to be a mixture of naivete, moralism, anti-Americanism, anti-Semitism and anti-Zionism and an altogether serious danger.' Schroder's devastating analysis surely needs the widest possible circulation. The evil nexus she describes is a major factor behind continuing terror and rising anti-Jewish hatred. The fact that a member of the European Parliament itself is blowing the whistle on it should be thrust in particular in the face of EU Commissioner Chris Patten, who has done so much to brush this under the carpet -- and who, if he becomes, as trailed, the next chairman of the BBC, will hardly use this position to expose such vileness to the light of day.
Posted by melanie at February 8, 2004
Comments
I'm surprised that Kerry can get support putting France in charge of US foreign policy. I would have thought that Bush's sidelining of France/Germany & Russia would have played well with US voters. sorry, above should be below Posted by: ned at February 8, 2004 06:51 PMFrau Ilka SCHRÖDER Federal Republic of Germany 1992: School environmental action club; students' representative; action days; active member of German Friends of the Earth (BUND) youth section; 'Auftakt' festival. http://www.rantburg.com/qsearch.asp?S=Ilka%20Schroeder
"The Palestinians are playing the ugly role of being the cannon fodder for Europe’s hidden war against the U.S.,"
http://www.time.com/time/europe/generatione/profiles/index.html
Funny, when she was a normal green lefty nobody seems to have asked for her expulsion. Any other MEP who has, say, compared Israel to Nazi Germany has been expelled? "And remember, anti-Zionism is nothing but the outsourcing of genocide to the Arabs, because Europeans are not anymore fond of menial jobs" ?????????????????????????
Nothing you've written about Schroder, Romulus, does anything to invalidate her statements on the EU's relationship to Israel. So she's left-wing: does that mean that all of her political opinions are necessarily false? So some members of her party think she's a pain in the neck; well, that settles it - get her outta here! (Never mind that the people who want to kick her out are probably orthodox leftists of the type you so abhor.) Posted by: kid charlemagne at February 8, 2004 11:58 PMOn a related topic: The Atlantic Monthly magazine has a brief article about a report on anti-Semitism in the European Union. The report was commissioned by the EU, but when it came out, the EU suppressed it. Apparently, the EU expected the report to blame far right-wing groups for the recent rise in anti-Semitic activities in Europe. What they got was a stinging document implicating European Muslims and, more controversially, the European left. The conclusions were deemed so incendiary that the EU ordered it shelved in February of last year. Concentrating on the first half of 2002, the report pointed out that the confluence fo the Palestinian intifada and the passionate debates around 9/11 led to a spike in pubic expressions of anti-Semitism, as well as in violence against Jews and Jewish property. The report says that this violence was the work of young Muslims. But it goes on to say that anti-Semitic rhetoric was increasingly heard from the far left, where vicious attacks against Israel and the United States often used traditional anti-Semitic stereotypes, for instance, clichés about a "Jewish world conspiracy" pulling the levers of power around the world. A leaflet from a German anti-globalization group depicts Uncle Sam with a "Jewish" hooked nose, dangling the world from his finger. It's pretty disgusting that the EU suppressed this report. But I have to wonder: Did they really think these findings were such startling revelations? Left-wing anti-Semitism is not exactly hot-off-the-presses news. It's been in the making since the 1970s, since 1967 in fact. What planet have these people been living on? The article is in the March issue of Atlantic Monthly. The report is called "Manifestations of anti-Semitism in the European Union," by the European Monitoring Centre on Racism and Xenophobia. I think we need some sort of perspective here. Of course it is impossible to deny that anti-Semitic rhetoric is becoming increasingly mainstream - most worryingly amongst the chattering classes for whom attacks upon Israel so easily tend to slip into attacks on Jews after a couple of glasses of Chablis. As far as the far left go, attacks on Israel are simply a point scoring exercise in bashing US imperialism. Uneducated...expedient..yes. But I'm not sure about anti-Semitic. I speak as a leftie depressed at the base level of debate and shear political opportunism on the left. There are problems, however, in that the boundaries of what is considered "anti-Semitic" seem to have been stretched to ludicrous extents. For example, Melanie's pre-emptive strike on David Hare's new play (two sections down) seems illustrative of such lunacy. Furthermore, I certainly think that anti-Semitic attitudes are less prevalent than Islamophobic ideas. Just look at the level of popular support Kilroy-Silk gained for his racist rant. Likewise, the Brits (or at least their gutter press "advocates")seem to have a fair degree of contempt for all minorities - gays, asylum seekers, gypsies etc. This is the depressing fact. Posted by: guy chambers at February 9, 2004 01:21 AMI have been saying for years what Schroder has just said—and I am not even a lefty or a greenie. ;-) The Euros get really, really upset when you confront them with such facts. They believe that their politicians are not representative of THEM. Indeed they are! Every people gets the government it deserves. And Guy Chambers, Kilroy-Silk's "rant" as you put it was hardly racist. It was factual, just as Ms. Schroder's speech is factual. But, you are right that the Brits and the Euros have contempt for all minorities. They do, however, pretend that it is not so. Lili Posted by: Lilith at February 9, 2004 02:34 AMWell Kid, she is the only person who thinks the EU has a foreign policy; the only one who thinks anyone wants to put troops in the Middle East; and the only one who thinks the EU significant. If what she said were halfway true, the EU would cancel its trade agreement with Israel and it would fold like a pack of cards. Noone has cancelled Israel's trade agreement, or its access to EU technology funds, not have tariffs been inmposed; Berlusconi even proposed admitting Israel to the EU as a full rather than an associate member.
One doesn't need many soldiers to help the Palestinians. It is quite enough to send some hundreds of European "peace keepers" and they would serve as the perfect human shield for the terrorists. These will hide behind them after each attack and Israel won't be able to go after them or to shoot them in order no to be responsible for Euro casualties. That's what "internationalization" means in that conflict: the Europeans won't have to fight the Israelis because it is enough if, coming between Israelis and Palestinians, the "peace keepers" give these an edge. And whatever happens to an European soldier there will always be Israel's fault. Posted by: lafontaine at February 9, 2004 06:21 AMNo interest lafontaine....no interest in putting any troops into your witches' brew.....besides it was the USA which wanted that not Europe. Still Ilke Schroeder will not be an MEP after 9 June....elections are on a List System and since the Greens have dumped her she will probably lose her seat and become Visint Professor at Ben Gurion University which is probably the ideal place for her. Posted by: Romulus at February 9, 2004 07:08 AMIt's not too long ago that many European countries had troops all over the region: some would be glad to return. You imply lafontaine that Ilke Schroeder is a Jewess rather than someone who makes a noise and will lose her seat; I did not know, you apparently do. Yes I do think Jews complain too much; and elevate themselves above other people; and smear Europeans and the British in ways they would find painful if the words were substituted. There is a campaign of vilification and historical mendacuity waged on these boards which can only be considered as the product of sick minds, I think particularly of 'Charles' or whatever. It is a very long time since there were troops from France or Germany or Britain or Poland or South Africa or India in that region.....Britain left Palestine in 1947/8 having wasted too much money there; and the Germans were in Egypt until destroyed at El Alamein; that is now almost 60 years ago and predates Israel as a state. Yes, there were British and US and Polish troops in Iraq, and the US/UK was there in 1991 too......that is a contentious area as you know for Mr Blair...... but 'Peacekeeping' is a stupid exercise and not something we should waste expensive British soldiers on....we should let the Chinese send troops as a Security Council member......but Europe should close its doors to everything in the Middle East and seal our borders, and cut off trade links and loans and air flights. It is troublesome and has been in perpetual crisis since Britain and France left the area, the US has caused itself immense problems after Dulles conspired to get US oil interests into Iran and Saudi Arabia and Iraq. The main thing is that Scroeder is an MEP, and that is a non-job in a non-parliament; an alibi for a non-democracy; and the European Parliament should be abolished....after all only 18% are forecast to vote in the EU elections here......it is a clique of party hacks, and overpaid lobby-fodder.....look at the leader of the German Grens list she is a professional student running a lobby firm in Brussels and leader of Germany's Green MEPs Posted by: Romulus at February 9, 2004 08:50 AM"as a visiting prof at Ben Gurion University, then, supposing her views were the exact opposite, where would she feel at home: Oxford, Sorbonne, Heidelberg?"
1997 Abitur (A-level) in Berlin since 1997 student of economics in Oldenburg (Lower Saxony) As you can see from her Website lafontaine she has not even graduated from a third-rate agricultural college in 7 years.......and you think she should be at Heidelberg or Oxford or the Sorbonne ? No wonder academic standards are faling........she is a Niete. Posted by: Romulus at February 9, 2004 08:54 AMThe Carl von Ossietzky University of Oldenburg was founded in 1974 on the grounds of the city's 200-year-old teacher training college. Today, the University serves more than 10,000 students in five faculties, such as Pedagogy and Education; Computer Science; Economics and Law; Arts and Languages; Humanities and Social Sciences; Mathematics and Natural Sciences. Posted by: Romulus at February 9, 2004 08:56 AM"Europe should close its doors to everything in the Middle East and seal our borders, and cut off trade links and loans and air flights.. . " Hey! Romy, you are stealing my lines. I think we should do the same—except for oil. Which they have to sell or they will starve. Cut the SOBs off from civilization and let them murder each other! They don't want modernity. Hey, no problem. More for us. ;-) BTW—the EU exists solely to counter the U.S. Except of course, it's not working. :-) Lili
"except for oil"....but oil comes from Russia as it did before 1914. The EU was first proposed in around 1932 by Jean Monnet...the US was isolationist then; The European Movement postwar was financed by SIS and CIA as a means of undermining Communist Europe........actually Lilith, it was the US which did most to promote the EEC in the 1950s......and in 1946 two OSS economists Charles Kindleberger and Walt Rostow persuaded Monnet to launch a UN-backed Economic Commission for Europe....
May 1949 ACUE created Council of Europe in Strasbourg. 80% ACUE funding from US State Dept handled by Thomas W. Braden and was Asst. to Dulles at CIA. Mutual Security Act 1951 stated financial assistance to Europe could be used "to further encourage the economic unification and political federation of Europe" The Mutual Security Act of 1951 distributed $7 billion in foreign aid. It thus extended the Marshall Plan.
http://www.oecd.org/document/48/0,2340,en_2649_201185_1876912_1_1_1_1,00.html "In June 1950 Stikker, Chairman of the OEEC Council, put forward an action plan for the economic integration of Europe through specialisation of activities, division of labour and the creation of a single European market. Countries with heavy state trade were asked to issue long-term purchase contracts at reasonable prices, and a joint list of objects for freeing was proposed. A European fund was to be set up to alleviate the consequences of increased competition for firms. Other proposals were made to accelerate the freeing of trade, and also to give the OEEC power to organise the European economies or rationalise them. Consequently, the French and Italian ministers, Petsche and Pella, amended the Stikker Plan. Central to these projects was a European Investment Bank (EIB), which came into being with the Common Market." "The Marshall Plan had been a vehicle for the "cult of productivity" in the firm. A productivity programme was resumed in 1952 by a European Productivity Agency set up under OEEC auspices and largely financed by the United States. Over 3000 specialists and hundreds of farmers, organised into more than 500 teams from 15 different countries, visited American factories and farms. In late 1957, a European Nuclear Energy Agency was set up under the OEEC. Its first act was to sign a convention establishing security controls on nuclear energy. The same year the OEEC provided the framework for negotiations aimed at determining conditions for setting up a European Free Trade Area, to bring together the Common Market of the Six and the other OEEC members on a multilateral basis" "In 1957 the so-called Treaties of Rome (Euratom and EEC) were signed. One of the aims of the EEC was a common market to allow the free movement of persons, services and capital. The Euratom Treaty was meant as a new impetus for European cooperation and was set up to promote nuclear energy. http://www.antenna.nl/~wise/493-4/eu.html " "By June 1947 European integration was already a major U.S. foreign policy goal, and the United States was willing to endure some trade discrimination to foster this political objective. The Marshall Plan's integrationist agenda opened a mild but persistent disagreement between Britain and America. The Attlee government could tolerate the European Payments Union, but the Schuman Plan for a European Coal and Steel Community went too far. The (failed) European Defense Community was too integrationist and supranational for the second Churchill government, as was the European Economic Community, or Common Market, for the short-lived Eden government. In these early years Britain set a policy of partial detachment from European integration that would last for decades. This caused irritation in Washington, particularly when London presented its policies as part of the British effort to be a faithful partner with America. " "When Churchill delivered his "iron curtain" speech in March 1946, Truman was less enthusiastic about it than were the Labour Prime Minister Clement Attlee and Foreign Secretary Ernest Bevin. And a week later, Secretary of State James Byrnes offered the hardly heartwarming comment that the United States was no more interested in an alliance with Britain against the Soviet Union than in an alliance with the Soviet Union against Britain........
Romulus: you are choking all comments on this blog. Please just make your point(s) briefly and leave it at that. I'm sure I'm not the only one who hasn't the time or inclination to wage through such long screeds. I prefer to see a lively exchange of different views. If you have so much to say, why not have your own blog? Shouting down the opposition is not a way of winning arguments. Posted by: ilana at February 9, 2004 05:12 PMThe more frantic the accusations of "racism" and "anti-semitism" (stupidly inaccurate term, since Arabs are semites, BTW) the more likely that their potency will fall to homeopathic levels. "Whig", "Tory", "democrat", "socialist" were all originally smears. Their targets cheerfully embraced them and they lost their sting. Beware, runners off at the mouth. Conserve your ammunition. Posted by: WJ Phillips at February 9, 2004 05:26 PM"Romulus: you are choking all comments on this blog. Please just make your point(s) briefly and leave it at that. I'm sure I'm not the only one who hasn't the time or inclination to wage through such long screeds. I prefer to see a lively exchange of different views. If you have so much to say, why not have your own blog? Shouting down the opposition is not a way of winning arguments."
Ilana, please don't run Romulus off before he gives some examples of Jews "elevating themselves above other people" as he says they do. Then he's free to go. Posted by: Theodopoulos Pherecydes at February 9, 2004 05:54 PM"anti-semitism" (stupidly inaccurate term, since Arabs are semites, BTW" Every person who is not educationally subnormal or currently at large from a lunatic asylum knows exactly what is meant by it. The only individuals who ever complain are the idiotic Jew haters who suggest that because "anti-Semitism also refers to Arabs, it really doesn't exist," or some such nonsense. Whatever you want to call it - Jew hatred, anti-Semitism - it still remains the malignant cancer that sits at the very heart of European culture. Posted by: Charles at February 9, 2004 06:19 PMAnti-Semitic; Islamophobic; Institutionally Racist; Homophobic; .......it is so hard for Britons to nabvigate their way around their own country nowadays without bumping into one of the Leftist slogans or another......do they actually have any meaning nowadays ? Homophobic apparently means you don't like gays; Anti-Semitic is defined as not liking Jews; Institutionally racist means whatever McPherson thought it meant and no one really knows; and Islamophobic means you prefer Jews to Muslims.........
Ilke Schroeder's speech has been reported on fairly uncritically at numerous places on the web, but especially here. Is this a) because Ms. Schroeder is absolutely correct about the EU or b) because it confirms people's existing prejudices about the EU? Given her lack of convincing evidence, b) seems to be the more convincing option. (And Romulus, don't post huge chunks of text blindly.) Posted by: Randy McDonald at February 9, 2004 08:10 PMIt appears that Europeans are mostly anti-semitic... This weekend I came across three references to resistance to the Nazi’s “Final Solution”, three instances in which faced with refusal the Nazis backed off and abandoned their demands to exterminate sections of the Jewish People. Two of the cases involved states, Bulgaria and Morocco and the third was a case of simple, unorganised civil protest in the heart of Germany, indeed in the very centre of Berlin. The first two episodes refute the long held position of the countries invaded by the Nazis who handed over their Jewish nationals to the Nazi Murder Machine saying then, as they do still today, that they could do nothing to save their Jewish populations as they themselves were an invaded and beaten people who could not resist the orders of the Nazi leadership. The first example of the national “refusenik” is Bulgaria. I became aware of this reading “Beyond Hitler’s Grasp” ( http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/1580620604/104-7315017-1991915?v=glance#product-details ) a book by Prof. Michael Bar Zohar, himself a survivor of the Nazi occupation of Bulgaria. It seems that when the Bulgarians were ordered to deport their Jewish population to the extermination camps, King Boris refused stating that the Jewish population of Bulgaria was too valuable to the country, the engineers, physicians and academics were too important to be surrendered and those less educated and less qualified were drafted into “essential occupations” in industry and agriculture, where they were perhaps, less than free, but were saved from deportation. The Nazis never exerted significant pressure on the Bulgarians and thus the 50,000-strong Jewish population of Bulgaria was saved. This population emigrated almost in its entirety to Israel after 1948. The second episode involved Morocco (Hi Teacher!) when a demand was received from the puppets of the Nazis, the Vichy French, to organise the deportation of the Jewish community to the death camps of central and eastern Europe. The King of Morocco at that time, Mohamed V (who, I believe, was grandfather of the present king), replied that there were no Jews in his domain, “only Moroccans”. Again the demand was not insisted upon and the entire ancient Jewish community of Morocco, of about 265,000 people, was saved from the Holocaust. Could it be that the Jews of Holland, Belgium, Norway, Denmark, Hungary and the rest of occupied Europe could have been saved from extermination if those countries had refused, like Bulgaria and Morocco, to co-operate? The third episode is perhaps even more amazing because of the claim of the German population to have been unaware of the treatment of the Jews, or if they had been aware they would have been powerless to resist. It is now well known that the German population in general could not have been unaware of the Nazi treatment of the Jews, the continual disappearances, the endless transports, and the huge amounts of Jewish slave labour in German agriculture and industry at the time could not have gone unnoticed, yet there was no protest. Was it because the German population believed that protest would not be possible, or that it would endanger their own livelihood and perhaps their lives so much? Or was it that they really didn’t care? It would now appear, at least with the hindsight of historical perspective, popular protest could have made all the difference to many of the six million Jews who died, and perhaps to the many millions of other minority groups murdered by the Nazis. http://www.jerusalemposts.com/modules.php?name=Forums&file=viewtopic&t=4160 Posted by: at February 10, 2004 06:15 AM I Can't Believe This..Holocaust Revisionism!, March 13, 2000
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/1580620604/qid=1076399309//ref=sr_8_xs_ap_i1_xgl14/102-6843053-3651315?v=glance&s=books&n=507846
I am glad Frau Schroder has discovered what the brilliant historian Bat Ye'or has termed Eurabia- its etiology and its machinations: October 9, 2002, 9:15 a.m. European Fears of the Gathering Jihad, by Bat Ye'or. FrontPageMagazine.com, February 21, 2003 "The first two episodes refute the long held position of the countries invaded by the Nazis who handed over their Jewish nationals to the Nazi Murder Machine saying then, as they do still today, that they could do nothing to save their Jewish populations as they themselves were an invaded and beaten people who could not resist the orders of the Nazi leadership. "
As Polish schools, libraries, theatres etc were closed down and all leaders in church and state sent to KZ.....you should ask Roman Polanski just why he could not persuade the Germans running Poland to liberate his family Posted by: Fact nnot Fiction at February 11, 2004 06:57 AM |
