Dershowitz: Euro Trash
Charles Johnson
Mon Nov 10, 2003 at 9:05 pm PST • Views: 183
Alan Dershowitz writes about the disgraceful European Union poll that shows a majority of Europeans believing that Israel is the biggest threat to world peace: Euro trash.
Can the Europeans who believe that Israel is the greatest danger to world peace name another country that has ever given back land that was legitimately captured in a defensive war and necessary for its own defense in exchange for a promise of peace?
How, then, to explain this afactual, ahistoric and immoral poll result? At one level, it is simply the latest manifestation of millennia-old efforts to blame the Jews for all the evils in the world. When plagues broke out in Europe, it was the Jews’ fault. When wells were poisoned, obviously, the Jews did it. When Christian children were found murdered, who else but the Jews? A German parliamentarian recently blamed Stalin’s mass murders on the “predatory” Jewish people, and the cardinal of Honduras has blamed the sex scandal in the Catholic Church on - you guessed it - the Jews.
But there is more at issue here than primitive anti-Semitism, though that surely plays a role in some of the polling results. A generation of Europeans has been miseducated by its own media and leaders about Israel. The United Nations has contributed to this miseducation by condemning Israel more frequently than any other nation, well out of proportion to its faults.
Criticism of Israeli policies is certainly fair game, but throughout Europe, criticism of Israel is rarely comparative, contextual or constructive. Instead, Israel is singled out for demonization and delegitimization.
Frank says: