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autoreply@economist.com</a>><br>Date: Aug 21, 2006 1:48 PM<br>Subject: An article for you from Michel Rbeiz.<br>To: <a href="mailto:mrbeiz@gmail.com">mrbeiz@gmail.com</a><br><br></span><br>- AN ARTICLE FOR YOU, FROM <a href="http://ECONOMIST.COM">
ECONOMIST.COM</a> -<br><br>Dear Michel,<br><br>Michel Rbeiz (<a href="mailto:mrbeiz@alum.mit.edu">mrbeiz@alum.mit.edu</a>) wants you to see this article on <a href="http://Economist.com">Economist.com</a>.<br><br><br><br>
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http://www.economist.com/subscriptions/offer.cfm?campaign=168-XLMT</a><br><br><br><br>TO ISRAEL WITH HATE--AND GUILT<br>Aug 17th 2006<br><br>Why Europe, unlike America, finds it so hard to love Israel<br><br> THE ugly little mid-summer war that has just ended in Lebanon spilled
<br>over into the parliaments, streets, television studios and dinner<br>parties of Europe. By and large, Israel got the worst of it.<br><br>The Council of Europe said that Israel's response to Hizbullah's<br>cross-border attacks was "disproportionate" and accused Israel of
<br>"indiscriminate attacks on civilian targets". Romano Prodi, Italy's<br>prime minister, called Israel's reaction "excessive". In Norway,<br>Jostein Gaarder, the author of "Sophie's World", accused Israel of
<br>ethnic cleansing and murdering children, and said that the Jewish state<br>had forfeited its right to exist. In many capitals, anti-war protesters<br>marched under Hizbullah flags. When Britain's Tony Blair tried to<br>
explain things from Israel's point of view--and failed to call for an<br>immediate ceasefire--his political stock took another tumble.<br><br> Mr Gaarder was prodded into a half-hearted apology. But the truth is<br>that, far from being extreme, these criticisms of Israel convey the
<br>mood of millions of Europeans, rooted in what polls suggest is a<br>hardening attitude. A YouGov poll in Britain, taken in the first two<br>weeks of the conflict, found 63% of respondents saying that the Israeli<br>response to Hizbullah's attack was "disproportionate"; a similar German
<br>poll had 75% saying so.<br><br> Such reactions reflect a wider European view of Israel that contrasts<br>sharply with America's. In a Pew Global Attitudes survey earlier this<br>year, far more Europeans sympathised with the Palestinians than with
<br>Israel (see chart). These findings come on top of a European Union poll<br>in 2003 that had 59% of Europeans considering Israel as a greater<br>menace to world peace than Iran, North Korea and Pakistan.<br><br>Why has Europe become so reflexively anti-Israel, just when America has
<br>become so reflexively pro-Israel? Europe has no equivalent of America's<br>powerful AIPAC Israeli lobby, and it also has a disgruntled (and<br>growing) Muslim population. But neither is enough to explain all the<br>difference in attitude. Indeed, many Muslims in Europe now feel
<br>beleaguered and can only dream of wielding AIPAC's clout.<br><br>Some Americans blame rising anti-Semitism in Europe, which they also<br>attribute in part to its growing Muslim population. But there is a<br>difference between being anti-Semitic and being anti-Israel. And in any
<br>case, it is not obvious that anti-Semitism is a big factor. In central<br>Europe, for example, there seems to be both greater anti-Semitism and<br>more support for Israel. And some polls suggest that more Americans<br>
think Jews have "too much influence" in their country than do Europeans.<br><br> It is also often the right in Europe, linked with anti-Semitism in the<br>past, that is most supportive of Israel today. Britain's Conservative
<br>Party, for instance, not always known for its admiration of Jews or<br>Israel, is now the most pro-Israel party. In Italy, which invented<br>fascism, Silvio Berlusconi's Forza Italia and Gianfranco Fini's<br>formerly neo-fascist National Alliance, are more pro-Israel than the
<br>government. In Spain, the centre-right opposition was highly critical<br>of Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero, the Socialist prime minister, when he<br>donned an Arab headscarf to show solidarity during the Lebanon war.<br>
<br> Countries that were most culpable in the Holocaust tend to be<br>stauncher supporters of Israel--especially Germany. What was then West<br>Germany became the main financial backer of the new Jewish state six<br>decades ago, with a first payment of $865m in 1952. Aid continued
<br>throughout the 1960s, long before America became Israel's main source<br>of outside support. This week's decision to commit German troops to the<br>peacekeeping force in Lebanon also reflects past guilt.<br><br> If the right (and the Germans) are doing penance, the left, which now
<br>controls many of Europe's chanceries, and certainly much of its media,<br>feels a sense of betrayal--which is why many now attack Israel with all<br>the zeal of the convert. Until the 1960s European socialists championed
<br>the cause of the Jews and Israel. Mid-century socialists saw<br>anti-Semitism and fascism as products of the right, so they became<br>instinctively pro-Israel. In the 1950s it was left-wing French<br>governments that provided Israel with nuclear power and a modern air
<br>force.<br><br> This changed with the six-day war in 1967, when Israel launched a<br>pre-emptive strike to defeat the Jordanian, Egyptian and Syrian forces<br>that seemed about to invade. It was a stunning victory, but it led to
<br>the occupation of the West Bank, Gaza and Sinai. To European<br>socialists, who had rallied to the underdog Israel in 1967, the<br>Palestinians were now the oppressed and displaced. Israel came to be<br>seen as a neo-colonial regional superpower, not the plucky survivor of
<br>the Holocaust keeping powerful neighbours at bay.<br><br> In the decades after 1967 Israeli politics also changed. The Labour<br>Party, which had largely ruled Israel since 1948, began to lose ground<br>to right-wing parties, notably Likud. European left-wingers, who had
<br>idealised Golda Meir's Israel as a pioneering socialist collective of<br>happy kibbutzniks, were shocked by what they saw as the militarisation<br>and racism of Menachem Begin's Israel--and they began a romance with<br>
the Palestinians instead.<br><br>This change can be chronicled over nearly a century in such liberal<br>papers as Britain's GUARDIAN. Chaim Weizmann, the first president of<br>Israel, played a vital role in fostering the GUARDIAN's early advocacy
<br>of Zionism and Israel, but the paper is now one of Israel's harshest<br>critics. The BBC, a bastion of the soft left establishment, has also<br>been criticised for its bias against Israel, not least during the<br>latest war.
<br><br>Attitudes to America have also clouded European views, especially on<br>the left. As Israel has drawn closer to America in the past few<br>decades, the left's antipathy towards the behemoth of capitalism has<br>spilled into dislike of Israel. Public opinion in Turkey, the one
<br>Muslim country that was once pro-Israel, has turned against it in<br>parallel with its turn against America, especially over the war in Iraq.<br><br> Emanuele Ottolenghi, an expert on Israel and Europe at Oxford<br>University, argues that "Europeans see Israel as the embodiment of the
<br>demons of their own past." The European Union is supposed to have<br>traded in war, nationalism and conflict for love, peace and federalism.<br>But Israel now reminds Europeans of darker forces and darker days.<br>
<br> Could attitudes change? It seems unlikely, not least because Israel is<br>now so stridently critical of the Europeans, especially of their media.<br>In this area, at least, the transatlantic gap is widening.<br><br><br>
See this article with graphics and related items at <a href="http://www.economist.com/world/europe/displaystory.cfm?story_id=7796479">http://www.economist.com/world/europe/displaystory.cfm?story_id=7796479</a><br><br>Go to
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