Sunday, May 25, 2008

When it comes to Israel , Europe is hypocritical, submissive and obsequious


Comment by Khalid Amayreh in Occupied Ramallah

"In comparison to the madman in the White House, Europe may look less bellicose, less confrontational and less unreasonable in its overall approach to contentious international issues.

However, when the issue is the Palestinian plight, the US and Europe look very much like tweedledee and tweedledum.

In recent months and years, European leaders from Germany’s Merkel, to France’s Sarkozy, to Britain’s Brown and Italy’s Berlusconi were shamelessly pandering to Israeli savagery to the extent of embracing relentless Israeli criminality against the Palestinian people , including the ongoing genocidal ethnic cleansing in the occupied Palestinian territories, particularly in the Gaza Strip.

True, the European tone of speech often sounds less odious especially when compared with the unmitigated saber-rattling coming from Washington. But, in the final analysis, the outcome in both cases is similar. In fact, the US and Europe collaborate and even collude to effect the same unethical goals often by playing the old game of Mutt and Jeff (good cop and bad cop), with their persecuted victims, whether in Palestine, Sudan or Iran.......

Hence, European inaction or reluctance to call the spade a spade so long as Israel is concerned is not due to ignorance of reality in Palestine, but rather to a willful European decision to play blind, deaf and dumb and look the other way, thus effectively leaving the Palestinians alone to face their fate at the hands of a state that is very much a crime against humanity.......

Needless to say, a morally-inconsistent European approach toward the Palestinian plight doesn’t auger well, neither for Europe nor for the world at large.

Indeed, if Europe, along with the US, continues to allow the “forces of the jungle” to determine the rule of the game (international politics), then all states will have to draw their conclusions because survival is paramount for nations as well as individuals. And if strength only respects strength, then everyone will have to be strong or risk extinction or at least enslavement by the powerful.

I am saying this because what America and Europe seem to be telling the Palestinians is that as long as you are weak, you will continue to be killed, raped, persecuted and starved to death, otherwise you’ve got to settle for a life of perpetual enslavement by the “chosen people.

Some states, such as Iran, have already got and internalized the message, and sooner or later, other states will follow suit.

Is this the ideal world Europe would want to see?"

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