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| Europe | |||
| Europe’s Arab gambit: | |||
| 2004-01-09 | |||
| EFL The poll conducted recently by the EU which found that Europeans consider Israel to be the single greatest threat to world peace shocked many and caused the EU’s political leadership to cringe with embarrassment. And yet, according to Geneva-based historian Bat Yeor, the results are the culmination of a European policy now three decades old. "After the [1962] French withdrawal from Algeria, [French President Charles] De Gaulle, who up to that point favored Israel, completely changed France’s policy toward the Arab and Muslim world. There was a convergence between France’s embrace of the Arabs and its attempt to weaken the Atlantic alliance with America. The Arabs were to give France strategic independence from the US. France’s attempt, first through the European Economic Community and now through the European Union to create a unified European foreign policy, in competition with the US and led by France, sees European alliance with the Arab world as one of the primary sources of this strategic independence." While, in Yeor’s view, "De Gaulle’s strategy was in the abstract," the European embrace of the Islamic and Arab at the expense of Israel and the US became a concrete policy in the wake of the 1973 Yom Kippur War and the subsequent OPEC oil embargo of the West. In November 1973, French president George Pompidou and German chancellor Willy Brandt met in Paris and proclaimed a joint resolution aligning EC policy with the Arab demands against Israel. This, according to Yeor was the first official European declaration of a unified foreign policy. "After this proclamation, the Arab League opened a formal dialogue with the EC. It was not a simple exchange between elites from the two sides. It established three bodies that would regulate European-Arab relations regarding the US, Israel and Arab immigration to Europe."
As to Arab cultural autonomy in Europe, the resolution of the 1975 conference of the Parliamentary Association for Euro-Arab Cooperation anchored this effort by calling for the European governments to facilitate "the creation of generous means to enable immigrant workers and their families to participate in Arab cultural and religious life." The results of these policies on Europe have, according to Yeor, been nothing short of disastrous. "What the Europeans did not realize at the time was that their embrace of the Arab and Muslim world did not simply involve their abandonment of Israel. What they were actually destroying was themselves. Europe is a continent built on the roots of Judeo-Christian traditions and history and values. By allowing unlimited Arab immigration and the Islamization of their universities, they were destroying their own culture. The new culture that has taken form in Europe is one of subservience to Islam. The new religion, in the post-Christian Europe is ’Palestinianism’ whose core belief is the need to destroy Israel and replace it with a Palestinian state. Palestinianism replaces a Jewish Jesus with a Muslim Jesus."
Europe’s embrace of the Arab political agenda for Israel lies, according to Yeor, at the root of European unwillingness to cooperate with the US on the war on terror. "Until September 11, Chirac and Villepin always said that the root cause of terrorism is the Israel-Arab conflict. This is of course the Arab-Islamic view. Like the Nazi vision of the centrality of Jews as the root of all evil, it is a vision long developed and adopted by Europeans. When George Bush said, after September 11 that ’you’re either with us or with the terrorists,’ he didn’t understand what was going on in Europe. The truth is that for 30 years the Europeans were with the terrorists. They can’t fight the Arabs; they have allowed the Arabs to dictate their policy since 1974. It is a huge problem. Part of the reason is also that they are terrified of terrorism. Their decision was to be subservient, not to fight and that has been their policy for 30 years. By attacking Israel, they believe they are saving themselves, but really, they are destroying themselves... Increasingly, the European-Arabian alliance has led to the increase in European anti-Americanism. For the Arabs, President Bush’s quotations from the Bible and allusion to the Judeo-Christian roots of America is anathema." | |||
| Posted by:tipper |
| #9 Hyper - I call them tumors... ruprecht - IMHO, you're dead right about OBL's "CharlieFox" (as Dr. Steve so colorfully pointed out elsewhere today) strategy. Not only did he attack the one entity who could and would fight back, but his minions have added dropping turds on the living room floor of several nations who were doing the wink, wink, nudge, nudge routine with the jihadis. Doh! I think he and his ilk are remarkably stupid. In parallel, if the US institutions and agencies who are responsible for going after financing terrorism were doing their job worth a shit (they are half-assed, IMHO) - and publicly excoriating the foreign states which are not cooperating, OBL & Co. would be limited to hand-carried cash... and all that physical handling would give us far more opportunities to bag 'em. OT, we could also kick some Feeb and Pentagon ass over the translator issue which is obviously working against us. Just a few little fixes here and there would make a huge difference in the cumulative difficulty factor we face. |
| Posted by: .com 2004-1-9 6:32:44 PM |
| #8 God does play dice with the universe and the dice are loaded. |
| Posted by: Cotton Mather 2004-1-9 6:07:24 PM |
| #7 Einstein said, "God doesn't play dice with the universe." Hawkings retorted with, "Not only does God play dice, he sometimes throws them where they can't be seen." Sounds more like Loki to me, too, Grid Willing, of course. |
| Posted by: .com 2004-1-9 4:22:31 PM |
| #6 The best model I've found for a God is not Yahweh or Allah, but Loki. |
| Posted by: Robert Crawford 2004-1-9 3:35:59 PM |
| #5 Sometimes I think he has a strange sense of humor, though... |
| Posted by: Fred 2004-1-9 2:22:33 PM |
| #4 God works in mysterious ways maybe. |
| Posted by: Lucky 2004-1-9 12:53:58 PM |
| #3 This whole thing points out how absolutely stupid Bin Laden was for igniting a war with the US. Another decade and half of Europe would have been Islamic at the rate they were going. Heck, if the Muslims in England, France and Germany moved into Spain and Greece they could add them back to the Dar al-Islam almost immediately. It looked like they were going for a longer term demographic shift in Europe and Bin Laden went of prematurely. |
| Posted by: ruprecht 2004-1-9 11:47:06 AM |
| #2 "the volume of this population flow was unprecedented in the history of European colonialization. And also unprecedented was the European decision to allow and encourage the new immigrants to maintain their ties to their countries of origin and thus prevent their integration into European society." Welcome to U.S. immigration policy regarding Mexican illegals. I am a HUGE fan of legal immigration in part because America is strengthened by the natural cultural diversity that results from immigration and the assimilation of motivated, talented people from all over the world, and also because my own ancestors escaped starvation and slaughter when they came to this great nation. The difference is that they came here to become Americans, as do the vast majority of foreigners who apply for and receive American citizenship. Mexican illegals are here to make money and send it home, not to become Americans. They expect to be Mexicans in Mexico while in America, thereby morphing America to be more like Mexico. Chinese proverb: put a frog into boiling water and it will jump out. Put a frog into cool water and slowly bring it to a boil and the frog will die, not noticing the slow incremental rise in temperature until it is too late. Through negligent immigration practices (which totally differ from our immigration laws), our politicians have de facto allowed and encouraged the chipping away of America and it’s proud culture, and turned the USA into a pot of slowly warming water… |
| Posted by: Hyper 2004-1-9 10:33:41 AM |
| #1 The Arabs were to give France strategic independence from the US. France’s attempt, first through the European Economic Community and now through the European Union to create a unified European foreign policy, in competition with the US and led by France, sees European alliance with the Arab world as one of the primary sources of this strategic independence." So, hows that workin' out for ya Peppi? Lay down with dogs, wake up with fleas. |
| Posted by: JerseyMike 2004-1-9 6:58:21 AM |