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Europe, NGO's & the Middle East:The Ironies and Agonies
By Rabbi Joel
R. Schwartzman
July 14, 2006 (Tammuz 18 , 5766)
In light of all that has happened in the Middle East this week, and of the hostilities which are occurring on Israel ’s northern and southern borders, we have come tonight to voice our fervent prayers to God for the safety of our brothers and sisters in Israel . It seems that every attempt that they have made over the years to live in peace with their neighbors has met with contempt and rejection. Not a people to despair, and blessed or cursed with an indomitable belief that they truly can control their destiny, the Israelis have repeatedly made gestures to live with or separate from their hostile adversaries, all the while demanding their right to a homeland and to recognition of their place on soil that had been promised to their ancestors thousands of years ago. Their assertions have repeatedly been met with an Arab intransigence and will to destroy the state and all its Jewish inhabitants.
Against this background, it is important to realize just how important world opinion is to both sides. Israel ’s great benefactor and protector, the United States , once again vetoed a one-sided resolution in the United Nations this week, while many states of the European Union harshly criticized her for excessive use of power and for over-reacting to what was unwarranted and unprovoked aggression on the parts of both Hamas and now Hezbollah. I, therefore, want to speak on one aspect of the Arab-Israeli conflict this evening, one that has perplexed many of us, especially in light of what we think to be Israel ’s just case for her own survival. I want to talk about Europe ’s approach to the Middle East and why the governments of the EU often strike anti-Israel postures so frequently and stridently.
Probably no truer words could be spoken than that the Europeans see the world differently than we Americans do. According to an interview that I recently read and whose contents and insights I wish to share with you tonight, and in the words of the interviewee, Gerald Steinberg, Director of the Conflict Management Program at Bar-Ilan University :
In Europe there is a dominant social climate where the continent sees itself as ‘postconflict,’ postnationalist,’ and multicultural.’ Another frequently used expression in the discourse is ‘post-heroic.’ Europeans often try to universalize these images by mistakenly applying them also to the Middle East . But they are irrelevant to the ethno-national conflicts in this and other regions…. Europe thus wants to impose its own perceived reality on the rest of the world. In conflict regions, such as the Middle East , this approach can only lead to problems. Zionism is a nationalist movement and not a colonial one. When Israel is forced to confront violence, it cannot avoid a military response without inviting destruction. This attitude is very difficult for Europe to accept since for the European Community to function successfully, nationalism must be constrained and violence avoided. But the European conditions are far from universal.
Many in European politics, academia, the media, and the Non-governmental Organizations (NGO’s) use almost identical semantics. These four elements of society parallel each other, and work together as well, reinforcing each other in the overall attack on Israel . Analysis can start with any one of them. When various European Union representatives and diplomats condemn Israel they use standard vocabulary such as ‘excessive force,’ ‘violation of human rights,’ or ‘violation of international law.’ (pp. 1-2)
Most recently we have seen these words and this analysis corroborated by events on the ground. Only a blind man or one who acted like one could fail to see that once Israel evacuated the Jewish settlements in Gaza , the Palestinians rather than scampering to begin building a viable state for themselves, turned their efforts, under both Fatah and Hamas leadership, but with the aid of many other terrorist organizations, to Hamas’ dream of destroying Israel . Their most effective ploy was to begin firing Kassam and occasional Ketushas missiles from the northern part of the Gaza strip into Israeli territory. The sheer number, over 1000 rockets, have life in the town from which Israel’s Defense Minister, Amir Peretz, comes, S'derot, a living nightmare. So much so, that the residents actually closed down their town to all traffic and demanded, most futilely, that the Israeli government either do something about the constant reign of rocketry terror. Actually, it wasn’t until Corporal Guilad Shallit was kidnapped by Hamas operatives in a shocking attack-via-tunnel at Keren Shalom, where two of Shallit’s fellow soldiers were killed, that Israel turned forces, small in number though they are, are on Hamas and the “militants’…oh, let’s call them what they truly are, “terrorists,” who now not only hold this young Israeli hostage, but continue to send missiles into Israel as far as the 10 kilometers that separate them from Ashkelon, a major Israeli port--the second most important city in producing electricity for Israel’s power grid.
In the beginning of the Gaza operation, dubbed Summer Rain by the IDF, no country in the world criticized Israel , except for the usual Arab carpers…ones including Saudi Arabia , Iran , and Syria . More recently, if you’ve been paying attention to the newspapers and other media, you have begun to hear those European catch phrases I quoted earlier: ‘excessive force,’ violation of human rights,’ and ‘violation of international law.’…this while Shiites in Iran gun down 40 innocent Sunni co-countrymen, and the daily carnage either equals or far surpasses the number of terrorists that Israel has killed in battle throughout their entire Gazan operation.
I wouldn’t bring all this to your attention this Shabbat were it not that, coupled with all that I have laid at Europe’s feet, is the fact that these very same governments often fund various NGO’s who, in the guise of doing good deeds and caring for the impoverished and down trodden, often are major contributors to Israel’s enemies and supporters of rife rhetoric which is both anti-Israel and anti-Semitic. In very much the same way as media outlets like National Public Radio and the BBC often interview the most radical elements of Israeli society, elements which themselves are often anti-Zionist and hostile to Israeli attempts to defend herself, these NGOs also quote the malcontents of Israel who represent anything but the majority voice of the country. Again to quote Gerald Steinberg:
In this environment, it is also very difficult to question the multiple European myths. In view of its history, Europe perhaps cannot even afford an honest debate. Many Europeans are in a postrealist stage. They have an unquestioned belief in the ideas of progress, human and political evolution, and that international law will solve conflicts….This optimistic theory of achieving ‘perpetual peace’ through mutual agreement has become very dominant in Europe.
I hasten to add that the best example of this posture is the way the Europeans have played into the hands of the Iranians, as that country continues its stalling tactics in an effort to enrich enough uranium to build themselves an atomic bomb or two or four or fifteen.
But the most shocking information that I bring to you this evening is that some European NGOs like Oxfam, Christian Aid in the UK, the Geneva based International Commission of Jurists, and Save the Children in the UK and Sweden all demonstrate a highly distorted history of the Arab-Israeli conflict, side with the Palestinians, blatantly and constantly castigate Israel, and tell the Middle East story through a thoroughly distorted lense. There are two other facts about these organizations: they receive a good deal of government funding, and what they collect in terms of their on-scene analyses from the kooks of the Israeli far left and far right gets fed back to their governments and often becomes the basis for their own governments’ distorted policies toward the Palestinians and the Israelis. Indeed, as Steinberg tells us, “Many of the Palestinian NGOs were the prime movers of the anti-Semitic demonization campaign at the Durban Conference [in South Africa ] in September 2001. They introduced and promoted the hate language there. The European Union, and some of its individual member states, has been prime funders of these NGOs.” ( p. 5)
Perhaps, the most disturbing fact that comes from all this is that a major funder of the Durban Conference was our very own Ford Foundation. And, in turn, the New Israel Fund which funds reputedly highly anti-Israel NGOs like Human Rights Watch, Physicians for Human Rights, the Committee Against Housing Demolition, and Betselem , play the game of claiming its own legitimacy because it has received funds from the Ford Foundation. This self serving cycle revolves around just as surely as the Earth does around the sun, and, in a sense, the sun around the Earth. Meanwhile, they feed everyone with Israel ’s sins, claiming that Israel is constantly at fault for violating Palestinian human rights and other egregious acts like trying to protect her citizens from suicide bombers and kidnappers. These are the same NGOs which, I again quote, “played a major role in the UN resolution of December 2003 that brought the issue of the Israeli separation fence to the International Court of Justice. Christian Air, Amnesty, Oxfam and other major human rights organizations demanded, like the EU-funded Palestinian groups, that Israel conform to their version of international law. They never used the words ‘advisory opinion.’”
Now I want you also to know that Gerald Steinberg is not just connected with Bar-Ilan University in Israel ; far more importantly he is also the editor of a website: www.ngo-monitor.org. He is constantly working to remove the veil of non-transparency from the workings of these NGOs and to expose their prejudices, their tactics, their governmental sources of money, and their support, advertent or not, of terrorism in the Middle East . Most importantly, he is exposing the philosophical and political underpinnings of these organizations, how they feed their government sponsors with Arab propaganda, how they villain-ize and demonize Israel at every turn, how they misuse the funds they are honor bound to give to the poor and destitute, how money they do give often winds up in supporting terrorist operations, and how you and I, perhaps, have been duped into giving to high sounding, allegedly charitable operations which demonstrate, under-write and propagate anti-Semitism the world over. There's nothing like giving to those who are out to do you harm!
Ziva and I often walk during the day to get some exercise. These last few weeks, I have given my poor wife an ear full about the viciously ironic position in which Israel always finds herself, in the eye of world opinion. The Palestinians send suicide bombers, and Israel builds a defensive fence which has saved countless Israeli lives and, yes, has cut through some Palestinian orchards but after appeals to the Israeli Supreme Court has often been re-routed. Then, in European media the fence gets called, “ Israel ’s Berlin Wall!” Israel takes the bold step to disengage itself from the Gaza Strip in the hope to move a two state solution forward, and the Palestinians, in the face of vast Fatah corruption, elect Hamas as their government. Hamas, sworn to Israel’s destruction, then turns a green light on the firing of missiles into Israeli kibbutzim, S’derot, and Ashkelon which is but 10 short kilometers away from the Gaza Strip.
At every step to separate from their Palestinian nemeses, it is Israel which receives the criticism, not their violent, vengeful protagonists.
So what, Rabbi, you ask? So, at least, let us be very, very careful what ‘good’ organizations we support with our hard earned dollars. The hardest pill for any of us to swallow would be to realize that the money we have given with the best of intentions is actually being used to foster anti-Semitism or to viciously and unjustly criticize Israel.
Regardless of how much the Europeans and the rest of the world and especially the members of Hamas, Islamic Jihad, Hezbollah and the Iranians themselves might wish it, Israel is not going away. But let us make doubly certain, that in our zeal to correct some injustices in the world, we don’t pile onto what Israel has to face, and what may come back to make our Jewish lives less joyous here in America.
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