THINK THERE: Israel and Europe – what went wrong?

The EU is still Israel's largest trading partner, the source of much of the valuable research funds flowing into the country, as well as the cultural and cultural base. intellectual property of a large part of the Israeli population. I dare to add that I have no doubt that if he ever set himself up, Israel could rely much more on Europeans than on his new "friends" in Russia, India, Japan, Africa and Saudi Arabia. to arrive at his ends. However, to listen to these last few days some Likud leaders – including Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu, Homeland Security Minister Gilad Erdan and Energy Minister Yuval Steinitz, one has the impression that Europeans – or more exactly the members of the EU – are our greatest enemies, who seek our destruction. Well, not all – not Hungary, Romania, the Czech Republic and Austria, who participated in the celebrations of the opening of the US Embassy in West Jerusalem at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs , and two of which are planning to open embassies. their own in our capital for the foreseeable future.

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Netanyahu is furious with the Europeans, who "condition their relations with Israel, which produces technology in all areas, on political conditions" (as he has said to the leaders of the four members of the Visegrad Group Hungary, Poland, Czech Republic and Slovakia – in July 2017), including Israel which halts the development of Jewish settlement in the territories, posing a threat to the two-state solution that the EU supports. Netanyahu is also frustrated by the Europeans, who insist on supporting the nuclear deal signed with Iran in July 2015, even though they admit that this is not an ideal deal.

Erdan accuses the Europeans of funding organizations that, among others, support the BDS (as well as the United States, Australia and some other non-European states). Steinitz was furious at the EU's attempt to intervene in the case of the Arab-Israeli center director of Massawa, Jafer Farah, who allegedly was beaten by an Israeli policeman while he was in detention , after the violent demonstration in Haifa during the skirmishes along the Israel-Gaza border on May 21, during which 62 Palestinians were killed. "Let them (the Europeans) go a thousand times to hell," said Steinitz on May 23.

Yes, I know that Europeans – especially Liberals and Social Democrats among them – can be difficult in their approach to Israel. And yes, they expect Israel to act in accordance with international law in general and human rights principles in particular at a time when Israel seems to be moving away from these rights. They remember that since the beginning of Zionism and until recently the Zionists, and later the Israelis, acted in Eretz Yisrael through international agreements based on international law, even though religious Jews still believed that the earth was ours. Today, it is the last argument that Europeans hear for example the Minister of Education Naftali Bennett, the Deputy Foreign Minister Tzipi Hotovely and the Chairman of the House Committee Knesset Miki Zohar, while Israel insists on its own interpretation of international law. , which does not quite match what the majority believes this law says.

Depending on how the overwhelming majority of states in the world, and in Europe in particular, perceive international law, the presence of Israel in the territories that it occupies June 1967 is an occupation, not a release, and all legal means can be used to take it out of these territories on the basis of an evil agreement also provided to the legitimate security concerns of Israel. Such legal means may include sanctions against Israel, although the EU insists on sanctions – including a boycott – only against Jewish settlements in the territories and those who support them economically. No European state is talking about boycotting Israel as a whole or acting for its destruction.

With few exceptions, Europeans refuse to move their embassies to Jerusalem until the status of Jerusalem is settled by agreement – not by unilateral Israelis. or US stocks, and certainly not on the basis of the argument that Jerusalem is the eternal capital of the Jewish people, where two Jewish states and temples were built and destroyed in 70 years each time (at the time of the war). the time of King David and King Solomon, and at the time of the Hasmoneans).

All Zionist Jews believe that we have strong bonds with this land, and especially with Jerusalem, but we do not all believe that we have a religious right, rather than an internationally recognized right to be here as long as we do not neglect the rights of others could have, and especially those of the Arab inhabitants of Palestine.

Basically, people like me can understand European positions and even sympathize with most of them. The problem begins when positions legitimately held by Europeans are actively promoted by anti-Semites, and / or people who ignore basic historical facts.

There can be no denying that there are among the Europeans, and even among some of their leaders, people who have anti-Semitic views and who would not want to go into mourning if the state Jewish ceased to exist.

But ignorance is the worst enemy. For example, I wonder what most European leaders would say if they are asked how many people – Jews and Arabs – have been killed as a result of the war between the two since 1947. How many know that more Muslims have been killed in Syria since the civil war that erupted there in 2011, that has been killed in all the wars, campaigns, terrorist attacks and operations "behind the lines" between Israel and the Arabs (Palestinians and others) since 1947? In addition, more people were killed in the former Yugoslavia in the early 1990s when this miserable state collapsed and its various national components began to wither.

Or another example. If you ask European leaders why there is no Palestinian state today, how many will answer that in principle, in 1947, the Arabs of Palestine and the neighboring Arab countries refused to accept the UN partition plan of November 1947 and develop a state Palestine – and preferred to trigger a total war to prevent the creation of the Jewish state? Of course, there are other reasons why a Palestinian state has not emerged since the late 1980s, when the PLO adopted a more pragmatic agenda, and the politics of the Palestinian state. Israel is among them, but it is still the Palestinians who are most responsible.

However, after all this, the current wave of Europhobia in the Israeli government is not really justified by the facts and the situation, and in the longest running – especially after the American President Donald Trump no longer resides in the White House, and a more rational and healthy return has returned to American politics – we could find ourselves "in front of a broken hollow" (to borrow a Hebrew proverb), just when we need to "get out of it." a salvific drink of water.