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Jewish World Review June 1, 2007 / 15 Sivan, 5766 As Europe self-destructs By Caroline B. Glick
Wednesday's decision by Britain's University and College Union to call for a boycott
of Israeli universities and colleges was not only hypocritical. It was suicidal.
It is not simply that the British prefer to boycott Israeli universities than say,
Palestinian, Egyptian, Syrian, Iranian, Saudi and Jordanian universities where
students are indoctrinated to seek the annihilation of the Jewish people and the
subjugation of Christianity through the destruction of Western civilization.
It is not merely that they ignored the poor, brave Iranian students who just three
weeks ago were brutally attacked by regime forces as they sought to hold elections
for their pro-democracy campus organizations.
By calling for a boycott of Israeli universities, Britain's academic establishment
is turning its back not only on Israel, but on Britain. When Britain's professoriate
rejects Israel's right to exist as a Jewish, democratic nation-state and glorifies
Palestinian society which supports global jihad and the destruction of Western
civilization, they are rejecting the British state.
They are embracing a culture founded on a rejection of the culture and traditions
that have formed Britain since the Magna Carta was issued in 1215. For the past 800
years, Britain has stood for individual liberty and freedom of inquiry - at least
for the British themselves. In universities like Oxford and Cambridge, it was this
humanist spirit and the justified national and cultural pride it nurtured which
facilitated Britain's rise to international power. By boycotting Israel, which
itself embodies these British ideals, the British are abrogating their own
traditions of openness. Consequently, they are destroying themselves.
And Britain is not alone in its self-destruction. Britain's rush to oblivion is part
of a wider trend overtaking all of Western Europe. Take Sweden for example.
Sweden is upheld by leaders of the Israeli Left like former foreign minister Shlomo
Ben-Ami, (who now devotes himself to attacking the US and Israel from his academic
perch in Toledo, Spain), Education Minister Yuli Tamir, Defense Minister Amir
Peretz, Meretz chief Yossi Beilin, and former Labor chairman Avrum Burg. They extol
Sweden as a social democratic wonderland which Israel must emulate.
12.5 percent of Swedes are immigrants and around half of Sweden's immigrants are
Muslims. Muslims will soon comprise the majority in many of Sweden's cities.
The intrepid Scandinavian blogger 'Fjordman' recently penned an essay, "Jihad and
the collapse of the Swedish model" in the online Brussels Journal. In it he relates
the significance of Sweden's Integration Act of 1997 to Sweden's national
self-destruction. The act officially proclaimed Sweden "a multicultural society."
Notes to the act stated, "Since a large group of people have their origins in
another country, the Swedish population lacks a common history. The relationship to
Sweden and the support given to the fundamental values of society thus carry greater
significance for integration than a common historical origin."
As 'Fjordman' explains, the act was nothing less than national suicide. "Native
Swedes have… been reduced to just another ethnic group in Sweden, with no more claim
to the country than the Kurds or the Somalis who arrived there last Thursday. The
political authorities of the country have erased their own people's history and
culture."
Fjordman cites authors Jonathan Friedman, Ingrid Bjorkman, Jan Elfverson and Ake
Wedin who explained in their 2005 book Exit the People's Home of Sweden - The
Downfall of a Model of Society, that multiculturalism, as the "dominant ideology in
Sweden, which has been made dominant by powerful methods of silencing and
repression, is a totalitarian ideology, where the elites oppose the national aspect
of the nation state."
The authors explained that "the problem is that the ethnic group… described as
Swedes implicitly are considered to be nationalists, and thereby are viewed as
racists."
Like the totalitarian ideologies of the twentieth century, multiculturalism
identifies the Jews and the Americans as its chief enemies. Both must be defeated
for their refusal to destroy themselves and merge into the post-national thought
stream. And like their 20th century predecessors, the multiculturalists of today
embrace radical Muslims who share their rejection of Judaism and Americanism.
The multiculturalists convince their societies to accept their own destruction by
indoctrinating their fellow citizens through their education systems and media. A
recent poll of Swedes between the ages of 15-20 showed that 90 percent had never
heard of the Soviet gulag.
Needless to say, the consequences of this state of affairs are not localized to
Europe. As they do towards their own people, the European elites work tirelessly to
subvert American and Israeli cultural confidence and to undermine every action the
two nations take to combat the forces of global jihad. Whether by condemning the US
incarceration of jihadists at Guantanamo Bay, claiming that Zionism is racism,
attacking the US campaign in Iraq, financing Israeli anti-Zionist pressure groups
and the Palestinian Authority, or insisting that Iran should be negotiated with, the
EU works to compel the US and Israel to stand down rather than defend themselves and
to convince American and Israeli societies that we are unworthy of being defended.
Disturbingly, rather than face-up to Europe's self-destruction and give it a wide
berth, led by our own post-national elites, Israel and the US are adopting the
European model of cultural collapse.
The most recent example of the Israeli elites' subversion of their country is
Attorney General Menachem Mazuz's assault on the Jewish National Fund.
Since it was chartered by Theodor Herzl in 1901, financed by donations from Jews
throughout the world, the JNF has purchased land to promote settlement of the land
by the Jewish people. The JNF owns some 2.5 million hectares of land.
In 1961, the JNF signed an agreement with the Israel Lands Authority which
authorized the ILA to manage JNF lands in accordance with the JNF charter. In 2004,
the anti-Jewish Arab Israeli pressure group Adalah petitioned the Supreme Court
demanding that the ILA enable non-Jews to settle on JNF lands. Adalah alleged that
by acting in accordance with the JNF charter, the ILA discriminates against Arabs.
Rather than reject Adalah's claim on its face, or at a minimum cancel the 1961
agreement and enable JNF to manage its own lands, Mazuz sided with Adalah. Last week
he ordered the JNF to stop operating in accordance with its charter. That is, Mazuz
effectively and with no legal authority, expropriated the property of the Jewish
people.
In so doing, the Attorney General of the Jewish state essentially decided that
Zionism is a form of racism and that the Jewish people have no special rights to the
Land of Israel. No doubt the Swedes are proud of him.
The Olmert government has likewise embraced the European model of national collapse.
Rather than defend Israel's citizens from our enemies and cultivate the Jewish
character of the state, the government seeks to appease the Palestinians, the
Syrians, the Egyptians and the Europeans at the expense of Israel's citizenry.
At the invitation of successive Israeli governments, Europeans forces are deployed
today in Hebron, in Gaza and along Israel's northern border with Lebanon. These
European forces have done nothing to prevent the Palestinians from arming, training
and attacking Israel. Along the Lebanese border, since last summer's war, the
Europeans have similarly done nothing to prevent Hizbullah from rebuilding its
arsenals and reasserting its control over southern Lebanon.
And this is to be expected. As Europeans perceive their interests, they are better
off appeasing the Arabs and the Iranians and condemning Israel and the US for every
step we take to combat the forces of global jihad committed to our destruction.
Rather than acknowledge this reality and work to remove the Europeans from our
midst, the Olmert government is exacerbating the problem. In recent weeks, the
government has asked the Europeans to increase the size of their forces along the
Gaza-Egypt border. Thursday Minister for Strategic Affairs Avigdor Lieberman
recommended that NATO forces be deployed in Gaza. Similarly, Minister Rafi Eitan and
far-left Meretz MKs Zahava Gal-On and Avshalom Vilan are calling for Arab League
forces to be deployed to Gaza. Gal-On and Vilan envision the Arabs and the Europeans
jointly take control over Gaza. For his part, Eitan is recommending that Arab armies
deploy to Judea and Samaria as well.
In the US, the situation is depressingly similar. At leading universities,
professors and students who openly support Israel and the US campaign in Iraq are
hounded and isolated. In keeping with the general anti-American and anti-Israel
gestalt on college campuses, last year Harvard University invited former Iranian
president Muhammad Khatami to speak on campus. Harvard ignored Khatami's stewardship
of the Iranian nuclear program during his tenure. His role in violently quelling the
student democracy movement in 1999 and 2003 was similarly overlooked.
The Bush administration's foreign policy has likewise been Europeanized. Five years
after President George W. Bush placed Iran and North Korea firmly in the axis of
evil, the State Department is working overtime to appease them both. In line with
this policy, on Tuesday, Iran's announcement that it had arrested five US citizens
and is charging them with espionage was greeted by embarrassment and paralysis in
Washington. Just the day before Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice had dispatched
the US ambassador in Baghdad to meet with his Iranian counterpart.
The US's treatment of North Korea is perhaps even more dramatic. Rather than abandon
its appeasement policy towards Pyongyang after the North Koreans breached their
commitment to close their nuclear facility at Yongbyon in April, the Bush
administration has redoubled its efforts to placate the Stalinist dictatorship. Not
only did the US have little to say about the North Korean short-range missile tests
over Japan last week. It sent its emissaries to Beijing this week to attempt to buy
North Korean compliance with its breached commitment by unfreezing Pyongyangs's bank
accounts in Macau. The US treasury froze those accounts when it discovered that they
were being used to launder profits from counterfeit US currency and drug deals.
Then there is the US's refusal to abandon pressure on Israel to appease the
Palestinians. At a time when jihadists from Iraq have panned out to Lebanon and
Algeria and are actively working to overthrow those countries' governments, Tuesday
Rice claimed that the Palestinian conflict with Israel is "at the core of a lot of
problems in the region."
During the Cold War, protected by the US military, Europeans could embrace cultural
and national suicide without fearing the consequences of their actions. Now faced
with those consequences, the Europeans have embraced their own destruction rather
than abandon their multicultural model and its concomitant anti-Americanism and
anti-Zionism.
Israel and the US do not have anyone else to defend them. And in spite of the
rantings of their cultural, media and academic elites, the Israeli and American
people have no interest in committing national suicide. In light of this, both
countries must move swiftly to end the Europeanization of their cultures and
policies.
JWR contributor Caroline B. Glick is the senior Middle East Fellow at the Center for Security Policy in Washington, DC and the deputy managing editor of The Jerusalem Post. Comment by clicking here.
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