Many European policies are being reconsidered. Those pertaining to the Middle East and Israel should be no exception.
I submitted the following remarks to the European-Israeli Dialogue (EID) which took place in Berlin on September 2011 :
1. Over the past four years, Europe has realized how frail and unfunctional it is in many fields, including what hitherto looked as its major achievement : economics, finance and the single currency. It has accordingly engaged in a major reassessment of its former policies and a wide effort to redefine its options regarding the future.
2. The two fields where Europe has not undertaken any serious reexamination in spite of growing difficulties are the demographic and immigration issues on the one hand, and international relations and defence/security matters on the other hand.
3. Demographic and immigration issues are affecting European politics in many ways, from a growing non-European and more specifically Islamic Middle Eastern and African leverage on European elections and political debates to a surge of extreme xenophobic or racist parties all over the continent. In a frightening development, Islamic Middle Eastern and African immigration first contributed to a reawakening of crude antisemitism in Europe, including among the ethnic European population ; and then elicited a neoracist reaction that ironically targets both Islam and Judaism.
4. Regarding defence/security matters, Europe has been largely passive in front of at least four threats : Russia’s return as an authoritarian and imperialistic power ; the so-called Arab Spring and its outcome, Islamist Winter ; the rogue regime in Iran ; the rise a neo-Ottoman and semi-Islamist Turkey.
5. Instead, Europe clings to mantras from a previous period, like the importance of exacting ‘concessions’ from Israel, including ‘a return to the 1967 international borders’, in order to settle the Israeli-Palestinian issue.
6. Clearly, it is time to address these various issues in a more realistic way and to set a more relevant order of priorities.
7. It should be remembered that Euro-Israeli relations are in fact no so much about the relations between the European Union or the European countries with the State of Israel than about the global relationship between Europe and the Jewish people, and Europe identity as a Judaeo-Christian civilization.
© Michel Gurfinkiel, 2012