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Officially, the institutions of the European Union always declare that they are - well balanced - calling upon both sides to hold peace again. But in reading the resolutions, in following the policy of the EU, you know that this is not the case. You have only to see the exhibitions on Israel and Palestine in the European parliament's foyer - where Israel is accused of sociocide and branded as an apartheid state - to know which side the EU is on. While the Israeli side is confronted over and over again with concrete demands and every step of Israel is being commented on and criticised in detail, the PA is only abstractly called upon doing everything possible against an abstract kind of terror. And you can have considerable doubts whether the repeated public demands on the PA are still raised in any informal setting.
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It is an open secret within the European Parliament and the Commission that European Union aid to the PA has not been spent correctly. Everyone knows that the PA created a black budget. After entering and searching the Headquarter of Arafat, the IDF presented a vast amount of material found there. It shows how the PA as an Institution and Arafat as a person are involved in ideological preparation, financial and political support and planning of terrorist acts against Israeli citizens. The government of Israel officially informed the European Commission that the PA misused EU money.
The reaction of the Commission to the material that the Israelis presented was - to put it diplomatically - not very convincing. After all, the responsible commissioner Christopher Patten constantly repeated that there were no grounds. When he did comment on one of the many grounds that he claimed to be non-existent he evaded all concrete accusations, drew absurd comparisons, refuted accusations that nobody had made, explained technical details that had nothing to do with the issue - and all this with the monotonous persistence of a Tibetan prayer wheel. You will excuse me if I do not go into further details - it is not worth it.
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Apart from this, the PA has to divert attention from its responsibility for the living conditions in the Palestinian territories. Not only have PA officials sold food aid so that European cans have not even reached their intended recipients. At this moment, I prefer to remain silent about the rather petit-bourgeois forms of corruption and extortion in which high- and low-ranking officials of the PA engage. To put it cautiously: In view of the amount of aid to the PA it is rather strange that malnutrition and insufficient supply are so widespread in the Palestinian territories. Let me add something: The role of UNRWA, which is the United Nations Agency for Palestinian Refugees, and that is sponsored mainly by the EU, is also very questionable. It is doing everything in order to keep this refugee problem unsolved- together with the Arab states - and it is thus providing the PA with a means to block every serious peace process with the demand for a so-called right to return.
For its war against Israel, the PA has received not protest but rather enthusiastic approval from Palestinian society. This is the result of a true flood of anti-Semitic literature that is published in the Palestinian territories and in all other Arab countries and that sells like hot cakes, among them books like "Protocols of the Elders of Zion", Ford's book about "the international Jews" or Adolf Hitler's "Mein Kampf". Much of this is a contemporary form of Holocaust-Denial-literature from Europe and the US, some of it comprises works from Syrian, Saudi-Arabian, Lebanese or Palestinian writers, among them high representatives of the respective regimes. Anti-Semitic hate talk can be found in newspapers that are close to the government. Anti-Semitic statements are made on national, pan-Arab and international conferences by official student bodies and otherwise respected professors. The distribution of this literature would not have been possible without the benevolent support or at least tacit consent of state authorities as well as of the PA. Similarly, new schoolbooks published by the PA and financed by different European countries are not free of anti-Semitic clichés. Thus, the mental mobilisation against Israel had begun long before September 2000, and there is no evidence that the PA would stop it even if it were to call off the Al-Aqsa-Intifada.
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Thus, we should not lull ourselves into a false sense of security by assuming that these waves of anti-Semitism in the Arab world are nothing but a short-lived flower of war propaganda that will fade away in the wake of eased political tensions. Anti-Semitism is not the result of seeking a scapegoat in time of crisis that vanishes when the crisis is over. It is a widespread world-view and also exemplifies a resentment that can be very useful for different political strategies.
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So, if people talk about a so-called viable Palestinian state, like Commissioner Patten does so often, one has to ask what "viable" really means. Today, anti-Semitism has become an integral part of the nation-building ideology of Palestine. This will not vanish and go away once the economic and social situation of the Palestinian people has improved or once Palestine has become an independent state with defensible borders, more weapons and its own water resources. But this is the underlying concept of the so-called Road Map. This road map is a German invention that is now in a modified version a part of the official policy of the US. The premise of this plan is that all that is missing for real peace is an independent Palestinian state. In this concept, Israel is held responsible for the existence of an aggressive Palestinian nationalism, for the terrorist acts committed against its own citizens, and for the growth of anti-Zionism, anti-Semitism and anti-Americanism all over the world. It was a European success to make this Road Map the official policy of the US government. Before this happened, Israel and the US demanded the end of terrorist acts as a sign of good will from the PA before negotiations could start. Had the PA done this, it would have been a sign that the PA had changed its strategy and wanted to be a real partner in a lasting peace process. Now a Palestinian state is to be built without any conditions to be fulfilled. Israel would be nuts to allow building-up a Palestinian state that could be a threat to the Jewish nation. The Road Map is an attempt to force Israel to do so, and further conflicts will follow automatically. Besides this, the Israelis can do whatever they want — for their enemies it will always be an expression of so-called Zionist imperialism.
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European policy in the Middle East is an important link of European anti-Zionism and Arab anti-Semitism which is as disastrous as it is effective; a coalition that is all the more effective because it is accompanied by an emancipation of the EU from the US. The relationship between foreign policy and mass consciousness is particularly important in the case of growing, openly expressed anti-Semitism.
Ladies and Gentlemen, the open expression of anti-Semitism is still disapproved by the media and the political elite in Europe. If you wanted to express an opinion that Jews are a power that controls the world by money, you would usually do this more cautiously: in the form of criticising Israeli policy, in the form of hints towards a powerful Jewish lobby in the US, through conspiracy- theories about the events of September 11th, or as a complaint about Anglo-Saxon predatory capitalism. None of it is anti-Semitic per se, a few of these resentments are simply a wrong criticism of capitalism but all these ideas can be linked with anti-Semitism and this is why they often succeed in calling up the corresponding pictures of supposed Jewish plans for world domination.
Moreover, this is also important in another sense. In the words of Theodor W. Adorno, anti-Semitism is a form of conformist rebellion, which means an opposition against the current state of society but in the name of ruling values and norms of this very same society . Anti-Semitism is open for an apparent or real approval from above exactly because it supports the idea to be a defender of society against an evil minority. Let us not fool ourselves: even before September 11th, anti-Semitism had not disappeared in Europe. In fact it has been continuously on the rise since 1989. Political developments since then have not only allowed anti-Semitism to grow but also increased the courage of convicted anti-Semites to openly state their prejudices. The connection of anti-Semitism and anti-Americanism has a longer history, but has only now received public legitimation through the new confrontation of the European Union with the USA. This does not mean that this connection would disappear again if there was an official condemnation - even if it was meant seriously; the condemnation would rather convince the adherents once more of the power of the Jews. It might be impossible to convert hardcore anti-Semites, but you can confront them, fight the official approval by the UN and the EU. Nothing strengthens an inhuman ideology such as anti-Semitism in a stronger way than its taking advantage of the reputation of respected institutions and carrying the banner of moral outcry about human rights violations. At the third United Nations World Conference against Racism, which took place from 31 August to 8 September 2001 in Durban, the discussions centred on incitement against Israel. Notably, Israel was the only state that was insulted as a racist state. In the preparatory negotiations, representatives of Jewish organisations were even exposed to physical attacks and in the context of the conference anti-Semitic literature was spread. Only after strong pressure from the US delegation did the conference's final resolution not equate zionism with racism and not omit reference to the Holocaust. The representatives of European states at the conference, on the other hand, did not appear to be anxious about the attempted whitewashing of anti-Semitic history in Europe. If you look at UN resolutions on the Middle East, the permanent one-sided condemnation of Israel, the exclusion of Israel from important UN bodies, the ignorance of the actions of Arab states and the PA, the siding of UN institutions with the PLO like the Day of Solidarity with the Palestinian People - all of it shows that the spirit of the 1975 Resolution that held zionism to be racism has remained the same even if the tone has become more moderate. This official support increases Anti-Semitism because it is not related to an aggressive nationalism but to an institution that is respected worldwide and which pretends to promote peace, understanding and tolerance.
Bearing this context in mind, it is no coincidence that the war in the Middle East is used for a relativization of the Shoah. The Shoah was the realisation of an extermination-threat, which will be part of the world-wide anti-Semitism as long as it exists . This continuing threat is the central legitimation of Israel. If you wanted to question the legitimacy of a defence of Israel against its Arab and Palestinian neighbours on the grounds that Israel is engaged in a defensive fight against an anti-Semitic national project, then you would portray Israel as the real aggressor and you would try to equate the suffering of the Palestinians with the Shoah. This recasting does not bear the light of a reasonable analysis of facts, and in my opinion this is exactly the secret about the immunity against facts and arguments. You can talk forever, pile up facts, bring forward one argument after another, but you will not succeed against the decision to picture the Palestinians as victims.
The greatest danger today is that the globalisation critique, anti-Americanism and anti-Zionism which exist in the heads of millions of people is amalgamated into a common sense that is supported and used by European policy. There is no difference in the consciousness of an average Member of the European Parliament and an average German peace demonstrator and I consider this to be a mixture of naivete, moralism, anti-Americanism, anti-Semitism and anti-Zionism and an altogether serious danger.
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