The European Union of Dying States has fully embraced its Nazi past:
Last month, the EU distributed a binding directive to all member countries forbidding the financing, giving of scholarships, cooperation, research stipends and prizes to anyone residing in Judea and Samaria and east Jerusalem, Haaretz reported on Tuesday.
According to the directive, any future agreement signed with Israel must include a clause stipulating that the settlements are not part of the sovereign state and are not included in the agreement. It is unclear if and how any Israeli government ministers, including Economy and Trade Minister Naftali Bennett (Habayit Hayehudi) will agree to sign on to any agreement that contains that distinction.
The directive goes into effect on Friday. [Update: not until 2014]
David Kriss, EU spokesman in Israel, confirmed the report, adding that the directive will be published on July 19 in an official EU policy publication. In a statement, Kriss said, “On June 30 the European Commission adopted a Notice containing guidelines on the eligibility of Israeli entities and their activities in the territories occupied by Israel since June 1967 for grants, prizes and financial instruments funded by the EU from 2014 onwards.
The EU’s justification for this boycott is the old “settlements are illegal under international law” argument, which, in the opinion of many competent jurists, is unsound. But many of these jurists are Jewish, and Europe doesn’t put much store in their opinions.
The text of the directive is to be released on July 19, and a lot of things aren’t clear. So I have a few questions to address to the august personages of the EU regarding this:
• Who gave you the right to determine the boundaries of sovereign states?
• What happened to UNSC 242, Oslo, the Quartet’s Road Map, etc., all of which say that borders are to be determined by negotiations between the parties? Do you repudiate them?
• What is an ‘Israeli entity’? Does an individual Israeli Jew count as an Israeli entity? Are you saying that a Jew living in Hevron is not eligible for a scholarship but an Arab is (h/t: NB)? Is this racism or what? [Update: the guidelines do not apply to individuals, only organizations]
• Will you stop making huge grants to anti-state NGOs like B’tselem who operate in the territories? Surely they are ‘Israeli entities’. [Update: no, they won’t stop. They specifically exclude groups that agree with their policies.]
• International law about terrorism is far less in dispute than the status of the territories. Yet you continue to fund the Palestinian Authority, which is ruled by the PLO, whose charter calls for the violent destruction of the state of Israel. You still haven’t declared Hizballah a terrorist entity. What’s up with that?
• Do you have a similar directive for agreements with Morocco, regarding Morocco’s occupation of Western Sahara? Or do EU contracts specify sovereign borders only for Israel? How about Russia’s occupation of South Ossetia and Abkhazia? Or China’s occupation of Tibet and Aksai Chin? Or India’s occupation of Arnuchal Pradesh and Kashmir? Or Armenia’s occupation of Nagorno Karabach? Could there be a double standard? (h/t: AB)
Lest those of us who live in the US feel smug about our government’s ‘fairness’ to Israel, please note that the US Consulate in Jerusalem, which is supposed to provide services in the territories and eastern Jerusalem, also boycotts Jewish residents.
Update [1547 PDT]: The text of the EU guidelines appears here. Just to give you an idea of the flavor of it, item 15 is this:
Notwithstanding points 12-14 above, the requirements set out in section D do not apply to activities which, although carried out in the territories referred to in point 2, aim at benefiting protected persons under the terms of international humanitarian law who live in these territories and/or at promoting the Middle East peace process in line with EU policy.
So yes, they can continue to fund B’Tselem and a whole array of NGOs engaged in subversive activity.
Its official apartheid against Jews – which is in favor in the “civilized” West.
If any one proposed similar restrictions upon the Arabs, they would be quashed.
Both the EU and the US State Department think the key to peace is to legislate the Jews of Judea and Samaria and eastern Jerusalem out of existence.
This Orwellian racism directed solely at the Jews will not bring peace closer.
1) The NY Times states the boycott is between the European Union and Israel,and not between the individual states and Israel. Is this a mitigating factor in terms of the practical meaning of the measure?
2) The Europeans have promoted Arab intransigence, have been a negative factor. But the decisive factor is the Palestinian Arabs themselves and their refusal to strive for peace with a Jewish state of Israel.
3) I do not know what counter moves Israel can make.
4) The Europeans did this on the ninth of Av,probably out of ignorance but perhaps maliciously.
5) I wonder whether this move was Kerry coordinated or perhaps even inspired.
Shalom:
I’m not sure of available Israeli conter-moves, but I have some ideas.
I understand, for example, that Israel is helping Europe with their “Galileo” GPS satellite network.
If it is not too late for such a move to be executed with effect, I’d pull out right away, and as a parting shot, even insert some malware/virus into whatever software has been developed thus far to really muck up this project in the worst way.
I’d find any way I could, through actions of that nature, to make those bastards PAY for this. I know there is a lot of Israeli technology that European firms – firms and governments around the world – are hungry for.
This could cost Israel some business, but that, sometimes, is the “cost of doing business”. Didn’t the Arabs use oil as a weapon? And that is just a commodity, that can be had from many sources (even Israel, today or in the near future). But in many cases, what Israel offers is unique.
But Israel never exacts a price.
Here she is: a sovereign state, that Chinese officials, for instance, have referred to as “the little superpower”. Nuclear armed, first-rate military and computer technology, with ‘secret weapons’ on top of that, according to former PM Olmert, that are “beyond imagination”.
And still, with every insult like this, the “shtetl” mentality remains. “What can we do to make them like us again??” will be the plaintive cry behind the next humiliating round of excuses and apologies that masquerade as policy.
It does little good to make logical, rational arguments based on facts, history, morality, etc. One has to go through this exercise, of course, if for no other reason than to justify to ourselves actions meant to MAKE THEM PAY, but that is as far as it goes.
These Europeans who initiate this nonsense against Israel, these EU officials, they all know their history; they are educated people. They all know about the many other, far more egregious – i.e., GENUINE – “occupations” that have been carried out and which still remain in force to this day in other places. And they don’t give a damn.
All they care about is: a) screwing the Joos; b) appeasing Islamist sensibilities out of fear, and c) taking money under the table from Moslem Petrodollar Pimps.
And the only way to deter them from this crap, is to make it hurt them in ways that make their incentives that I just enumerated above seem like a poor trade off.
One more thing: I’m SURE this was done in coordination with the Obama administration. He has them do by proxy what he cannot YET do in immediate, practical political terms.
But he is ratcheting up the pressure, and there is more to come. Congress is being set up like a bowling pin to be deemed “irrelevant/incompetent” in the eyes of Americans. Already, one hears many mainstream, even conservative pundits here bemoan the “fact” that “Congress can’t seem to do ANYTHING”…even though the PRIMARY problem is the LACK OF PRESIDENTIAL LEADERSHIP.
Another two or three years of this contrived gridlock and Obama can do what he wants to Israel – or can at least do a lot more, and not the nice kind of things – and Congress can piss and moan all they want…a lot fewer Americans will be listening, ‘cuz ‘Congress is incompetent/ineffective/IN THE SWAY OF THE JOO LOBBY, dontcha know.
He’s already got his “team” in place: Hagel, Power, Brennan, Kerry, and now, Robert Malley (!) as Undersecretary of State for Near Eastern Affairs; in other words, this latter fellow is Kerry’s “go-to” guy on the Middle East!!!!
Netanyahu is going to have to be smart, shrewd, and above all, as strong as he can be. I don’t know one way or the other if he is up to this challenge. From here, it seems to me that he is doing a fair job overall standing up to Obama. But more tests are coming. A lot more.
That’s my two shekels on this, anyway.
I’ve read this issue only today, so belated but heartiest compliments to Robman on getting it absolutely right, especially with his remark about the “shtetl” mentality, which has always been particularly strong among Jews here in the UK!