If We In The EU Undermine Israeli Sovereignty, That Undoes the Holocaust, Right?

by Josep Borell, Chief of Foreign Policy, European Union

Brussels, September 10 – Europe’s unified approach to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict grows in large part out of the Continent’s ambiguous legacy when it comes to the wholesale slaughter of Jews under Nazi occupation during the Second World War. The perpetrators could not have committed atrocities on such a vast scale without the enthusiastic collaboration of local gentiles, and to grapple with the shame that knowledge engenders in these subsequent generations, the many nations the Union comprises have settled on a basic principle: that weakening Jewish control of the ancestral Jewish homeland, through the funding and strengthening of the Jewish State’s existential foes, will somehow negate the evil perpetrated against Jews who should have enjoyed our protection here in Europe.

This approach currently unfolds on two main axes: Palestinians and Iran.

Concerning the Palestinians, European Union policy aims to sever any Jewish control of the places where Jews have their ancient roots, in this case by underwriting and fostering the construction of facilities to establish Palestinian “facts on the ground” in violation of existing Palestinian agreements with Israel concerning the disposition of various areas of respective control. We also maintain steadfast refusal to recognize Jewish claims to Jerusalem, the center of Jewish ritual and longing since ancient times. All this stems from our effort to expunge the sins, both of commission and omission, the weight of which the various peoples of Europe bear as their post-Holocaust legacy.

Our attitude toward Iran also bears the hallmarks of this approach. Empowering the mullahs who hold Holocaust-denial conferences, vow to destroy the world’s only Jewish state, sponsor terrorism against Israeli and Jewish interests all over the globe, and show blatant disregard for all people who stand in the way of their hegemonic ambitions, Jews or otherwise, provides Europe with yet another way to expiate its Holocaust guilt.

Philosophers can quibble over the metaphysical processes by which Europe can undo, to whatever extent possible, its historic shame by following this approach. Speaking for myself and a large part of my constituency, the moral calculus is simple: play up the Jews-are-the-new-Nazis angle in propaganda and political rhetoric; cast the Palestinians as the helpless victims of Israeli aggression, thus inverting the Nazi-Jewish dynamic under the Third Reich (during which the Arab leadership in Palestine sided vociferously with the Nazis and their genocidal policies toward Jews); and then swoop in to rescue the oppressed Palestinians from the new Nazis, and presto – moral carte blanche to be rid of the Jews by whatever means.

Heaven knows we’ll never forgive the Jews for the Holocaust.

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