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The EU’s propensity for self-harm is mind-boggling

100,000 civilians have been slaughtered in the ongoing Syrian civil war, and another 2.8 million – that’s 2,800,000 people – have been rendered homeless, refugees in their own state or having abandoned everything and fled to neighbouring countries such as Turkey, the Lebanon and Jordan.

The 10-million-strong Coptic Christian minority of Egypt suffered unspeakable atrocities at the hands of the Muslim Brotherhood under Morsi’s rule. Now the Islamist Morsi has been swept aside by popular sentiment (and army support) and the Egyptian civilian population is not only in political turmoil – statistics reveal that almost 15 percent of Egyptians have had to cut back on their basic food intake in a country that is collapsing politically, economically, industrially, agriculturally, morally and socially. During the 4-day revolution last month several hundred women were brutally raped in Cairo and elsewhere, some by Morsi supporters who objected to the presence of women in public places, the rest by anti-Morsi activists who celebrated their exuberance over Morsi’s removal with “recreational rape”.

In Somalia and elsewhere female genital mutilation is still practised routinely, often with fatal results – and that’s before we even consider the psychological effects on the survivors. The Taliban are increasing their presence and gaining credibility in Afghanistan, with offshoots in countries like Pakistan and elsewhere. Saudi culture still embraces the enslavement of black Africans and non-Muslim “guest workers” from overseas. The Iranian regime still routinely hangs shoplifters, gays and political dissidents in public squares. Hizbollah still reigns with impunity in the Lebanon, expanding its terrorist fiefdom there and coercing opponents into scared silence. The Egyptian army has sealed Egypt’s border with Gaza, smashing some Hamas tunnels under the border and flooding the remainder with raw sewage, drowning Palestinian Arabs like rats. The EU-funded Palestinian Authority still routinely names roads, schools and public buildings in honour of mass-murderers – even when these roads, schools and public buildings are constructed with EU funding. The Islamist Turkish regime still illegally occupies Northern Cyprus – and Cyprus is a full-fledged EU member state.

And while all this strife in the Muslim world is going on, the EU manages not to comment on, deal with or even acknowledge any of the above. Instead, it manages to focus on the world’s sole Jewish state – Israel. In a move that was both malicious in the extreme and grossly lacking in sensitivity, coming as it did on the anniversary of the date on which the Jewish Temple in Jerusalem was sacked and Hitler formally ratified his project for the industrialised extermination of world Jewry, the EU announced that it has unilaterally decided on the borders of Israel and that parts of Jerusalem, including the Western Wall (the site of the Temple), will henceforth be classified as being located in “Palestine”.

The EU’s reasoning is crystal-clear: since the Arabs succeeded in illegally making Judea and Samaria judenrein back in 1948, following their illegal ethnic cleansing of all Jews from eastern Jerusalem and cities such as Hebron, this is now to be regarded as the norm. The Arab ethnic cleansing, while illegal, succeeded, and any attempt by Jews to regain their former homes is instead regarded by the EU as illegal. Understand this clearly: if you succeed in your crime, you get to keep the loot.

Because of the success of the Arabs’ ethnic cleansing back in the 1940s, the EU has decided that this shall be enshrined in something the EU mandarins mistakenly refer to as ‘international law’. They are wrong, of course; international law does not transform the disputed territories into occupied territories, and it does not rebrand the successful Arab ethnic cleansing of the territories as acceptable. That illegal act of ethnic cleansing is what caused the territory to be disputed in the first place, and no amount of unilateral EU map-drawing is going to change the law.

The EU’s propensity for disregarding unpleasant truths while falling back on that tired old chestnut of Jew-baiting is insulting, pathetic – and set to be really, really expensive. Because once Jewish industries in Judea and Samaria dismiss all their Palestinian Arab workers in accordance with the EU directive and replace them with Israeli and other workers, that will massively increase the unemployment rate in the Arab sector of the nascent “Palestine”. The EU, which has decided to play idiotic mind games with the livelihoods of Palestinian Arab workers, will have to step in to make up their economic shortfall, depleting an already ravaged EU economy. All so that Catherine Ashton and her fellow-tsars in their air-conditioned offices in Brussels can bait the Jews, using the livelihoods and jobs of hard-working Palestinian Arabs as a baseball bat against the Jewish state.

Catherine Ashton’s move served her personal political goals, but it has benefited neither the Palestinian Arabs – who will now dig in their heels even further and refuse to negotiate – nor the Israelis, who feel increasingly embattled and will not give an inch. How it is possible for so much economic incompetence and political venom to be embodied in one single person defies description. In true EU style, she will no doubt be promoted to a new job in Brussels or, better still, UN headquarters in New York.

 

About the Author
Served as deputy chair of the West Sweden branch of the Sweden-Israel Friendship Association. Written three political thrillers about Sweden-Israel-Gaza in The Hart Trilogy: "Bridges Going Nowhere" (2014), "The Threat Beneath" (2015) and "From the Shadows" (2016), where the action switches seamlessly between Samaria, Gaza, Israel, Sweden and Iran. Work has started on a fourth book, "Picture Imperfect".