US Review of Falklands Exposes Euro Hypocrisy

When several NATO allies failed to cooperate with the Iran war, the Pentagon launched a review of, among other things, the UK’s sovereignty over the Falkland Islands, the subject of a war between the UK and Argentina in 1983 that, despite the Monroe Doctrine, the US did not prevent the UK from undertaking.

In the context of the Iran war, this might look a bit petty. While completely blind to the way they are insulting the US, British leaders have spoken out according to the BBC report, “Liberal Democrat leader Sir Ed Davey has once again called for the King’s upcoming visit to the US to be cancelled.’This unreliable, damaging president cannot keep insulting our country,’ Sir Ed said.”

Well, Sir Ed, we have survived your volatile governments (including the one who didn’t outlast a head of lettuce) and condescension, so I’m sure you’ll be fine too.

But in the broader scope of European policy towards Israel, it reveals an enormous hypocrisy. To be clear, I believe the Falklands belong to the UK because the people who live there want to be part of the UK. “A 2013 referendum among the island’s 1,672 eligible voters saw all but three voting to continue as an overseas territory, on a turnout of more than 90%.” The expired claims of the Spanish Empire as inherited by the Indian-genociding Argentina don’t really matter.

Indeed. And the majority of Israelis support Israel’s existence! And yet Israel is marked by these same countries as a colonial experiment that must be unwound. Not the Falklands or Gibraltar for that matter. Yet Spain continues to do business with the UK, even if they want their tourists gone. Spain hasn’t recognized a Gibraltarian two-state solution or demanded that the UK relinquish its sovereign territory on Cyprus.

Nor has Spain itself “freed” its African holdings that sit like warts on Morocco. France continues to hold territory worldwide. The sun never sets on France. The anger over having its Sykes-Picot privilege checked and being excluded from the Lebanon-Israel peace process is delicious.

Spain is the king of the brand of hypocrisy, have effectively exiled or arrested leaders of the Catalonian independence movement, which has popular support in that region of Spain. Yet from the Pyrenees to the sea, Catalonia is not free.

Western Christendom is surely familiar with the phrase “let he is without sin cast the first stone,” yet at every chance the sinners line up to cast those stones at the only Jewish state.

The outrage they take at being reminded of this makes it worth pointing out. If mentioning these things is off limits among friends, then, by all means, don’t mention them.

Of course we know your internal politics demands you do in what is itself an example of population change. The demographic shifts in Europe this century are numerically no more drastic than they were in Mandatory Palestine.