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January 21, 2009
Is Israel Losing the Propoganda War? Maybe Not.
When you see the headlines in our East- and West-coast more liberal newspapers, you would believe that Israel has been “disproportionate” in their response to the Hamas unremitting missile attacks, and as a consequence is “losing the PR war.” However, another dynamic is taking place behind the scenes that is far more important than the ugly street demonstrations. The Christian Science Monitor (January 8th) has picked up on something interesting: they claim that Israel is finding more sympathy in Europe – a major change in 30-year-old European government policies. The Monitor has not been particularly friendly toward Israel over the years, which makes this observation even more important.
For several decades now, the generous European policy encouraging Third World immigration (largely out of need for labor to augment Europe’s shrinking population) has gone unchecked. However, since 9/11, a small number of European writers, out of sync with their leftist elite colleagues, have been sounding the alarm that Europe has permitted an anti-democratic and increasingly violent Islamist population into its midst. European police and security people have taken note and action – but they are unfortunately often countered by leftist judges who prefer to see terrorism as “freedom fighting.” But this too is changing.
Ordinary citizens not enchanted by theoretical liberalism have begun to resent the behavior of these immigrants. They experience the increase of rapes, battery of women, exploitation of generous welfare, and Islamo-fascist propaganda campaigns. Increasingly, the alliance between Islamists and European anarchists (who have nothing in common but their hatred of the U.S. and Israel) has produced street mobs ready to rumble anywhere, which has spread to the U.S. as well.
Serious European leaders are increasingly concerned about this Islamist threat – and seemingly overnight have been throwing their support to Israel in the Israeli/Palestinian conflict. Even more heartening is new staunch support of the U.S. position on this conflict. At least for a while, the European love affair with Barack Obama will make it more acceptable for Europeans and Americans to share values once again.
Even more fascinating is the evolution of change in the leadership of the Arab world, which has for so long used the Palestinian “plight” to distract public attention from their own leaders’ failures. However, as authoritarian as that leadership is, we have finally learned that ill-conceived “democracy” can bring something worse – Hamas and Hezbollah. The Arab world also has cause to fear the growing influence of Iran in the region, with their surrogates in Syria, Gaza, and Lebanon. For the first time since the end of the Cold War, the Enemy of the United States and Israel is their enemy too.
The only holdouts in Europe are the elitists in the universities and in the European Parliament (a revolving door of former government bureaucrats). They talk to each other, and nothing changes. But elsewhere, support for Arabs is way down in the polls. France’s Sarkozy, Germany’s Merkel, Britain’s Brown, and Italy’s Berlusconi are seen as leaning toward Israel. The lone pro-Arab leader is Spain’s José Luis Rodriguez Zapatero, who recently spewed an anti-Semitic triade at an official luncheon.
“There is a general ‘Arab fatigue’ in Europe,” according to Denis Bauchard, an adviser to the French Institute for International Relations in Paris. “The Palestine issue continues, the violence continues, the Palestinians are divided, and it just creates a kind of fatigue.”
“Europe fears an Islamist threat, whether internal or external…” says Aude Signoles, an expert on Palestinian movements at the University of La Reunion in Madegascar. Another specialist, Antoine Sfeir (“Cahiers de L’Orient”) says that European leaders understand the political realities in Israel, the problems of a state attacked by rockets, and the need to protect its citizens.
A number of former leftist intellectuals (including Bernard-Henri Levy) now see Islam as a creeping form of totalitarian ideology moving into Europe. They see that the Palestinian issue is not a conflict about territory; it is a conflict about totalitarian Islamist control of the region – and if they could, the world.
FamilySecurityMatters.org Contributing Editor Dr. Laina Farhat-Holzman is an historian, lecturer, and author who also writes for the Santa Cruz Sentinel. You may contact her at Lfarhat102@aol.com or http://www.globalthink.net/.
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