Douglas Murray Nails The European Union's Double Standards

To quote a current report by the Guardian's Middle East editor (who needless to say is no friend to Israel):

"EU governments have agreed to list the armed wing of Hezbollah as a terrorist group because of concerns over its activities in Europe. But the EU ignored pressure from the US and Israel to ban the Lebanese organisation outright, allowing contacts with its political representatives.

Monday's decision by EU foreign ministers came after months of wrangling between member states, who needed to agree the ban unanimously. William Hague, Britain's foreign secretary, said the move would not harm European or UK relations with the Lebanese government....

The British ambassador to Lebanon, Tom Fletcher, said on Twitter that the EU's blacklisting of Hezbollah would not affect dealings with its political wing."

This European Union snub to Israel (for an in-depth analysis of what lies behind it see here) follows closely, of course, upon the EU's decision regarding settlements.

The latter has inspired that young British prophet for our time, the admirably courageous and prescient Douglas Murray, to note that the EU, which has acted so punitively towards Israel, has "has full, if not fawning, diplomatic and trade relations" with a number of countries involved in border disputes.

He points out that "what makes the EU's latest double-standard even more delicious is that the occupied island of Cyprus is actually a member of the EU," which might therefore be expected to take a close interest in the fact of its occupation, but does not.

Writes Murray:

"The northern part of Cyprus has been illegally annexed for the last four decades by Turkey. It is not as though Turkey shares a border with the island. Nor does it have -- as Israel has with the West Bank -- any legitimate historical, political or other territorial claims on the northern part of the island. There is no security reason for Turkey to sustain its occupation, as there is an obvious need for Israel to have defensible borders that do not permit terrorists from the West Bank to fire rockets into Israel, as do its friends in post-disengagement Gaza or southern Lebanon.

But unlike Israel and the West Bank, the Turkish invasion of Cyprus is not even a disputed matter. It was certainly not some understandable territorial gain made after aggressive war waged by Greece. It was outright theft -- an annexation: state terrorism. The entire international community recognizes it as such. Yet in 2013 not only is Turkey not an enemy of the EU, and not only is it a country which enjoys complete diplomatic and trade relations with the EU, it is a country which many leading members and officials of the EU actually want to promote into a full member-state of the EU.

Into the fifth decade of Turkish occupation of Cyprus, there is still no serious dictating by the EU to Turkey over what it must do about northern Cyprus. Turkey does not find itself under even the most remote international pressure finally to disengage from its illegal occupation of the northern part of Cyprus. And that is because for some inexplicable reason the EU does not consider it imperative that Turkey should disengage from the illegal occupation of an EU member state. It does not consider that the future of any region depends on this action. Yet it does persist, even now, with its view that it can dictate to Israel about its borders. And that it can have a constructive role in doing so. Of all the fallacies of the EU, that is surely the topmost."

Read all of Douglas Murray's article here