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

"The Greatest Threat To Peace In The World Today Is The Iranian Regime": Shimon Peres (video)

Addressing the European Parliament, the Israeli president implores the European Union, and indeed the international community generally, to treat Hezbollah as the Iranian proxy terrorist threat that it is, and reaffirms his support for a Two State Solution:

(JewishNewsOne video)

"European Governments Must Move Now To Stigmatise Hezbollah & Its Activities, Vision & Goals"

It sure gets around: the Hezbollah flag on display in Sydney

The Times of London's sister newspaper, the Sunday Times, bungled badly when it carried, on Holocaust Memorial Day of all days, an ill-conceived anti-Netanyahu cartoon by Gerald Scarfe that's been widely compared to a blood libel.  But the centre-right Murdoch press is at core soundly pro-Israel, and yesterday's Times carried a robust op-ed by two of Europe's most prominent political figures, José Maria Aznar and David (Lord) Trimble.

Both founders of the splendid Friends of Israel initiative, the Spanish former prime minister and the Northern Irish former first minister caution against the perception that Hezbollah's activities and influence are confined to Lebanon or that its political and military wings are separate from one another.

They deplore the unwillingness of some European Union member-governments to consider Hezbollah a terrorist organisation:

 'Jihadi terrorism is still alive and, as events in Mali and Algeria show us, poses a direct threat to us. The turmoil in North Africa reminds us that jihadism has no boundaries and that when confronting terrorism it is always better to prevent it rather than deal with its consequences....

[S]ome European governments are not willing to declare Hezbollah a security threat and put it on the EU terrorist list. This refusal is based on a misunderstanding of the nature of the group. Hezbollah is not just a Lebanese militia group and political party. It is the long arm of Iran. From its conception by Tehran in 1982, it has been committed to the revolutionary goals of the international expansion of Shia Islam, as dreamt of by the Ayatollah Khomeini....

[H]ezbollah has a global vision and reach. It has perpetrated attacks in places as distant as Argentina, Georgia, Israel, Thailand, Turkey and Saudi Arabia, as well as Lebanon....

Hezbollah is committed to violent revolution. It sees itself as being in total confrontation with our way of life. The idea that engaging Hezbollah through the Lebanese political process and institutions would moderate it has proved to be a dangerous illusion. And today it is actively intervening in Syria on behalf of Bashar Assad; we will know soon about the atrocities conducted by its militants there....

 According to Israeli intelligence, Hezbollah’s arsenal of 10,000 rockets was halved by the war [of 2006]; but today it has been expanded to five times the original figure despite the UN mission. 

As Iran gets more nervous about the impact of sanctions, the possibility that Tehran may counter-attack through its terrorist proxies has to be considered more serious by the day.... Putting Hezbollah on the terrorist list will diminish its ability to serve the sinister purposes of the ayatollahs in Tehran. ...

Hezbollah is already present and active on European soil; its illegal activities and networks cover the continent. It has shown that it is willing to strike in Europe. That is why European governments must move now to stigmatise Hezbollah and its activities, vision and goals...."

(The Times article is behind a pay wall, but the full text appears here)


Meanwhile, still on the subject of the European Union, the Palestinian Ma’an News Agency, which is funded by it, the British, Dutch, and Danish governments, and by UNESCO, has been hosting an antisemitic article authored by Sawsan Najib Abd Al-Halim, who says, inter alia:

".... Historically, it is known that the lives of Jews have always been war and fighting. The only reason for this is that they have been outcasts in every corner of the earth, and not one nation in the world respects them, for they cause strife, and scheme everywhere they settle. We know that they have been defeated in every war they have fought throughout history, and they have been dispersed in every direction, but Allah’s curse upon them and his fury at them cause them to continue with their transgression and tyranny....

Psychologically, they have been defeated through the ages and feel inferior to the nations and societies in which they live, because of the hostility and evil rising in their hearts towards others and for their plots and schemes against the nations who know with certainty that the Jews are the root of conflict in the world, wherever they reside....

Therefore, the only way we can deal with them, when we are weak militarily compared to Israel’s power, is to stick to the threat to annihilate Israel, not to submit to its [Israel's] desire for a cease fire, and keep the flame of resistance burning. Rather than [violently] resist and then back off somewhat, whereby we give them the impression that we are afraid of them. There is nothing wrong with our sitting with them to talk, but the resistance must always continue...."

For more on that, click here