There’s no escaping Middle East politics. Here I am, living in Denmark, as it struggles against a Muslim boycott and attacks on its citizens across the Arab world. The newspaper Jyllands-Posten published a series of cartoons showing the Prophet Muhammad, among other things, with a bomb fuse attached to his turban. The paper has apologized for giving offense. But Muslim critics go beyond the legitimate complaint that the cartoons conflate Islamic terrorism with the religion itself. They demand that Danes relinquish their right to free expression and abide by the Muslim proscription against any depiction of the Prophet. The support of immigrant and Danish-born Muslims for the boycott has shocked the indigenous Danes out of their naivete. They have discovered that their generous immigration policies and their pro-Palestinian politics have not rendered them immune to attacks from the Muslim world, and that those attacks have the support of many Muslims in their own country.
I do not feel schadenfreude: I like these people too much. But I am glad to see them finally losing their innocence. In the meantime, buy Danish. (Not the pastry.) Havarti, Danish Blue, and Samso cheeses and other Danish dairy products, Anton Berg chocolate, Tuborg and Carlsberg beer, Aquavit and Cherry Heering, Danish herring, Georg Jensen tchatchkes. (And of course Danish ham….)
As the West scrambles to adjust to the Hamas sweep in the Palestinian territories, commentators predict everything from the group’s conversion to moderation, to barrages of rocket fire from the West Bank. Both the European Union and the U.S. find themselves in a predicament. They have endorsed democratic elections and accepted the results, but must square this with their commitment not to support a terrorist organization dedicated to the destruction of a sovereign state. What to do then with funds promised to the Palestinian Authority, since these promises were predicated on the acceptance of a two-state solution? Israel is in a similar predicament: withhold revenues collected from Palestinians, since they may go for mortars and suicide belts?
As usual, one must balance that which is justified: cutting off aid, with that which is rational: trying to make a bad situation better, not worse. Only the most obtuse can believe that contacts between Western nations and Israel and Hamas are not occurring. And to give the devil his due, some Hamas leaders are speaking in more moderate tones. Nevertheless, the West and Israel cannot simply pretend that things are OK and fork over the money, with Hamas making no concessions.
Will the Europeans and the U.S. pressure Hamas to moderate not only its words, but its deeds? The U.S. has little credibility anywhere anymore. Suppose Hamas cannot quickly improve social services, and decides to distract the Palestinians by attacking Israelis? How can the president who has distracted America by taking it to war on false pretenses lecture Hamas on its behavior?
As regards the Europeans, living here tends to heighten my paranoia about them. Certainly they cannot be asked to meet a higher standard of non-contact with Hamas than that met by Israel itself. But it is hard to forget that in a poll just a few years ago, the majority of Europeans voted the Jewish state “the greatest threat to world peace.” This was the result not just of the occupation, but of decades of propaganda by the European Left, in and out of government, equating Israel with Nazi Germany and apartheid South Africa. Indeed, the extreme and not-so-extreme Left in Europe remains unreconciled to Israel’s existence. (In this they are joined by such Americans as “Munich” screenwriter Tony Kushner, famously quoted as saying, “ I wish modern Israel hadn’t been born.”)
Among the European states, beleaguered Denmark is far from the worst culprit in anti-Israel bias. Nor is much-criticized France the worst. That honor goes to Norway, with its on-again-off-again boycotts by labor unions and government officials. This from a country that banned Jews from its soil until well into the 19th century, sent 50% of its Jewish population to Auschwitz, and for decades resisted compensating the survivors for the stealing of their houses and property by their neighbors. One decent Norwegian official eventually overruled the compensation commission’s decision to deny reparations.
On the brighter side, the number of anti-Semitic incidents in Western Europe continues to decrease, according to the Jewish Agency for Israel. Some of this may well be due to the general decrease in violence between Israel and the Palestinians; some is surely due to embarrassed European governments finally cracking down.
The news from Latin America isn’t quite so good. This Labor Zionist strongly desires to support the leftward shift there: democratically elected leaders committed to decreasing the class divisions exacerbated by U.S. sponsored free-market “neo-liberalism.” But then there’s Brazil’s Vice President Jose Alencar, who as candidate for the office in 2002, called for Israel to be eradicated and the Jews transported to Europe (nosing out Iran’s Mahmoud Ahmadinejad by three years.) Alencar later apologized; the Jewish Telegraphic Agency noted, somewhat understatedly, “Many Jews saw Alencar’s apology as politically motivated and insincere.”
And there’s recently elected Bolivian President Evo Morales, who chose to tar traditional enemy Chile thus: “The United States wants to convert Chile into the Israel of Latin America.” Maybe he’s been snorting too much of his country’s major export, but his offhanded use of Israel as a measure of perfidy is more than worrisome.
Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez in a Christmas Eve speech dispensed with even the pretense that any of this was about Israeli policy: “The world offers riches to all. However, minorities such as the descendants of those who crucified Christ have become the owners of the riches of the world.” (He now claims that he meant wealthy elites, not Jews. The president of the Venezuelan Confederation of Israelite Associations has said that he believes Chavez’s remarks were not anti-Semitic. Wow, that’s a relief.)
What to make of this? Harold Pinter inadvertently gives us a clue in his Nobel speech, with its vitriolic, bilious, and often depressingly accurate description of U. S. policy in Latin America: “…you infect the heart of the country,… you establish a malignant growth and watch the gangrene bloom.” A depressingly accurate description of the words of Alencar, Morales, and Chavez.
But just when I begin to waver in my leftist convictions, the Right comes through. The French newspaper Liberation reports that the far-right Identity Bloc party has taken to feeding the homeless. The menu: pig soup. That greatly decreases the probability of homeless members of guess-which-two groups partaking of this repast. And a good thing too, since it comes with a strong dose of xenophobic propaganda.
The hungry homeless in France may have no choice. But as for the Identity Bloc: well, you are what you eat.
