The European World View

Submitted by Gary Vineberg (United States), Jul 29, 2002 at 02:50

After much thought, I've concluded that the divide between Europe and the U.S. vis a vis Israel (among other issues) is often due to a European world view that is quite different from our own. In some important ways, it is closer to that of the Muslim Middle East.

It seems paradoxical to many North Americans that the native French, just for one example, can be both hostile to Israel in foreign-policy terms and anti-Arab domestically. But why not? Beneath the leftist, anti-Jewish traits in European society, there is a traditonal view that Europe is Christian, the Middle East is Muslim, and the Jews have no business upsetting this arrangment by asserting their national aspirations. The Arabs aren't the only ones who remember the Crusades.

Christian Europeans may be more tolerant of Jews and other religious minorities today, but Muslim Arabs were more tolerant 800 years ago. (How soon the Europeans have forgotten that without Nazism and fascism, there might not have been the urgent need for a Jewish state.) Unlike the United States, Europe does not truly subscribe to religious pluralism; if it did, would the British Prime Minister select the Archbishop of Canterbury? Further, with the exception of the English-speaking countries, radical ideologies have given liberal democracy a run for the money in the West, which can thank America for the benevolent governments of today.

In short, the Europeans don't share our perspective that countries should either be pluralistic and multicultural, or carve out some space for those peoples who are unwelcome as equals. Hitler solved their "Jewish problem," so now the goal seems to be preventing the Muslims' agitation over Israel from disturbing the comfortable way of life in Europe.

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