Here are some excerpts from a speech by Ilka Schroder, a Green MEP. I had better make it clear, in the (probably vain) hope of forestalling misunderstanding, that I do not endorse everything in what Schroder says. There’s no evident sense in what she says of Israel’s great share of responsibility for the conflict. Nonetheless, if what follows is accurate, then it needs to be publicized:
Officially, the institutions of the European Union always declare that they are – well balanced – calling upon both sides to hold peace again. But in reading the resolutions, in following the policy of the EU, you know that this is not the case. You have only to see the exhibitions on Israel and Palestine in the European parliament’s foyer – where Israel is accused of sociocide and branded as an apartheid state – to know which side the EU is on. While the Israeli side is confronted over and over again with concrete demands and every step of Israel is being commented on and criticised in detail, the PA is only abstractly called upon doing everything possible against an abstract kind of terror. And you can have considerable doubts whether the repeated public demands on the PA are still raised in any informal setting.
…..
It is an open secret within the European Parliament and the Commission that European Union aid to the PA has not been spent correctly. Everyone knows that the PA created a black budget. After entering and searching the Headquarter of Arafat, the IDF presented a vast amount of material found there. It shows how the PA as an Institution and Arafat as a person are involved in ideological preparation, financial and political support and planning of terrorist acts against Israeli citizens. The government of Israel officially informed the European Commission that the PA misused EU money.The reaction of the Commission to the material that the Israelis presented was – to put it diplomatically – not very convincing…
When the first accusations were raised that European funds might have been used to create a black budget for the PA to finance its war against Israel, I started an initiative to establish an inquiry committee in the European Parliament. There was a lot of resistance against the establishment of such a committee. No matter that over 170 of my colleagues joined the initiative: it has pretty much failed. The European Parliament does not intend to verify whether European taxpayers’ money could have been used to finance anti-Semitic murderous attacks.
This is also to the point:
For its war against Israel, the PA has received not protest but rather enthusiastic approval from Palestinian society. This is the result of a true flood of anti-Semitic literature that is published in the Palestinian territories and in all other Arab countries and that sells like hot cakes, among them books like “Protocols of the Elders of Zion”, Ford’s book about “the international Jews” or Adolf Hitler’s “Mein Kampf”. Much of this is a contemporary form of Holocaust-Denial-literature from Europe and the US, some of it comprises works from Syrian, Saudi-Arabian, Lebanese or Palestinian writers, among them high representatives of the respective regimes. Anti-Semitic hate talk can be found in newspapers that are close to the government. Anti-Semitic statements are made on national, pan-Arab and international conferences by official student bodies and otherwise respected professors. The distribution of this literature would not have been possible without the benevolent support or at least tacit consent of state authorities as well as of the PA. Similarly, new schoolbooks published by the PA and financed by different European countries are not free of anti-Semitic clichés.
And there is a long section towards the end of Schroder’s speech on the spread of anti-Semitism in Europe. This should be read and taken seriously. There can be legitimate differences of estimate as to just how far this poison has now spread, but that it is spreading I think there are more than enough reasons to fear. (Hat tip: Anthony Cox.)