The West, Europeans in particular, are reaping the bitter harvest of their racism and colonialism: They are stuck in their impotence at dissuading or deterring the barbarity of the Jews against the Palestinians because of their own barbaric anti-semitism over centuries against their Jewish populations. If they dare tell Israel to stop, they will be immediately silenced by the red herring of antisemitism.
As a result they continue to blindly support the Israeli carnage and ethnic cleansing of Palestine, and in doing so, they are trashing all the "values" they suddenly discovered after the last three major wars in Europe (1871, 1914, 1939). Prior to that, Jews were considered vermin and the peoples of the global south were all savages and good candidates for imperial colonialism.
There is little doubt that Israel is a "European" colonial construct, now recuperated by the United States. Most leading Israelis are of German and East European ancestry. Israel is allowed to field teams at European sports meetings and competitions. The Israeli elite speaks perfect English and other European languages. And in fact, Israel was for the many decades of its existence a product of European colonialism, what with Theodore Herzl's Austro-Hungarian roots and the English Lord Balfour's Declaration. The founders of Israel were all European Ashkenazi settlers and illegal migrants to Palestine. The Sephardi Jews (Arabs, Persians and North African) came later: They had been leading happy peaceful lives for centuries embedded in their societies of the Middle East and North Africa, until the Jewish Agency and its Zionist recruiters began harassing them to move to Israel after the birth of the country.
In my own experience growing up in a Levantine capital, our pharmacist was Jewish, three of my teachers were Jewish, our neighbor across the street was a Jewish banker by the last name of Lahti. One after the other, they would come to my father (who was a school principal) and tell him that the Jewish Agency is paying them lots of money to move to Israel and they could not refuse. The newly fabricated Jewish state needed the demographic advantage over the Palestinians, and so the Zionists propagated all the lies they could about non-existent Arab progroms against Jews, with the objective of populating the state with human cattle to replace the ethnically cleansed Palestinians and make the artificial country more Jewish than Arab.
Zionist propaganda - Hasbara - has been telling the world that the Arab and Persian Jews were persecuted and had to flee to Israel. It's all lies. There are still thriving Jewish communities in Morocco, the Arab Emirates, Egypt, Iran, Tunisia and elsewhere. Why have they not been progromed? Persecuted? Why do they not "flee" their homelands for Israel?
Europe also has been swamped by millions of its "citizens" from its former colonies. A large contingent of these new Europeans is Muslim. Having sowed hatred and racism across the globe, the Europeans are reckoning with their history. With their devastation of Palestine using their own Jewish victims, they have mounted Muslims against Jews. Their large Muslim populations are a tinderbox of unrest and anti-Israeli sentiment on account of the carnage in Gaza.
In reaction, and apparently losing control of the situation in France and Britain in particular, the Europeans have almost converted to Judaism trying to appear more defenders of the Jews than the Jews themselves. Yet, their antisemitism problem did not arise from their Arab, North African and Muslim immigrants. European antisemitism has a long history deeply rooted in the Roman Empire and medieval Europe and all the way to the militaristic ultra-nationalisms of 19th century Europe.
Today's European antisemitism is deeply entrenched in the white European supremacists of the new right: Neo-Nazis and the like. The rising number of antisemitic attacks in France, for example, is the product not of Muslim immigrants but of radical white supremacists with nostalgia of Nazi collaborationist France of World War II. It was French security and police that carried out the massive roundups and deportations of Jews during WWII. To this day, both the French Communist party and the rightwing Rassemblement National remain ambiguous about their racism and antisemitism.
In other words, when pushed by remorseful guilt-burdened Europeans to face their brutality, the Israelis remind the Europeans of their antisemitism, such that what is fundamentally a problem of international colonialism becomes a local problem of antisemitism. Having been sacrificed in its land and its people by the European colonial creation of Israel, Palestine is again sacrificed in its soul by reducing its tragedy to one of European antisemitism.
Europe should have the courage to face its demons. Yes, it should continue to fight antisemitism, but not at the cost of persecuting another innocent people, the Palestinians.
Combating antisemitism should not be made at the expense of seeking justice for the Palestinians. Unlike most Europeans and westerners who do not live near Jewish people or interact with them, Palestinians have been physically living with Jews for the past 100 years; they've come to know a lot more about them than your average European for whom antisemitism remains an academic exercise.
In Lebanon, and despite many miserable periods of violence, Christians and Muslims live together and interact on a daily basis in every aspect of their life. Unlike Israeli Jews who have chosen a path of violence and exclusion against their fellow Muslim Palestinians, Lebanon's Christians have from the start sought accommodation with their fellow Muslims by sharing power. Lebanon's problems today have less to do with internal communal or religious divisions and more to do with antiquated tribal and feudal forms of governance that invite interference from outside players like Iran and Saudi Arabia. You'll find corruption in both Christian and Muslim leaders and politicians. Religious leaders of both communities continue to reject a laicization of the affairs of state, as is the case with the civil status that is still the exclusive domain of the religious establishment. Most politicians in both communities are beholden to the religious establishment which is very conservative and continues to resist any change to the status quo.
Europe should not be afraid of confronting Israel for its barbarity against the Palestinians that has nothing to do with the native antisemtisim on European soil. Even before the Hamas attack last month, Europeans, especially Germans, were only beginning to admit that the major threat to their security was from the native white neo-Nazis and not from Islamists on their soil. By amalgamating PAlestinian National Resistance with Islamism, Israel has succeeded in scaring westerners and justifying its barbarity and continued colonial rape of Palestine.
Will sound minds have the courage to express themselves honestly into the ears of the Israelis who are pretexting anger and revenge to continue stealing land and expelling indigenous Palestinians from their native land? Will antisemitism continue to be the scarecrow with which to cover up for the ongoing rape of Palestine?
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