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Opinion | Israel's Europe Complex Israel today

2021-10-25T14:01:36.388Z


For Europe, the recognition of Israel comes as compensation for the Holocaust • But its existence, in turn, gave rise to a sense of responsibility for the Nakba in the European consciousness.


Angela Merkel's successful visit to Jerusalem ended in a jarring remark.

In her own words: "I am in favor of a Jewish democratic state, but the existence of this state must be guaranteed in the long run. Once Israel is entitled to its own state, the Palestinians have the right to live (so she said) and determine their future." The accusation of "apartheid," one of the politically correct synonyms for "racism." This association raises the question: Should a conditional recognition of Israel be understood from it?

We are touching here on the sensitive point of Western countries. They do feel guilty about the existence of Israel, the very existence of which allegedly caused the Palestinian catastrophe: the Holocaust against the background of the Nakba. The guilt stemming from the Holocaust, while fueling a special interest in Israel, but it mainly cultivates a sense of debt towards the Palestinians that binds the European Union, without any pragmatic or strategic consideration, such as an order coming from its unconscious. In a recurring movement, this feeling generates an imperative directed towards Israel, which is required to adapt its behavior to its status as a state whose existence is conditioned more humanitarianly than it is charged with sovereignty. Europeans see it as the humanitarian camp of Holocaust survivors, and this is their condition for recognition of the country: a humanitarian party.

But there is a condition for that guilt-ridden recognition, which demands that Israel never deviate from its role as a "victim of the Holocaust," that it never fully exercise its sovereignty.

This is the intention inherent in the "proportionality" argument raised by both France in the Security Council and by Western public opinion in order to curb Israel's right to self-defense, by virtue of the Palestinians' principled innocence.

As if to say: "You are not legitimate in principle, you are facing not enemies who plan to destroy you, but victims for whom you are responsible and for whom you must. At most you will be allowed to carry out police action against unarmed civilians, but not a military response against an enemy who wants to destroy you."

And it works.

Everything has been telling us for several years that the IDF has lost the will and the vision to defeat the enemy as long as Gaza and Hezbollah pose a death threat to it.

The syndrome of the European Union is therefore based on European guilt thrown at Israel on the basis of the equation "Israel = compensation for the Holocaust". This equation generates another comparison: "Israel = Nakba". Subsequently, these two equations generate a double commandment: the commandment that rests on Europe towards Israel, and the commandment that rests on Israel towards the Palestinians. When this logic is not realized, the equation is reversed: then Israel is identified with the Nazis and the Palestinians are identified with the Jews of the camps, while Europe is blamed for becoming a very painful and "moral" observer in this drama. In a sense, Israel can not wear IDF uniforms except under the striped shirt of the camps.

The European memory of the Holocaust is not what Jewish memory is (or should be), much less Israeli memory.

The magic formula of European politics "two peoples, two states" serves only the mental comfort of Europe.



Samuel Trigno is Professor Emeritus at the University of Sorbonne.

His book "The Borders of Auschwitz" was published in 2016 in "Wrestling"

Source: israelhayom

All news articles on 2021-10-25

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