With support from the University of Richmond

History News Network

History News Network puts current events into historical perspective. Subscribe to our newsletter for new perspectives on the ways history continues to resonate in the present. Explore our archive of thousands of original op-eds and curated stories from around the web. Join us to learn more about the past, now.

Bat Ye'or: Europeans Ar e Adopting the Arab Vietpoint--And Not By Accident

Bat Ye’or, at frontpagemag.com (July 27, 2004):

Last Tuesday, the 25 nations of the European Union (EU) voted unanimously to support a United Nations Resolution condemning Israel’s defensive fence (ignoring that this barrier was constructed to keep jihadist murderers from entering the nation via Judea and Samaria). The EU’s craven, morally bankrupt stance was sadly consistent with Eurabian policies evident now for three decades. In fact, the EU has been completing a slow metamorphasis into the "Christian" arm of the Pan-Arab world, different in religious observation (or lack of same) but united in its views of Israel and America.

The European Community (EC), and later the EU, has been aligned with Arab policy regarding Israel and the United States since its June 1977 declaration. Disruption of the Western alliance by separating Europe from America, and the piecemeal destruction of Israel were the pillars of the Euro-Arab alliance that gave birth to Eurabia. The formation of this tactical alliance can be traced clearly to a document issued 24 years ago. Prompted by fears of Khomeini's Shi’ite theocracy in Iran, international Arab terrorism and the rise of oil prices, the EC adopted the 1980 Venice Declaration. This declaration made clear that the EC, under French leadership, had adopted Pan-Arab conditions regarding Israel without qualification, including: the 1949 armistice as Israel’s legitimate borders; Arab sovereignty over East Jerusalem; an Arab Palestinian state; the recognition of the PLO as the sole representative of the Palestinians, as well as its participation in all negotiations, and the obligation of Israel to negotiate with Arafat, exclusively; and the refusal to recognize a separate peace between Israel and any Arab country, for the resolution of the "Palestinian problem." By adopting all those conditions (which contradicted UN Resolution 242) Europeans could in turn justify their ahistorical designation of Judea and Samaria as occupied Arab land. Ultimately, the entire European effort to delegitimize and vilify Israel hinges upon this inaccurate, disingenuous formulation. In the 1970s and 80s, the Communist bloc and the burgeoning Euro-Arab alliance granted international legitimacy to the denial of Israel’s rights by the PLO. France, and to a lesser extent Germany, directed the entire European Community foreign policy in accord with Arab-Islamic sentiments. A careful reading of the Venice Declaration (1980), the Fez Islamic Conference (1980), the Amman Arab Summit (1980), and the Taif-Mecca Islamic Summit (1981) reveals the similarities between the European and Arab positions in relation to Israel. Europe’s modified wording is just a fig-leaf.

This subterfuge allows the EU to pose as a “neutral” agent between Israel and the Arab world and to retain a role in the peace-for-terrorists-process. At the Durban circus in September 2001, European representatives tried in vain to conceal the anti-American and anti-Semitic animus that permeates Eurabian policies, most visibly through the collusion of Eurabian and Arab NGOs. And again, during the recently completed International Court of Justice proceedings in The Hague, Eurabian judges employed similar tactics but joined their colleagues from the Muslim world in finding Israel’s anti-terrorist barrier “illegal” (and thus denying the Jewish state its legal right to self-defense).

Beyond a fleeting awareness, the overwhelming majority of Europeans and Americans do not understand the new Eurabian entity, which only the first step in a steady progression toward its Arabization and Islamization. Europe has evolved from a Judeo-Christian civilization, with important post-Enlightenment/secular elements, to a "civilization of dhimmitude," i.e., Eurabia: a secular-Muslim transitional society with its traditional Judeo-Christian mores rapidly disappearing.

This evolution of Europe has been duplicated internally within every EU country. This deliberate, comprehensive process has taken place through several means: the control of Middle Eastern Studies departments at European universities, and the re-writing of historical textbooks; allowing Euro-Arab bodies to screen cultural exchanges and publications relating to Islam and the Arab Muslim world for unwelcome content; taboos imposed on issues related to immigration and Islam; disinformation campaigns demonizing Israel (and America), while fostering a comprehensive and “brotherly” alliance between EU and Arab League countries on the political, economic, cultural, and social levels; and the servile obedience of the EU's mainstream media to all these initiatives.

Most recently, this program of Euro-Arab symbiosis has been codified in a detailed report entitled, “Dialogue between Peoples and Cultures in the Euro-Mediterranean Area.” Released last October, this report (whose contributors included Umberto Eco and Tariq Ramadan) was to establish complete interdependence between Europe and the Arab-Muslim world. Romano Prodi, President of the European Commission, established the High-Level Advisory Group which stated the aims, policies, and routine functions of the foundation. The Advisory Group mandated that the foundation have complete financial and administrative independence in managing its budget and in choosing its partners. In support of this remarkable request, the Advisory Group argued that the foundation needed considerable resources to cover its activities that would be extraordinarily expensive, as they will encompass all the countries of the EU. The Advisory Group further justified such conditions by invoking its lofty aim, which “is nothing less than peace itself.” And this “peace” -- accomplished through “brotherly love” and “dialogue” between the North and the South of the Mediterranean -- will be achieved by a total economic, political, and cultural fusion.

This May (2004), the EU followed this report up by accepting the creation of the Euro-Mediterranean Foundation for the Dialogue of Cultures, named after Anna Lindh, the Swedish minister murdered by a deranged man. Lindh was a staunch defender of Arafat and advocated an economic boycott of Israel by the EU, a policy long desired by Eurabian politicians. Not surprisingly, the Anna Lindh Foundation draws inspiration from the spirit of Edward Said, the late dhimmi ideologue bent upon subverting Western culture, and values. The Anna Lindh Foundation endeavors to fight what it dubs “Fortress Europe” on Arab immigration issues, and to establish a totalitarian academic structure which alone will be entitled to teach and publish material on the Euro-Arab Mediterranean. It will also monitor the texbooks and university curricula for all of the EU. Moreover, the Foundation promotes the vision of a unified Euro-Mediterranean world where people are not even defined as being from the North or the South, (terms considered too provocative as they might evoke visions of a once-Christian North and a very Muslim South). The Euro-Arab continent will instead be populated by an amorphous mass called only “Us,” without acknowledged ethnic, national, or religious features. In reality, Europe is creating a gigantic Muslim community, or “umma,” which is also inhabited by an anonymous (and precipitously dying) European dhimmi population.

One can choose to ignore it, but Eurabia is a tangible entity. Eurabia has a discernible historical development, and its functionaries are now well entrenched in each European parliament, and at the head of the European Commission. Often Javier Solana merely parrots the Arab League's Amr Moussa, or the Palestinian Authority's Yasser Arafat. Hence Solana's parrots the pan-Arab refrain that no reforms can be achieved in any Muslim country before the settlement of the Arab-Israeli conflict, reiterating the same fatuous statements made by Amr Moussa. The EU continues to proclaim that all negotiations must be conducted with Arafat alone and that the Middle East conflict is at the center of world politics. Those two assertions were repeated endlessly at the Fez, Amman, and Taif Summits (1980-81). The EU’s unlimited funds finance anti-Israeli and anti-American campaigns, as well as the "dialogue" industry. Regarding Israel in particular, it appears as if the EU has become the obsequious mouthpiece of the Arab League.

This Eurabian ethos operates at all levels of European society. Its countless functionaries, like the Christian janissary slave-soldiers of past Islamic regimes, advance a jihadist world strategy. Eurabia cannot change direction; it can only use deception to mask its emergence, its bias and its inevitable trajectory. Eurabia’s destiny was sealed when it decided, willingly, to become a covert partner with the Arab global jihad against America and Israel. Americans must discuss the tragic development of Eurabia, and its profound implications for the United States, particularly in terms of its resultant foreign policy realities. Americans should consider the despair and confusion of many Europeans, prisoners of a Eurabian totalitarianism that foments a culture of deadly lies about Western civilization. Americans should know that this self-destructive calamity did not just happen, rather it was the result of deliberate policies, executed and monitored by ostensibly responsible people. Finally, Americans should understand that Eurabia’s contemporary anti-Zionism and anti-Americanism are the spiritual heirs of 1930s Nazism and anti-Semitism, triumphally resurgent.