EU Rewards Israel for Starving Gazans, Expanding Illegal Settlements

By Khalid Amayreh

xpis.ps, December 13, 2008

On Monday, 8 December, European Union (EU) foreign ministers decided to boost relations with the apartheid state of Israel.

The decision opens the way towards a first-ever EU-Israel summit in the coming months, perhaps during the Czech Republic’s presidency of the bloc, in the first half of 2009.

The EU will also consider inviting Israel to participate in the civilian missions linked to its security and defense policy.

Czech officials have pointed out that upgrading EU-Israeli relations  will be one the Czech Republic’s  main priorities when it takes over the EU presidency from France in January.

Immoral decision

The plainly immoral  decision came as a surprise, not because the EU is a paragon of virtue and morality, but rather because Israel has been behaving and acting very much as a Nazi state would. Hence, the decision can only be viewed as a cheap appeasement and expression of political promiscuity.

Indeed, it is very hard to think of a single positive factor justifying this grave blunder on the part of the EU.

Israel, after all, is continuing to steal (they use the term expropriate or confiscate) Palestinian land in the West Bank and East Jerusalem on a very large scale in order to build thereon for-Jews-only colonies at the expense of the native Palestinians. This policy alone  is irreversibly killing  whatever  prospects there still are for the creation of  a viable and territorially contiguous Palestinian state.

Israel is also accelerating the process of institutionalized theft of Arab property and real estate in East Jerusalem, effectively making the Palestinian dream of making the city the capital of the contemplated Palestinian entity a far-fetched fantasy.

In the West Bank,  the Israeli government is allowing Jewish terrorists and  thugs, euphemistically called settlers, to terrorize innocent Palestinian civilians and vandalize their property. The recent outrage  in  the southern West Bank town of al-Khalil (Hebron), which Israeli leaders themselves described as “pogrom,”  was only an epitome caricaturing a fast-metastasizing  cancer resembling in certain ways  developments in Germany prior to the outbreak of the Second World War.

And the criminal outrage in Gaza which actually defies linguistic description.!!` Indeed, how can EU leaders be completely blind to the slow-motion genocide being carried out against 1.5 million helpless human beings  by Israel in close coordination  with some other regional and international players?

We are talking about a real-time holocaust being perpetrated before our eyes  at the hands of the holocaust children, their children and grandchildren.

True, gas chambers and ovens are non-existent in Gaza. However, Gazans, children and adult alike, are forced to die on a daily basis because of malnutrition, lack of proper medical care, contaminated water and a host of other preventable illnesses resulting directly or indirectly from the Nazi-like siege imposed for the third consecutive year  on the Gaza Strip, a territory that has been transformed into the world’s biggest open-air prison.

Indeed, if  Europe thinks that Israel is justified in starving Gazans, then Europe and the west in general should stop  making all these hypocritical denunciations of the Third Reich and Nazism.

Or, at least, admit that the holocaust was diabolical, not necessarily  because it was evil per se,  but rather  because  Jews were its victims.

In other words, Europe and the West in general  should  perhaps declare that  the holocaust would have been viewed entirely differently had its victims been non-Jewish.

I am posing these questions because the EU is almost indifferent to what is happening in Gaza as entire generations of people are being crushed by a merciless blockade aimed at punishing them, to the point of death,  for electing a government that refuses to recognize the legitimacy of Jewish-Nazism.

Insult to Arabs

There is no doubt that the EU decision to upgrade relations with Israel despite the latter’s pornographic oppression of Palestinians and grave violations of the  human and civil  rights of non-Jews in Palestine-Israel is a brazen insult to the so-called “moderate” Arab regimes who may be thinking  that  by savaging their own people and succumbing to Israeli dictates, they  will gain respect in the capitals of Europe.

For these regimes, the EU decision should be a wake-up call. However, it is amply clear that these “moderate” leaders are too bereft of dignity,  self-respect and national honor to understand the meaning of the European decision.

In the occupied West Bank,  PA leader Mahmoud Abbas ordered his henchmen to  arrest and torture  thousands of Palestinians to appease and please Israel and the West.  Abbas has likewise  vowed to crush all opposition, including peaceful opposition,  to the Israeli occupation, so much  so that he received several certificates of good conduct from Israeli leaders who are mostly certified war criminals.

In recent months, Abbas’s American-financed and trained forces raided and ransacked  hundreds of charitable and other institutions all over the West Bank, closing them down, to prove to Israel and the Bush administration that he is capable of fighting  "terror" efficiently.

A few weeks ago, as Palestinian civilians were being assaulted and terrorized by genocidal Jewish terrorists (settlers) in the Hebron and Nablus regions, the commanders of Abbas’s forces undertook to keep the forces in their barracks.

One of the leaders answerable to Abbas was quoted as saying that “even if settlers attacked us, we wouldn’t fire back at them.”

Hence, how can any reasonable person expect the EU,  or the world at large,  to show any modicum of respect toward such people and  leaders  who have no dignity of their own or respect for their masses?

In fact, the EU is acting within the normal order of things as far the Palestinian Authority is concerned. A few months ago, one of the highest ranking PA military commanders told his Israeli “colleagues”!!! that “we (the PA and Israel) are allies, with a common enemy,” an allusion to Hamas.

Well, if Israel is a  PA ally, then helping Israel should also benefit the PA.

The same can be said about Egypt, a country of nearly 80 million people rendered nearly  impotent by a decadent tyrant  who prefers to enjoy the   legitimacy that comes from American, Israeli and European acceptance than the  legitimacy that comes from the Egyptian masses.

This is the regime that  has been complementing and perfecting the Nazi-like Israeli siege to Gaza for the purpose of obtaining a certificate of good conduct from the outgoing Bush administration, the very administration that a majority of US citizens are now glad  it will finally be consigned to the dustbin of history. 

And how about the Saudi dynasty, which has been currying favor with Israel by preventing Gazan pilgrims from traveling to Mecca to perform  the annual  pilgrimage and by  organizing  so-called “inter-religious conferences”  which everyone knows are aimed at normalizing relations with the Zionist regime via the back door. So, why would Europe respect a Saudi leadership that has since time immemorial been  sacrificing Arab and Muslim dignity in order to please America so that  the House of Saud will remain in power for as long as possible.

Thanks to their cheap enslavement by the US and the West,  tyrannical Arab regimes may gain a few more years in power. However, they should remember that their place in history will be no better than that of the disgraced Shah of Iran or King Faruq of Egypt.

The great  Arabian poet Zuhair Ibn Abi Sulma wrote more than 1450 years ago that “waman la Yokarrim Nafsaho la yokarrami.” (He that doesn’t respect himself shall not be respected by others.”