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Europe and Israel: Worlds Apart?

[Z Word-American Jewish Committee] Robin Shepherd - Traditionalist hostility to Israel may in part be motivated by a residual anti-Semitism of the "I wouldn't want Jews in my club" variety. But it is also linked to a rejection of those forces - America generally and Israel in the Middle East in particular - that are seen to have upset the kind of old world certainties which are constitutive of the traditionalists' sense of nostalgia. The quasi-feudalistic, traditionalist character of much of the Arab world resonates with old right values in a way that "upstart" Israel never could. There is certainly a sense in which anti-Israelism unites people and ideological viewpoints which feel that they have lost out in the modern world. This may yet include the supranationalists of the EU and their deeply held belief that nationalism is an anachronism. For all across the old continent, the evidence in recent years has been pointing to a revival rather than a diminishing of national (and nationalist) loyalties. The writer is Senior Research Fellow for Europe at Chatham House in London.
2008-05-30 01:00:00
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