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Israel Through European Eyes

(Jewish Ideas Daily) Yoram Hazony - Every few months, Israel is publicly pilloried in the international media and on university campuses around the world for some alleged violation of human rights, real or imagined. Whatever the ostensible subject, we know for certain that there will be another campaign of vilification in the media and on the campuses and in the corridors of power - a smear campaign of a kind that no other nation on earth is subjected to on a regular basis. We will again see our nation treated not as a democracy doing its duty to defend its people and its freedom, but as some kind of a scourge. Israelis and friends of Israel can reasonably be divided on the question of whether the withdrawal from Gaza in 2005, or the parallel withdrawal from the security zone in South Lebanon in 2000, was really in Israel's interests. But one thing about which we can all agree, I think, is that these withdrawals did nothing to stem the tide of hatred and vilification being poured on Israel's head internationally. Whatever it is that is driving the trend toward the progressive delegitimization of Israel, it is a trend operating more or less without reference to any particular Israeli policy on any given issue. The modern State of Israel was founded, in terms of the understanding of the international community, as a nation-state, the state of the Jewish people. And the birth of Israel was followed by the establishment of dozens of additional independent states throughout the Third World. But now the nations of Europe have established a new paradigm in which the independent nation-state is seen by many intellectuals and political figures in Europe as a source of incalculable evil. Thus the new paradigm understands Israel, and especially the independent Israeli use of force to defend itself, as illegitimate down to its foundations. The writer is founder and provost of the Shalem Center in Jerusalem.
2010-08-27 08:20:34
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