The Carmis’ book has great merit in exposing Europe’s ongoing war against the State of Israel since its independence. The authors recall long-forgotten data, such as the British sale of arms to Jordan and Iraq in 1947 when they were on the brink of invading Israel; the British officers who led the Arab Legion against the nascent Jewish state; the French arms boycott of Israel during the Six-Day war (1967), taken to the European level over the Yom Kippur war (1973). A chapter deals with Palestinian terrorist strikes in Europe during 1968-87, showing how they triggered a European policy of appeasement and rewarded the culprits. The authors provide many facts related to the permeating and vociferous European anti-Semitism.
Europe induced Israel into the Oslo accords, as if Yasir Arafat and his European backers really sought peace. Israel’s efforts for peace turned into bloodshed, providing Europe with a high-level moral and acrimonious posturing against the victims while exonerating the terrorists. The authors reproduce several newspaper articles published during the intifada related to Europe’s funding of the Palestine Liberation Organization and its partiality toward Palestinian attacks on Israeli civilians. They quote the indignant denial of EU anti-Semitism by Javier Solana, EU foreign policy chief, and by Chris Patten, EU external relations commissioner, which add cynicism to a war of hate. The hostile and biased attitudes of U.N. institutions and the deliberate misinterpretation of U.N. texts are mentioned with their lethal consequences worldwide.
A short chapter on the Vatican’s relations with Israel summarizes the papal obstruction to Zionism from the late nineteenth century to a more balanced approach by Pope John Paul II. The Carmis quote author Amnon Lord, who described the emergence of a transnational system, modeled on the Stalinist regime, which encompasses the U.N., human rights organizations, and the media and is focused on hatred of Israel and the promotion of the Palestinian cause. The authors wish to end on an optimistic note, but evil has gone on for so long under the guise of virtue that a change seems doubtful. Anti-Semitism has become part of Europe’s banal political culture. The War of Western Europe against Israel offers an easy read and provides much information. Its main weakness lies in a reliance on the reproduction of press articles and opinion pieces rather than providing an independent assessment of the EU’s political and economic strategy toward the Middle East.
