Author: Bat Ye'or
Publication: FrontPageMagazine.com
Date: February 21, 2003
URL: http://www.frontpagemag.com/Articles/Printable.asp?ID=6262
The pro-Saddam Hussein European
manifestations of February 15th that brought millions into the streets
of European capitals are the culmination of Charles de Gaulle's political
vision of a European destiny led by France. During World War II de Gaulle
was the leader of French resistance against the Nazis, but his post-war
anti-Americanism rallied many of his previous enemies. Hostility to America
and antisemitism were strong in various French circles: the communists,
the left, and particularly among the numerous politicians, civil servants,
intellectuals and businessmen, who had willingly collaborated with the
Germans. Those political currents had important links with the Arab-Muslim
world.
De Gaulle's vision intended to restore
to France a dominant role in international affairs by the construction
of a strong and united Europe as a counter-weight to American power. After
the loss of Algeria in 1962, France's last Arab colony, de Gaulle oriented
his policy toward the Arab-Muslim world. During the 1960s, a French Mediterranean
policy was elaborated, which would link as an economic and political geostrategical
unit the European Community (EC) and the Arab League countries. But Arab
collaboration had a price: the elimination of Israel. In spite of France's
efforts to bring its European partners closer to Arab views, many countries
were reluctant to follow this path. At that time, the Arab-Israeli conflict
didn't provoke any interest or declaration from the EC.
After the Syro-Egyptian October
1973 war against Israel, and the third Arab defeat, the Arab oil producers
proclaimed an oil embargo, increased the oil price four times, lowered
the production, and classified the consuming countries into friends, enemies,
or neutrals. Now, France's maneuvers to align the EC on the Arab anti-Israeli
policy in order to create a strong Euro- Arab bloc succeeded. The nine
countries of the EC, meeting in Brussels (November 6, 1973) issued a joint
Resolution, which endorsed the Franco-Arab policy in respect to Israel.
In 1974 the Parliamentary Association
for Euro-Arab Cooperation was founded to strengthen the political, economic
and cultural co-operation between Europe and the Arab world. The Association
had about 600 members in 18 national Parliaments of the countries of the
enlarged European Union (EU), as well as in the European Parliament - and
all the major trends in European politics were represented. This Association
organized regular meetings with Arab leaders and politicians and served
as a channel between them and the European governments, the Presidency
of the European Council of Ministers, and the Commission of the European
Communities. In other words, it was a most powerful Arab lobby functioning
through European functionaries, built into the European institutions to
influence European policy at its summit.
In the following years, this body
was reinforced by a political, economical and cultural structure, named
the Euro-Arab Dialogue, which united at the highest level the EC - later
to become the European Union - and the countries of the Arab League. The
Europeans tried to maintain the Dialogue on a base of economic relations,
while the Arab countries tied the oil and business markets to the European
alignment on their anti-Israeli policies. Even though some countries were
reluctant to follow this path, the joint proclamations of the EU concerning
the Arab-Israeli conflict endorsed the anti-Israeli points established
previously by the Second Islamic Conference in Lahore, Pakistan (February
1974).
Henceforth, an associative diplomacy
binding the Arab-Muslim countries and the EU developed in international
forums and especially in decisions concerning the Middle East conflict.
During Euro-Arab symposiums the oil threat was brandished and pressure
was exerted on the EU, as a reminder that economic relations were inexorably
tied to Europe's political alignment with Arab anti-Zionist policy. However,
the Dialogue was not restricted to influencing European foreign policy
against Israel and detaching Europe from America, it also aimed at establishing
permanently in Europe a massive Arab-Muslim presence by the immigration
and settlement of millions of Muslims with equal rights for all, native-born
and migrants alike. This policy endeavored to integrate Europe and the
Arab-Muslim world into one political and economic bloc, by mixing populations
(multiculturalism) while weakening the Atlantic solidarity and isolating
America.
To facilitate Muslim settlements
in the West, cultural changes in school teaching, universities and social
life were imposed. Textbooks were rewritten in view of allaying Muslim
susceptibilities, and university teachings in Middle East and Islamic history
soon conformed to Arab-Muslim norms and their worldview. Recommendations
were emphatically and repeatedly imposed for spreading the knowledge of
the Arabic language in Europe, and the learning about the superior Islamic
history and civilization. As these decisions were taken, and then implemented
through the mechanism of the Dialogue that covered every country of the
EU, a profound cultural Islamization - through the network of schools,
universities and the blessing of Islamophile clergymen - conditioned the
mentalities of two generations of European youth. To this cultural transformation
was added from within the demographic pressure of an ever-increasing Muslim
immigration and, from without, an all-encompassing symbiosis on every level
with the Arab-Muslim world. This symbiosis built on the system of the Euro-Arab
Dialogue, and hence approved by the higher political authorities of the
EU, covered book publishing, university exchanges, television, press and
radio collaboration, theological rapprochement, youth meetings, and intense
collaboration between numerous ONG organizations, humanitarian activities,
workers unions, economical and financial relations. Scientific, nuclear
and military training were provided as, for exemple, France's nuclear program
with Iraq, culminating in the construction of the nuclear reactor Osirak,
destroyed by Israel in 1981.
The development of those complex
ties between the Arab-Muslim world and the EU was, at its core, conditioned
by an anti- Israeli and anti-American policy, the Arab ambition being to
detach Europe from its Atlantic ally. As Palestinian and Islamic terrorism
developed, the EU - anxious to save its growing and multiple interests
in the Muslim world - accused Israel and U.S. policy of provoking it. Rather
than confronting Islamic terrorism, European leaders resorted to appeasement
by condemning Israel. Anti-Zionism, integrated into the developing Euro-Arab
relations became a European sub-culture of hate, denigration and disinformation,
nourished by the inner dynamic of the Euro-Arab Dialogue that led to the
rise of Eurabia. Opposing views were silenced to maintain a monolithic
façade of Islamic correctness in the press and publications. From
September 2000, the outburst of Palestinian terrorism within Israel triggered
a violent antisemitic wave in Europe as if it had become the heart of Arabism.
France, Germany and Belgium, the
troika leading Eurabia, imposed monolithic orders for the EU and their
African satellites. An alliance with the Organization of the Islamic
Conference, comprising 56 countries, would provide world supremacy at the
UN in some issues. The Euro-Arab bloc's reliance on UN "international legitimacy"
is based on its virtual control of this forum. Essential to the Arab League's
policy in relation to Israel, Arafat - the godfather of international terrorism
- became the key regulator between the EU and the Arabs. The EU assumed
the main funding of the Palestinian Authority, and until now the European
Parliament refuses any investigation of how more than a billion euros of
European taxpayers' money, transferred to Arafat, has been used.
Today the Iraqi crisis confronts
the EU governments with three decades of pusillanimous policy based on
oil, markets, short- term economic gains, and an imperialist ambition of
domination. It is practically impossible now in Europe to control Islamic
terrorism either from within or without. Nor can the EU accept the destruction
of the multifarious symbiosis created by all European political parties
with the Arab and Muslim world, to the detriment of their own country's
security. Europe has undergone a profound structural and demographic change,
which is not yet fully perceived by Europeans, even less by Americans.
This transformation of a Judeo-Christian based-civilization and culture
by strong trends of Islamization is creating social, political and cultural
grounds for confrontations that could provoke dangerous social implosions.
The drifting away of Europeans from America is not, therefore, due to their
superior moral exigencies, as some superficial analysts write. Rather,
this drift reveals a traumatic fear of a terrorism that the EU always refused
to acknowledge, scapegoating instead Israel and America. It reveals the
preservation, at all costs, of Arab and Muslim corrupt dictatorships, including
Arafat, with whom the EU has built its economic and international political
strategy, power and security. And, more threatening, it indicates a profound
transformation, a mutation, whereby a civilization is drifting toward 'dhimmitude.'*
(Author's note: Dhimmitude derives
from the surrender of the Christian clergy and political leaders to the
Muslim jihad armies, and their submission to Islamic domination of both
their lands and peoples. In exchange, they received a pledge of protection
('dhimma') from the Muslim sovereign - and the cessation of the jihad war.
This "protection" was conditioned on a ransom payment (jizya) that was
extorted from the vanquished Christian and Jewish populations (dhimmis).
Sometimes, Christian submission to Islam was rooted in personal ambition.
Dhimmitude often induced self- hatred, and hatred against Jews and Christians
who resisted the jihad and Muslim domination. Christian dhimmitude has
been a world force for Islamization throughout history.)
- Bat Ye'or is the author of three
books on Jihad and dhimmitude (www.dhimmitude.org and www.dhimmi.org).
Her latest study is Islam and Dhimmitude. Where Civilizations Collide (2002);
see her "Eurabia: The Road to Munich." National Review Online, October
9, 2002.
