By Andrea Widburg
Europe has always dreamed of being Judenrein (Jew-free). Even as countries that the Nazis occupied bemoaned their fate, most cooperated with the mandate to turn over their Jews, some more enthusiastically than others (Ukraine, I’m looking at you). The impulse lives on, whether it’s the way in which Europe has spent decades inviting in Arabs who hate the Jews every bit as much as the Nazis did or the way it has undermined Israel at every turn. Regarding the latter effort, a leaked EU document shows that the EU has a secret plan to turn the Jewish sections of Judea and Samaria over to the “Palestinians.”
I should explain why I put the word “Palestinians” in quotation marks. It’s because they are an invented people, a product of Yassir Arafat’s manufactured history for the region. The scant number of Arabs who populated the swampy, fever-ridden land that marked the Biblical nations of Israel and Judah–land that had been a continuous home to the Jews for almost 4,000 years–was a mix of Tunisians, Algerians, and random Arabs who drifted there beginning in the early 1800s when the land was a colony of the Ottoman Empire.
It was the Romans who imposed the name “Palestine” on the Jewish land they controlled as a colony. They did so as an insult, to remind the Jews under their rule of the hated Philistines. There has never been a Palestinian nation. It is a name that reflects only colonial rule, whether Roman, Ottoman, or British.
Ironically, when western and eastern European Jews began to pour into the land at the end of the 19th century, the Arabs were delighted to have them. Unlike the Ottoman Turks, who shamefully neglected the fringes of their dying empire, the Jews made positive changes: They brought modern medicine and farming techniques, as well as ideas about universal education, all of which uplifted a grateful Arab population. You can read how that changed here.
The reason behind the modern Zionist impulse that called for Jews to return to the land in which they are the last surviving indigenous people was the fact that Europe was decidedly inhospitable. Every country across Europe had, at one time or another, brutally mistreated its Jews. At the end of the 19th and beginning of the 20th centuries, the western part of Europe wasn’t killing Jews but was treating them as disfavored citizens, while the eastern part of Europe was committing bloody pogroms against them.
Under Hitler, the western European disfavor and the eastern European pogroms melded into the Holocaust. The shame of Europe is that, despite the citizens’ hatred for the Nazi occupation, many of them participated in the Holocaust by doing nothing to save the Jews. (Of course, individuals who are honored as Righteous Gentiles often did extraordinary things to protect their Jews, but the nations in which these admirable people lived…not so much.) Others were not just passive, they were happy to oblige when the Nazis demanded that they hand over their Jewish citizens.
In the years since then, Europe has been increasingly hostile to Israel. As someone once said, the Europeans have never forgiven the Jews for Auschwitz.
During the Cold War, Israel was a strategic ally against the Soviet Union. With the Cold War over, Europeans are freed from that obligation. And that’s how we end up with news about the EU’s secret plan to do away with a Jewish presence in Judea and Samaria, the heart of the ancient Jewish kingdom:
Judea and Samaria, also referred to in the media as the West Bank, was split into three “Areas” under the Oslo Accords of 1993. The Area A is to be exclusively administered by the Palestinian Authority (PA), the Area B jointly by the PA and Israel, and the Area C by Israel. The Area C is home to some 400,000 Israelis.
Citing the leaked EU document, the news agency Jewish News Syndicate noted that ” Brussels is actively working with and on behalf of the Palestinian Authority to take over Area C of Judea and Samaria, with the overall objective of integrating the region with Areas A and B.”
The EU also wants to undermine the historic Jewish claim to the biblical land. “The six-page document calls for mapping the territory in order to prove Palestinian rights to the land and monitoring Israeli archaeological activity, as ancient Jewish ties reinforce Israeli claims,” the JNS noted. (Read excerpts of the EU document summed up by the JNS here.)
This plan, if put into effect, would end a Jewish presence in Judea and Samaria, given that the “Palestinians” are open about their plan to rid Israel of Jews and have, in fact, cleared Jews (and most Christians) from those regions over which they have control.
Sunlight is the best disinfectant, and it’s to be hoped that news of this disgraceful plan puts a stop to it. Unfortunately, the Biden administration, like the Obama administration before it, is disgracefully hostile to Israel, even though it is the only liberal democracy in the entire region, one that gives full civil rights to all citizens, whether Arab, Christian or Jew; gay or straight; male or female. It’s not likely, therefore, that the Biden administration will do anything to stop the EU from acting against Israel in this way.
