Rank hypocrisy of European Union position on “occupation”
There’s no hypocrite like an EU bureaucratic hypocrite.
Northwestern University Law Professor Eugene Kontorovich has been doing wonderful work exposing the myth of the Israeli “illegal” occupation of Judea and Samaria (the “West Bank”). You really need to watch the videos we have posted here, The Legal Case for Israel and The historical fiction of Israel’s “occupation”.
Given the war on Israel declared by the American Studies Association and two other smaller anti-Israel boycott groups, and the need to correct so much of the anti-Israel propaganda behind it, here is Prof. Kontorovich’s explanation of the legal history of the region again:
Now Prof. Kontorovich has come out with a challenge to the European Union to treat Israel’s “occupation” the way it treats other “occupations” — and the Europeans are none too happy.
As reported by The Times of Israel, Why is this occupation different from all other occupations?:
Many Israelis have long felt that the European Union is biased against them. Two legal scholars – a former Israeli ambassador and an American Jewish international law professor — think they’ve found the perfect case to prove the claim: A new fishing deal, signed between the Europeans and Morocco, which applies beyond Morocco’s internationally recognized borders, taking in the territory of Western Sahara, even though Morocco invaded that area in 1975 and has occupied ever since.
The two scholars are now challenging EU foreign policy chief Catherine Ashton to explain why the agreement, in not excluding Morocco’s occupied territory, doesn’t prove that the EU is holding Israel to a double standard.
The EU insists that any agreement it signs with Israel explicitly exclude the settlements in the “occupied” West Bank, the scholars noted in a letter sent last month to Ashton’s Brussels office. So why don’t the same constraints apply in the case of Morocco? This blatant inconsistency shows “an official double-standard practiced by the EU,” Professor Eugene Kontorovich of Northwestern University and Israeli ex-ambassador to Canada Alan Baker charged.
Last week, the EU responded to the letter, saying, essentially, that Israel’s occupation is different, but without detailing how and why….
“Whatever they have identified in their ‘analysis,’ they’re obviously not very proud of it. Had it been substantial, they would have surely not hesitated to provide more detail,” Kontorovich told The Times of Israel this week.
“The terseness of Ashton’s statement reflects the general moral superiority of EU officials toward Israel that I’ve encountered in my attempts to discuss these issues with them,” he added. “The attitude is that they are the judges, we are the suspect. How dare we accuse or judge them? As one senior EU official said when I brought these matters up with him, ‘We’re here to talk about you [Israel], not us.’ That is why they do not need to give their reasons: They do not have to explain themselves. We do.”
Keep in mind that the EU also continues to deal with Turkey without restriction, even though Turkey actually does illegally occupy part of Cyprus.
At every level, from dealing with EU bureaucrats to ASA academic boycotters, we have to push back and force them to live by their own rules.
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Comments
The EU’s position on Israel is this: If you were barbarians, we would have no problem. We could excuse that on the basis you need time to come up to our standards. Er, btw, you’re Jewish.
Perfect, Juba.
Now run that through the plain English ==> EU Elitist Bureaucratese Google translator and the rough edges will be softened and you’ll achieve that faux social-justice shine.
Pretty soon we’ll need EU to English bilingual dictionaries.
“The two scholars are now challenging EU foreign policy chief Catherine Ashton to explain why the agreement, in not excluding Morocco’s occupied territory, doesn’t prove that the EU is holding Israel to a double standard.”
My then seven-year old niece explained a similar inconsistency in her own thinking to me forty years ago: “Oh,” she said, “that’s different!”
The EU also treats the citizens of Europe with disdain, at its risk, because it cannot even claim to be democratic, as in elected by the voters, its democracy deficit.
Even now they refuse to acknowledge their antisemitism, in effect if not in intent, as Summers has said. They are blind to it. They would be far less inclined if this involved ANY other group than Jews. Instead, they pretend its just Israel.
Then they lecture others as to morality.
Precisely. Unelected, they can’t claim to legitimately represent anyone.
That’s a major flaw in all ‘regionalism’, in which voters are cut out of selecting ‘regional’ representatives by their own intermediate un-representative ‘representatives’ who (for political-class reasons) don’t/can’t reflect the same interests.
What the Islamic horde could not accomplish with a frontal assault, has been achieved through invitations received from well-meaning bureaucrats. The Europeans have been betrayed from within.
You assume to much when you assume they are well meaning.
Right!
I would describe them as with “evil intent.”
“In 2010, the religious affiliation in the country was estimated by the Pew Forum as 99.9 percent Muslim,”
Which is why the cowardly, anti-Semites of the EU don’t treat them like Israel.
Remember, these are the same folks who claim “universal jurisdiction” against “crimes against humanity”.
When they put King Leopold in trial for what he did in the Congo, let me know.
In the meantime they lecture about human rights and international law to the rest of us.
There’s a reason why my ancestors left that continent, for which I am grateful.