The Swedenization of Europe
by Per Ahlmark
http://www.project-syndicate.org/commentaries/commentary_text.php4?id=1586&lan
g=1&m=series
Anti-Semitism, anti-Zionism, and anti-Americanism are becoming
linked and ever more rabid in today's Europe. They arise from a
kind of blindness, combined with a strange mixture of alienation,
guilt, and fear toward both Israel and America.
Millions of Europeans resist seeing Israel as a country fighting for
its survival. Israel cannot afford to lose one major war, as it would
mean the end of the Jewish democratic state. But huge numbers of
Europeans believe that something is fundamentally wrong with
the Israelis: they never compromise; they prefer using military
means to solve political problems.
Something similar is at work in the European attitude to the US.
Look at Europe, many Europeans say, we have eradicated wars,
dangerous nationalism, and dictatorships. We created a peaceful
European Union. We do not wage war; we negotiate. We do not
exhaust our resources on weapons. The rest of the planet should
learn from us how to live together without terrorizing each other.
As a Swede, I have heard such pacific boasting all my life: that
neutral Sweden is a moral superpower. Now this bragging has
become the EU's ideology. We are the moral continent. Call this
the "Swedenization" of Europe.
Yes, today's EU is a miracle for a continent where two modern
totalitarian movements - Communism and Nazism - unleashed
rivers of blood. But what Europe forgets is how those ideologies
were overcome. Without the US Army, Western Europe would
not have been liberated in 1945. Without the Marshall Plan and
NATO, it would not have taken off economically. Without the
policy of containment under America's security umbrella, the Red
Army would have strangled the dream of freedom in Eastern
Europe, or brought European unity, but under a flag with red stars.
West Europeans also forget that some areas of the world have
never known freedom. In many places, torture chambers are the
rules of the game, not the grotesque and shameful mistakes of ill-
supervised troops. Any attempt in such places to go behave the
European way and negotiate - without the military power needed
to back up diplomacy - would be pathetic.
Instead of supporting those who fight international terrorism,
many Europeans try to blame the spread of terrorism on Israel and
the US. This is a new European illusion. Spain's latter day
appeasement à la Munich arises from this thinking.
But what if Spain - and Europe as a whole - had reacted in the
opposite way to the Madrid train bombing of April, saying: "We
promise that because of that slaughter we will double our support
for stabilization in Iraq by sending twice as many troops, experts,
engineers, teachers, policemen, doctors, and billions of euros in
support of allied forces and their Iraqi co-workers." The triumph
of terrorists would have been transformed into a triumph of the
war on terror.
The images many Europeans hold of America and Israel create the
political climate for some very ugly bias. You have the Great
Satan and the Small Satan. America wants to dominate the world -
exactly the allegations made in traditional anti-Semitic rhetoric
about the Jews. Indeed, modern anti-Zionist rhetoric portrays
Israel's goal as domination of the whole Middle East. Such ideas
are reflected in opinions polls in which Europeans claim that
Israel and the US are the true dangers to world peace.
Ian Buruma, the British writer, claims that this European rage
against America and Israel has to do with guilt and fear. The two
world wars led to such catastrophic carnage that "never again"
was interpreted as "welfare at home, non-intervention abroad."
The problem with this concept is that it could only survive under
the protection of American might.
Extreme anti-Americanism and anti-Zionism are actually
merging. The so-called peace poster "Hitler Had Two Sons: Bush
and Sharon," displayed in European anti-war rallies, combines
trivialization of Nazism with demonization of both the victims of
Nazism and those who defeated Nazism.
Much of this grows from a subconscious European guilt related to
the Holocaust. Now the Holocaust's victims - and their children
and grandchildren - are supposedly doing to others what was done
to them. By equating the murderer and the victim, we wash our
hands.
This pattern of anti-Zionism and anti-Americanism returns again
and again. "The ugly Israeli" and "the ugly American" seem to be
of the same family. "The ugly Jew" becomes the instrumental part
of this defamation when so-called neoconservatives are blamed
both for American militarism and Israeli brutalities and then
selectively named: Wolfowitz, Perle, Abrams, Kristol, etc. This is
a new version of the old myth that Jews rule the US.
Earlier this year, the editor of Die Zeit, Josef Joffe, put his finger
on the issue: like Jews, Americans are said to be selfish and
arrogant. Like Jews, they are in thrall to a fundamentalist religion
that renders them self-righteous and dangerous. Like Jews,
Americans are money-grabbing capitalists, for whom the highest
value is the cash nexus. "America and Israel are the outsiders -
just as Jews have been all the way into the 21st century," Joffe
says.
The links between anti-Semitism, anti-Zionism, and anti-
Americanism are all too real. Unless Europe's leaders roundly
condemn this unholy triple alliance, it will poison Middle East
politics and transatlantic relations alike.
Per Ahlmark is a former Deputy Prime Minister of Sweden.
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