Bat Ye’or
Euro-Arab anti-Semitism is closely linked to the strategic, political, and economic constraints of Europe’s Arab/Muslim policies; to the changed demographic pattern
of Europe due to Muslim immigration; and to the threat of terrorism. Current E uropean Judeophobia intertwines with the European political and cultural Mediterranean/Arab strategy that encompasses all member states of the Euro-pean Union (EU). Th e European Commission and the European Common Foreign and Security Policy (ECFSP) coordinate this policy through an elaborate network.
Such a strategy involves comprehensive planning, conceived in the 1960s by the French president, General Charles de Gaulle. In the European Community (EC), he championed a strategic Euro-Arab alliance as a rival pole to America and an in-strument for French interests in former Arab colonies (Gaullist Arab policy). French diplomats developed contacts with their Arab counterparts, notably with Haj Amin al-Husseini, former mufti of Jerusalem, whom de Gaulle had saved from the Nurem-berg trials in 1945, and with Libyan diplomats. Th e outbreak of international Pales-tinian terrorism in Europe, followed by the Yom Kippur War (October 1973) and the Arab oil embargo, allowed France to introduce a common European oil policy and to carry along the EC in the Euro-Arab pact.
In the 1970s, the EC and the Arab League associated with diff erent but converg-ing aims. Th e EC adopted a pro-Arafat stance and sponsored Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) policy, hoping thereby to protect itself from Arab terrorism, to maintain its energy supplies, and to promote its economic interests. On their side, the PLO and the countries of the Arab League welcomed the Gaullist plan as a means to separate Europe from America, destroy Israel, and achieve technological parity with Europe.
Th is informal alliance created a framework called the Euro-Arab Dialogue (EAD) between the EC bodies and member states, on the one hand, and the Arab League, the Arab Mediterranean countries, and the PLO, on the other. EAD encompasses the whole Euro-Arab relationship in strategy, business, social and human aff airs, immigration, culture, and media. Th e European Commission promoted associations and common projects between the two parties. It created numerous legal, fi nan-cial, and economic instruments intended to disseminate and establish the Euro-Arab common strategy (Eurabia) as a domestic and foreign policy binding the member states of the EC through an expanding network of activities and organiza-tions. Canada and other European non-EU countries, as well as bodies like the Inter-national Committee of the Red Cross, participated as observers or active delegations in the EAD meetings. Numerous Euro-Arab conferences and EC/EU documents provide information on EAD’s unfolding. EAD focused on solidarity with the Pales-tinians; it triggered European public sympathy for the PLO, while demonizing I srael. Traditional European anti-Semitism and anti-Americanism furthered Arab propaganda.
Th e European Parliamentary Association for Euro-Arab Cooperation (PAEAC) represents the main instrument of EAD anti-Israeli policy. Its members are parlia-mentarians from each major European political party. Created in 1974 in Paris and supported by the European Commission, PAEAC fulfi ls Resolution 15 of the Sec-ond International Conference in Support of the Arab People held in Cairo (January 1969). In June 1974, its Arab counterpoint, the Arab Interparliamentary Union (AIPU), was created.
Euro-Arab policy worked for rapprochement and solidarity between the EC and the Arab world at all political and cultural levels, regionally and internationally. It involved the ECFSP, the universities, and the media and aimed to create a strategic Euro-Arab pole. Europe’s anti-Israeli strategy results from its planned long-term vi-sion to create a joint society with the Arab Mediterranean countries and the PLO.
After the 1995 Barcelona Declaration, the Mediterranean Partnership enlarged the EAD framework and included Israel, in view of implementing the Oslo agree-ments. Th e partnership determines EU strategy toward the United States, Israel, and the Arab states, as well as the domestic policies of EU member states in rela-tion to Muslim immigrarela-tion to the EU.
Th e Mediterranean Partnership intends to set up a vast Euro-Arab demographic, political, economic, and cultural zone. Using multiculturalism and immigration, the EAD network introduced Islam and Arab culture as a political force to the Euro-pean continent. Th rough the combined eff ects of demographic and terrorist pres-sures from within and without, and with oil dependency, Euro-Arab anti-Zionism hardened.
Euro-Arab Judeophobia avoids targeting European Jewry, reduced by the Shoah to demographic and political marginality. Although it professes antiracism, it de-monizes the State of Israel, which is accused of being “the root cause” of Islamic terrorism. As a European militant ideal for peace and justice in the Middle East, EU Mediterranean policy promotes Palestinian victimology and Israel’s malevolence.
Th e cynical and secretive character of this Judeophobia results from the opacity and impunity of EU collegiality.
Th e European Council adopted Th e European Common Strategy in the Mediter-ranean Region on June 19, 2000. Th is document charges the European Council, the European Commission, and the EU member states to ensure the consistency, unity, and eff ectiveness of the common strategy, with special attention to the media and universities. Cultural and media collaboration and solidarity with the Mediterranean (Arab) world are prescribed even more urgently—as a matter of European security
—in the report of the European Commission for Culture, Science and Education presented to the European Parliamentary Assembly by Luis Maria de Puig from the Spanish socialist group (November 2002). Euro-Arab anti-Semitism reached a peak with the second intifada (Autumn 2000) and the coalition war against Saddam Hussein (2003) when the EU increased the eff ectiveness and visibility of its Medi-terranean policy at the request of the European Council.
Multiculturalism is a crucial dimension of the Euro-Arab strategic alliance. It fuels the cultural and media jihad waged in Western academia with a Judeophobic, anti-American, and anti-Western character. Euro-Arab anti-Semitism promotes a political, historical, cultural, and theological Palestinian replacement doctrine, whose main themes claim the nonexistence of Judeo-Christian values, the Islam-ization of Christian theology through the Muslim Jesus, the return to a Christian replacement theology whereby Palestine replaces Israel, the transfer of Jewish his-tory to the Palestinians, the crucifi xion of Palestine by an Israel born in blood and sin, and the Nazifi cation of Israel. Th ese themes, taught by the Sabeel Ecumenical Liberation Th eology Center in Jerusalem, by European clergy and specialists in
interfaith dialogues, are promoted throughout Europe by the EAD network as well as by European and Palestinian nongovernmental organizations funded by the EU.
Euro-Arab anti-Semitism belongs to a common Mediterranean strategy that pur-sues Israel’s demise by inciting its constant and universal vilifi cation. Its themes correlate with traditional European Judeophobia but within the militancy and ide-ology of Islamic jihad against Israel and the West. Th is context places Israel at the core of a crucial 21st-century confl ict.
Select Bibliography
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Bat Ye’or. 2005. Eurabia: Th e Euro-Arab Axis. Cranbury, NJ: Associated University Presses.
Bourrinet, Jacques, ed. 1979. Le Dialogue Euro-Arabe [Th e Euro-Arab Dialogue]. Paris:
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