Opinion Editorials, January 2015

Many Israeli officials are quite nervous and furious these days. The reason is not Hamas's ability to withstand the all-out Israeli onslaught on the Gaza Strip in summer, which destroyed, partly or completely, as many as 100,000 homes and killed and maimed thousands. Nor is it the ongoing Palestinian Authority (PA) efforts to get the UN to designate a deadline for ending the decades-old Israeli occupation of the Palestinian homeland.
 
The main reason for the fury and nervousness is the largely symbolic recent voting by several European parliaments to recognize Palestine on the basis of the 1967-armistic line between the West Bank and the territories seized by Israel in 1948.
 
What is especially interesting is that the Israeli reactions to these European parliamentary moves have been fraught with brash Islamophobia and venomous incitement against European Muslims, the imagined "villain" behind the pro-Palestinian moves.
 
In their reactions, most Israeli commentators and officials imputed the belated European awakening, if indeed it is an awakening, to the growing Muslim population in several European states, although the expatriate Muslim communities in Europe have actually very little political clout in the states where they live and work.
 
Some Israeli commentators have actually stopped short of urging European states to expel their Muslim citizens. One Israeli journalist wrote in the mass circulation Yedeot Ahronot recently that Europe was becoming an Islamic continent.
 
The pornographically mendacious remarks were apparently intended to generate hatred and racism against Muslims.
 
The Israeli logic goes like this: if Europe becomes more anti-Islam, the democratic European governments will be forced by public pressure to be less pro-Palestinian and more pro-Israel (the truth is that Europe is still far more supportive of Israel than of the Palestinians- Just a few days ago Germany agreed to supply Israel with several attack submarines that could be fitted with nuclear warheads).
 
In many aspects, the brazen Israeli incitement against European Muslims goes beyond the pale. It is quite similar in form and substance to the Nazi incitement against European Jewry prior to and during WWII.
 
Thus Muslims are portrayed as Europe's ultimate enemy. Europe is reminded of the "terrible Turks," and the most racist and Islamophobic European figures, including intellectuals and politicians, are featured, interviewed and promoted by Israel's state-run media.
 
In a nutshell, Israel is saying to Europe: Expel them, don't allow them to multiply and grow, don't commit a historical mistake….!
 
We all know that the holocaust didn't begin with Auschwitz, Bergen Belsen, Dachau and other concentration camps. It rather started with incitement that at the time seemed innocuous.  
 
Unfortunately, the premier victims of the holocaust are now striving and praying hard to be able to generate a similar holocaust against the Muslims of Europe.
 
I am not inciting against anyone. And I am not being phobic or hysterical. I am just warning all those concerned, including European Muslims, to be careful and vigilant.
 
Red herring
 
European Muslims constitute less than 5% of the continent's overall population. Hence it is unrealistic to believe that Israel is just hysterical over a purported demographic growth of Muslims in the old continent. After all, Israel itself is surrounded by hundreds of millions of Muslims, and Israel itself, along with the occupied territories, has already lost its Jewish majority, according to some Israeli demographers.
 
Yes, there are some violent or violence-prone individuals here and there. Such people exist in every society and culture. But the vast majority of European Muslims are peaceful and law-abiding citizens. This is the outstanding fact that Israel and Zionist circles want Europeans to ignore by hook or by crook.
 
But what is it that really makes Israel so exasperated, so convulsive?
 
The more likely reason for the Israeli hysteria has to do with the chances that the pro-Palestinian moves in some European parliaments might lead to a concrete political action against Israel, either by the EU or by individual European states. This could conceivably include a meaningful economic boycott of the Jewish state as well as divestment from Israel.
 
Hence, Israel is releasing all its phobic fears and illogical malicious warnings in order to be able to destroy the Palestinians undisturbed.
 
Invoking the holocaust
 
Last week, Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu, who is notorious for making hyperbolic mendacious statements, was quoted as saying that the latest pro-Palestinian moves showed that the Europeans apparently learned nothing from the "holocaust."
 
So what does Netanyahu and his racist colleagues want from Europe?
 
Does he want Europe to allow Israel to gang up on the unprotected Palestinians and exterminate them once and for all?
 
Does he really believe that Europe can only atone for one holocaust by allowing Israel to carry out another holocaust against the Palestinians?
 
Indeed, a careful examination of statements by Israeli and some American Zionist officials leaves no doubt as the real intentions of these depraved thugs.
 
In truth, the unspoken words of these Zionist supremacists sound quite horrifying. The Zionists are effectively telling Europe that "you must allow us to finish off the Palestinians or else we will invoke the golem of anti-Semitism again.”
 
This should explain why most Israelis and Zionists raise their eyebrows in objection to European condemnation of the genocidal murder by Israel of Palestinian civilians, as happened in Gaza a few months ago.
 
In other words, what many Israelis, especially in government and the media, seem to say is that as long as the number of murdered Palestinians has not reached the six-million figure, Europe, indeed the rest of the world, has absolutely no right to open its mouth.
 
In short, Israel demands that Europe remain silent and passive as Israel continues to carry out its slow-motion genocidal ethnic cleansing scheme against the helpless Palestinians.
 
Israel is behind violence in Europe
 
As an observer of Israeli behavior for the last 40 years, I have no doubt that Israel is decidedly behind much of the so-called Islamist terror in Europe. Israel is simply hell-bent on inciting European states against Islam and Muslims. Israel seems hell-bent on seeing a European 9/11 replayed in Paris or London or even Berlin. Again I have no doubt in my mind that the Mossad is working rather hectically on this day and night. Israel is simply too nefarious and too satanic to be given the benefit of the doubt.
 
Imagine, just imagine, a Nine-eleven -like attack on London, Paris or Berlin by suspected Muslim terrorists? This is probably the dearest Israeli dream these days, as such an attack would effectively turn 500 million Europeans against Islam and Muslims, which would then give Israel the required carte blanche to finally liquidate the Palestinians and their just cause
 
Needless to say, all that the Mossad needs to fulfill this dream-nightmare is to find some gullible individuals bearing Muslim names, willing to do the job. The rest would be details.
 
In the past, Mossad agents or individual Jews carried out anti-Semitic incidents in order to blackmail western governments and to keep the anti-Semitism golem alive.
 
However, the mostly phobic Israeli fear of Islam in Europe seems to haunt and overwhelm the Israeli-Zionist psych today so much that a real shock is needed to reverse the tide in Europe. Hence, the idea of fabricating a European 9/11 and blame it on Muslims.
 


Khalid Amayreh is a veteran Palestinian journalist and political commentator living in Occupied Palestine

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