Support for Israel plays a far bigger role in U.S. public and political opinion than in Europe, from which the Holocaust and an exodus to the new Jewish state drained most of the Jews who might have given it impetus. U.S. Jews are politically well-organized, important sources of funds and talent and disproportionately influential in big, vote-rich states like New York and California. The right wing of the Republican party, through its evangelical Christian connections, has a powerful attachment to Israel as the Jews' God-given home. In foreign policy, a cohesive group of neoconservatives like Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz, with strong feelings for Israel as a strategically in a troubled region, have the intellectual initiative inside the Administration. By contrast, the injustices suffered by the Palestinians — predominantly Muslim, poorly organized in the U.S., with their most radical factions supported by unsavory regimes like Iran, Iraq and Syria — have little resonance in mainstream American opinion.
Even France, with the largest populations of both Jews and Muslims in Western Europe, has no equivalent to the U.S.'s pro-Israeli lobby. Only lately, with anti-Semitic acts on the increase — police reported 400 incidents in a recent fortnight, compared to 200 for all of 2001 — and tension between France's 700,000 Jews and 5 million Muslims on the rise since the start of the Aqsa intifadeh, has the community become more politically engaged. A recent demonstration in support of Israel and against anti-Semitism highlighted uglier aspects of this new dynamic. Some 150 youths rioted, attacking peace activists, journalists and Arab-looking bystanders and stabbing a policeman. "The climate has shifted since Sept. 11, with radical anti-Arab feeling spreading throughout part of the Jewish community," Jean-Yves Camus of the European Center for Research and Action on Racism and Anti-Semitism told the daily Lib[a {e}]ration.
Some European Jews may be becoming more politicized, but Harry Kney-Tal, Israel's ambassador to the E.U., says Europe's relations with Israel have deteriorated as a result not of valid criticisms of Israeli policy, but of a bias deeply rooted in anti-Semitism, demographics and a kind of proxy resentment of U.S. power. "European culture makes a strange distinction between an imaginary Israel that, as they say, 'we hold to the highest standards,' and actual policy of this government. Well, Europe is just going to have to learn to live with the democratically elected government of Israel." Kney-Tal says he and the Israeli public miss any tone of "compassion" for Israel's dilemma in the carefully calibrated statements of European politicians. He gives only German Foreign Minister Joschka Fischer credit for having "gone the furthest in understanding the collective psyche of Israel." Fischer has been criticized by opposition politicians for "obsequious" behavior toward Israel. Until recently in Germany, where atonement for the Holocaust has translated into unstinting support for the Jewish state, such an accusation would not have been considered a criticism. But even Germany decided two weeks ago to hold up arms deliveries to Israel in a move that was seen by some as a de facto embargo on weapons sales. A new plan by Fischer that would entail greater E.U. involvement in the peace process has not been formally accepted by the E.U., but it has been warmly received — with the exception perhaps of its offer to send German troops to monitor an Israeli-Palestinian cease-fire.
The discomfort of other European opinion-makers with Israeli policy elicits nothing but scorn from Kney-Tal. "These people," he says, "are all pacifists. They don't like Israel or the U.S. because we use force. They think all conflicts can be solved the way labor disputes are — through negotiation." After Powell limped home, no European, or anyone else, could place much faith in negotiation. Yet the horrors — and perils — of placing faith in force seemed ever more clear.
