A KOSHER FENCE

In a real life happening outdoing the satirical imagining of a Jonathan Swift, the European Union, in moral-outrage orbit over Israel’s effort to wall out terrorists, is planning a separation fence of its own. The EU wants to build a wall stretching hundreds of kilometers between its new members, Poland and Hungary, and their neighbors, Russia, Belarus and Ukraine. Why create a new Berlin-style wall? To prevent migrants from crossing the border, in this case in pursuit of economic opportunity in the EU. Even more amusing, Magal Security Systems, the Israeli company that has been the chief contractor for Israel’s security barrier, will be participating in tenders to build the EU’s wall. Notes Daniel Pipes: “European hypocrisy is as rank as it is blatant. And the EU wall is not even for security reasons, just economic ones.”

EU GIVES EUROPE A CLEAN SLATE

Demonstrating what happens when the politically corrupt investigate the financially corrupt, OLAF, the EU’s fraud squad, has issued its report: the PA has not used any EU money to fund terror. What about the records Israel discovered in its 2002 raid of PA offices documenting in detail how EU money was siphoned to a black budget for terror groups? Prior to any investigation, former EU head Chris Patten was quick to dismiss the evidence as “Israeli propaganda.” The EU reluctantly embarked on its investigation under pressure from courageous EU Parliament member Ilke Schroeder who devoted most of her energies in her five year term to demanding it. (Presumably even Schroeder did not anticipate the whitewash to come.)

The European Commission website states that the conditions the EU attaches to its assistance have raised “the Palestinian Authority to a level of fiscal responsibility, control and transparency which rivals the most fiscally advanced countries in the region.” This ludicrous statement can be contrasted with the frank assessment of former PA Legislative Council Speaker Rafik al-Natshe who, in July 2004, described Arafat as the “protector of corruption and the corrupt.” The PA, he noted, did not need foreign aid because it already possessed billions of dollars “but no one knows anything about the funds.”

PEACE PARTNER?

A clause in the 1979 peace treaty between Egypt and Israel specified that “the Parties shall seek to foster mutual understanding” and will “abstain from hostile propaganda against each other.”

An especially venomous violation is reported by MEMRI (the Middle East Media Research Institute). In Egypt’s ruling National Democratic Party’s paper Al-Liwaa Al-Islami, Dr. Rif’at Sayyed Ahmad, director of the “Jaffa Research Center” in Cairo, published a two-part article “The Lie About the Burning of the Jews” which cites revisionist historian cranks like David Irving and Arthur Butz to “prove” that the Holocaust never happened.

A few brief paragraphs suffice to give the flavor of Ahmad’s righteous self-pity in the face of Western “idol-worshippers” impervious to truth.

“No matter what details and proof emphasizing the lie of the burning of the Jews in Nazi crematoria we present, they [the Jew] and the statesmen of Europe who trade in the Holocaust will never believe us. On the contrary – it is almost certain that they will accuse us of anti-Semitism…

“Dozens of Western laws in the European countries have been changed to protect this false myth of the burning of the Jews. Dozens of curricula have also been changed. Today, it is possible to curse the monotheistic religions, but the ‘holocaust’ and its lie are above criticism and above opinion, and in Europe it is unapproachable.

“All this proves that we are standing before new Western idol-worship that requires a genuine cultural revolution within it in order to destroy it – a revolution that will use facts and science against tales ungrounded in true reality and credible history.”

And then there is the recent article by columnist Hussam Wahba in the Egyptian government weekly ‘Aqidati, also translated by MEMRI, on “The Jews Slaughtering Non-Jews, Draining their Blood and Using it for Talmudic Religious Rituals.”

Note that it is to Egypt that the Sharon government looks to prevent Gaza, after Israel’s own ignominious retreat, from becoming a terror base against the rest of Israel!

GERMANS BRING LAND CLAIMS

While it is widely known that after World War II the Czechs ousted Germans from the Sudetenland (they had offered Hitler the pretext for dismembering Czechoslovakia), it is less well known that in 1945 millions of Germans were expelled from 40,000 miles of eastern Germany – land given to Poland in the aftermath of World War II. The Wall Street Journal (August 11) reports that now that Poland has joined the EU, the families of those expelled are bringing a wave of lawsuits to the European Court in the Hague.

Poland asserts that Germans have no right to restitution when it was their country that invaded Poland, starting World War II. Polish politicians say that if these claims are successful they will sue Germany for offsetting damage done to Poland during World War II.

We identify with Poland here, but look at the hypocrisy. Why should German aggression against Poland mean that territory is rightly forfeited while Arab aggression against Israel is to have no consequences? Poland has just claim while Israel has none?

THE POT CALLS THE KETTLE BALCK

Labor Party chairman Shimon Peres is quoted by the Israeli daily Maariv (July 30) as declaring, in a meeting with EU Foreign Affairs chief Javier Solana, that Arafat is “insane.” Sources close to Peres, seeking to tone down the statement (his first seriously critical of Arafat), explained his intention was merely to say Arafat “had gone crazy.”

But how should one characterize the mental acuity of Peres, who proposed putting a computer in the hands of every child in the Arab world on the theory that this would ensure a humane and tolerant next generation. As columnist Ralph Peters points out “the terrorists’ real ‘secret weapon’ has been the Internet, the greatest means of disseminating hatred in history, more virulent by far than even the printing press.”

ANGLICAN CHURCHMEN

Rowan Williams, the archbishop of Canterbury and head of the Anglican Church worldwide, is scheduled to spend the third anniversary of 9/11 praising Islam from the pulpit of an Egyptian mosque in Cairo.

Rev. Williams is of the same cloth as the Dr. Peter Carnley, head of the Anglican Church in Australia, who, at the annual synod of the Anglican church in Perth, held shortly after the bombings in Bali, Indonesia in which the majority of victims were Australian tourists, blamed the massacres on Australia’s support for United States policy in Iraq.

A BBC WATCH REPORT

In its fourth report on BBC coverage of the Middle East, issued in July 2004, BBC Watch has analyzed all documentaries on the subject of the Middle East shown on BBC 1 and 2 since the current intifada began in late 2000. Their principal findings:

The BBC is running a campaign to vilify Israel, broadcasting a documentary critical of Israel every 2-3 months. 88% of documentaries on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict paint either a negative impression of Israel or, in two cases, a positive image of Palestinians. Of 17 programs, only 1 was positive toward Israel