US and Europe should stop appeasing Israel 

(MENAFN - Arab News) The recent shootings of young, innocent Jewish schoolchildren in France by an extremist should set the alarm bells ringing in the capitals of Europe and not just in France.

Sadly, Lady Ashton, the European Union Minister for Foreign Affairs, was hopelessly both misquoted and misinterpreted by both the Jewish Parliament in Europe and by the leaders of Israel when she alluded to international trouble spots in which children had been the victims.

She even cited Siderot, the Israeli city most affected by rocket attacks from Gaza but for some unexplained reason this was omitted from the transcript of her speech. Regrettably the Israeli leaders both exploited this, and her reference to Gaza, in order to justify the appalling record of child murder established by the Israeli forces during its last invasion of Gaza in which over 300 Palestinians children were killed. By doing this they entirely undermined the validity of their case for Lady Ashton to resign.

The further claims of the Israeli government that their army is the most ethical army in the world do not equate to the reality on the ground. Where are the ethics or morality in Israel's use of its army to maintain the illegal military occupation of the West Bank? Where is the ethics employed by the Israeli army in its role of illegally expanding the Jewish settlements there, which resulted in the breakdown of peace talks?

Where is the ethics of the Israeli army in its role of the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians from their historic homes in East Jerusalem? Where indeed are the ethics of the Israeli army's establishment of military checkpoints in the West Bank designed to enforce racist oppression of the Palestinians within the context of Jewish racial apartheid? Finally, where are the ethics of the Israeli army in its forcible eviction of Palestinians from their homes and separation from their olive groves in order to facilitate the building of a wall which has become the pretext for an illegal land grab by Israel, as well as an attempt by Israel to abort the possibility of a contiguous and viable Palestinian state emerging in the future.

It should be clear from the above examples that any claim to ethical behavior that the Israeli army may have held has long been destroyed by the fascist policies of its political leaders. It is they after all who have turned Israel from a democracy into a rogue state by their abuse of the army. US support for the Israeli suppression of the rights of Palestinians by its army was a major catalyst in the events that led to Sept. 11, and yet neither the US nor the European leaders had the sense to realize this at the time, and both continue to appease the fascists who now govern Israel with massive military aid packages and trade concessions despite the fact that Israel remains in breach of 50 UN Security Council resolutions.

The assassination of Osama Bin Laden and other key figures in the Al-Qaeda leadership may have undermined the international status of this organization but it has not lessened the deadly potential of its individual members to strike unexpectedly within the heart of Western civilization. If President Sarkozy can speak of the similarity between the shootings in Toulouse and the events of Sept. 11 in the US, over ten years after, then what does that tell us about the efficacy of the wars of either Iraq or Afghanistan? Surely it tells us that both US and European leaders have failed quite ignominiously to seriously address and diagnose the major causes of recruitment to Al-Qaeda to this day.

Until US and European leaders stop appeasing the fascist regime now governing Israel in its current dismemberment of Palestinian territory for the purpose of wiping Palestine off the map and imposing the Zionist solution of a greater Israel in its place, they will continue to fail to address and root out extremism and terrorism internationally. Until they do that, and until they hold Israel accountable for its actions, in the same way they have held notable Arab regimes accountable for their actions, then there is a strong likelihood that they will increasingly jeopardize the lives of innocent Jews throughout the Western world, and beyond.