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Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs



Israel and Europe: An Expanding Abyss?
(Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs/Konrad Adenauer Foundation)

Manfred Gerstenfeld


Israel and Europe: An Expanding Abyss? explores the complex, tense, and historically loaded relationship between Europe and Israel. Over the years a fissure has developed between their political views. Many believe that it continues to widen and has become an abyss.

The introductory essay and the following interviews combine together as a reconnaissance mission into the essence of European-Israeli political relations. In the essay, the author illustrates how Israel and often European Jewry have been made to pay for Europe's major strategic mistakes in defense, energy, and immigration policies.

Europe has acted against Israel through voting for one-sided UN resolutions, political statements from EU and member countries, and EU financing of NGOs hostile to Israel.

Israelis and Europeans should not, however, give up hope for better understanding. Israel should take the initiative to see how the damage can be limited without endangering its vital interests or remaining silent about European injustice toward it.

In the second part of the book, fourteen interviewees from Europe, Israel, and the United States discuss major aspects of the European-Israeli relationship.


Contents:

  • Israel and Europe: An Expanding Abyss? - Manfred Gerstenfeld
  • The EU and Israel: Radically Different Worldviews - Yehezkel Dror
  • Israel and Europe: The Positive and the Negative - Hildegard Muller
  • Europe's Consistent Anti-Israeli Bias at the United Nations - Dore Gold
  • Confronting European-Israeli Misunderstandings - Johannes Gerster
  • The European Union: Continuously Creating Problems for Israel and the Jews - Shmuel Trigano
  • Something is Rotten in the State of Europe: Anti-Semitism as a Civilizational Pathology - Robert Wistrich
  • European NGOs Against Israel - Gerald Steinberg
  • European Anti-Americanism and Anti-Semitism: Similarities and Differences - Andrei Markovits
  • Experiencing European Anti-Americanism and Anti-Israelism - Jeffrey Gedmin
  • Choosing Between Israel and the Arabs - Avram Pazner
  • French History and Current Attitudes to Israel - Freddy Eytan
  • British Attitudes toward Israel and the Jews - Zvi Shtauber
  • The BBC: Widespread Antipathy toward Israel - Trevor Asserson
  • Israel and the New Accession States of the European Union - Mark Sofer


From the Interviewees:

The EU and Israel have radically different worldviews as well as value systems. This leads to fundamental disagreements.
Prof. Yehezkel Dror, founding president of the Jewish People Policy Planning Institute

It is very important that Israelis do not have the false perception that their country is being attacked by everybody. Israel has friends in Europe who generally support it.
Hildegard Muller, chairwoman of the German-Israeli Parliamentary Friendship Group

Europe's voting record at the United Nations shows a longstanding anti-Israeli bias. France plays a particularly negative role in the formation of this position.
Dr. Dore Gold, former Israeli ambassador to the United Nations

In every society there are opinion leaders. Israel should ask itself how it can reach the heads and the hearts of the European population again.
Dr. Johannes Gerster, representative in Israel of the Konrad Adenauer Foundation

European public opinion projects its own fears onto Israel, which has to face the Arabs. Europe tries to exorcise these fears by condemning Israel.
Prof. Shmuel Trigano, professor of sociology at the University of Paris-Nanterre

One serious problem for Jews and Israelis is that part of the slowly gestating European identity is being forged against the United States.
Prof. Robert Wistrich, director of the Hebrew University's Vidal Sassoon International Center for the Study of Antisemitism

Israel and Europe: An Expanding Abyss? is available from the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs - Price: $20 - NIS50.