EUROPEAN UNION POLICY: ISRAELI SETTLEMENTS IN THE WEST BANK AND EAST JERUSALEM ARE NOT PART OF ISRAEL

Middle East Monitor reports that in negotiating with Israel over Horizon 2020, a project for funding scientific research, “the EU guidelines dictate that any future agreement with Israel should make it clear that the Israeli settlements in the West Bank and occupied Jerusalem, as well as the Syrian Golan Heights, are not part of Israel and therefore not covered by EU-Israel agreements.”

The Palestinians have vowed that once they have achieved statehood, Palestine will be Judenrein. Not one European voice has been raised against the Palestinians’ promised ethnic cleansing. That means the more than 500,000 Israeli settlers will be forced out of their homes.

I really don’t understand the EU’s love affair with the Palestinians. The Europeans’ demands on Israel, if enacted, will ensure the eventual obliteration of the Jewish state. It seems like, except for Germany, the Europeans feel absolutely no responsibility for the Holocaust. Well, they better take a close look at history.

Many people in Nazi occupied Europe collaborated with the SS and the Gestapo in rounding up Jews for deportation to the Nazi death camps. The people in Poland and the Balkans did so eagerly. All of Europe bears some responsibility in the Holocaust, some countries more than others. The Europeans cannot use the excuse of having been under the boot of the Nazis because most of them were glad to get rid of the hated Jews.

The Europeans should also study history to enlighten themselves about how the settlements came to be established in the first place. It was because of the third Arab-Israeli war, better known as the Six Day War, when in 1967 the armies of Egypt, Jordan and Syria were decisively defeated by the Israeli defense forces. As a result, Israel captured the West Bank, East Jerusalem, the Sinai, the Gaza strip and the Golan Heights. Israel then established settlements in the West Bank, East Jerusalem and the Gaza strip.

In all wars through WWII, it had been customary for the victorious nations to retain some of the lands captured from the countries that were defeated. But the UN and the EU have decreed that Israel, which built its settlements to make the country more secure, is not allowed to do retain any lands it captured in 1967. Thus, according to the Europeans, the 500,000-plus Jewish settlers are living in homes on lands that are not part of Israel.