Now the EU says it wants to sanction Israel
Has the EU ever done a single thing that’s good? I’m drawing a blank on that. Here’s the latest action it’s considering that’s not good:
The European Union is considering sanctions against Israel as member states Spain, Ireland and Norway officially recognize “Palestinian state.”
The threat of sanctions is aimed at forcing Israel to stop the ongoing military operation against Hamas terrorists in the Rafah terrorist stronghold, European media reports suggest. The EU “foreign affairs ministers raised the prospect of placing sanctions on Israel in a “real way” for the first time over its continued military campaign in the besieged city of Rafah in Gaza,” the Irish Times reported Monday evening citing the country’s foreign minister.
I find it darkly ironic that people criticized the Jews in WWII for not fighting back sufficiently against the Nazis (although one of these days I plan to write a post showing that they fought back much more than people know), and now the Jews are criticized for fighting back against an enemy that is at least equally murderous.
It is also darkly ironic that most European countries that were occupied by the Nazis had a great many citizens who voluntarily cooperated with rounding up their own Jews for the slaughter. Now the European Union would like to give Israel Hobson’s choice: let yourself be murdered by barbarous neighbors, or we will squeeze you to death financially.
Fortunately, I don’t think the Eastern European countries will go along with this – although I could be wrong – and Germany would have an “interesting” dilemma in deciding what to do. Also, I don’t think that Europe is the biggest source of Israel’s trade (see this). Then again, I wouldn’t put it past Biden to join in the anti-Israel sanction festivities.
Anti-Israel sanctions are exactly the sort of thing the language of “apartheid state” and “genocide,” the recent international court decisions against Israel, and the MSM propaganda are all meant to engender. The aim is to isolate and cripple the Israeli state.
Just finished VDH’s “The End of Everything.” One lesson, especially for small states, is that other states won’t come to the rescue.
Yeah, you could see this coming once South Africa opened that ICJ case against Israel.
Looking like the World is about to put Israel thru what they put South Africa thru…Jeez!?
I am just finishing up Michael Oren’s Six Days of War (1967). Deja vu all over again. I am deeply offended by the virtue signaling countries and luminaries (here, there, everywhere) who know neither history or have any idea how the world really works.
Has the EU ever done a single thing that’s good? I’m drawing a blank on that.
Interesting question. I agree with the sentiment, assuming that I understand your meaning implied in the “EU doing something.” That is, the EU as a giant pseudo-nation state, doing something on the international stage.
The other way to look at the question is, “What has the formation of the EU done for its member nations?” Plenty of bad things, no doubt, but some clearly advantageous things too.
I have, or used to, follow various economic issues and also various gun or anti-gun law topics. It was curious, but not terribly surprising when the Swiss jettisoned a sizeable portion, but not all, of their historical firearm liberties or rights, under threats from the EU.
The threat was to remove Switzerland from the Schengen zone which allowed free movement of people and goods across borders. The Swiss corporate types were not going to accept the economic hit that would entail.
In principle, the commonality of the Eurodollar is a big economic efficiency. Although neither the Brits (when they were a member) nor the Swiss bought into that. In my limited knowledge, once Eurocrats moved a bit past the Maastricht treaty and the creation of the Eurodollar, it all ran amok.
One thing that’s bothered me for decades is how the anti-trust legal actions of the EU have been so brutally partisan and anti-US over the years. I believe it would be appropriate for US regulators to treat EU companies with equal harshness. But they haven’t.
I would like to have the US treat the EU as a pariah state, until they shape up, and start acting like civilized nations.
This antisemitism must end.
I commented last October that this may be the start of a world war and civil war between good and evil that would engulf nearly every nation. We seem still to be on that path of doom.
Western Europe has is in the process of jettisoning its civilization.
The late conor cruise obrien predicted this would be the result of german reunification in an atlantic piece in 1990
The use of “apartheid state” and “genocide” to describe Israel is indescribably stupid, born of ignorance, and an excuse to hate Israel and its Jews. No anti-semitism there, Nooo, none. “We deny that”.
They are evil some of the people they grovel to are stupid
https://www.ynetnews.com/article/byodznq4r#autoplay
The EU is ruled by unelected woke bureaucrats. Western Europe is well on its way to becoming a police state.
Posted something and changed my mind.
What a surprise. /sarc
I’m writing protests to mail to these morons. I expect to begin by reminding them that the (Muslim) Grand Mufti of Jerusalem was not just an ally of Adolf Hitler in the extermination of Jews, but a guest of his.
In my reading — and please correct me on this detail if I’m really wrong — the Balkans were the locus of attempts to arm a fighting force from the Middle East to assist Hitler. My uncertain point: only an absence of literacy kept these forces from getting trained well enough to do so.
At any rate! I am outraged like our host. THIS is a serious and ultimately dangerous stain against the EU.
PS Eurocrats bow to the UN and its stooge, the ICJ. That’s how I see the sequence of “positioning” — in the US, the Woke and guilt driven kneel to BLM. Among Eurocrats and its brethren, they kneel to the UN.
Here’s a fun guy, Jeremy Rifkin, and his book I took note of in the 2000s:
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According to Rifkin, the “European Dream” is one in which individuals find security not through individual accumulation of wealth, but through connectivity and respect for human rights. Rifkin’s concept of connectivity is displayed in the Dutch people’s quest for gezelligheid (meaning a cozy, inclusive environment), as well as the social market theories that have dominated French and German economic planning since WWII. Rifkin argues that this model is better-suited to 21st-century challenges than the “American Dream”.
–Jeremy Rifkin, “The European Dream: How Europe’s Vision of the Future Is Quietly Eclipsing the American Dream” (2004)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_European_Dream
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Ah, 2004. Good times.
The End of History had not entirely ended yet.
How’s that EU thingie working out?