The author's not arguing or defending a point of view. He's shaking his head and saying, "Tsk tsk! Bad Europeans!" in print. He's generating heat but he's not shedding any light. He offers two rational reasons for Europe to feel more sympathy for Palestinians than Americans do, and then he obscures that with the implication that because Europe -- as though "Europe" is a sufficiently precise synonym for Nazi Germany -- committed a Holocaust once, "Europe" must be willing to commit another one now.
He abandons the job of offering an explanation and just gives us libel. Ugh. Marvin Long Austin, Texas OK, this is absurd. This is the excuse that European bigots make. France was almost as enthusiastic about killing its Jews as Germany was. Every country in Europe was, save Britain, of course. Not surprisingly, Britain is the European country most sympathetic to Israel. The Europeans - all of them - want to pretend this didn't happen. They want to pretend that they were all innocents ground under the German heel who tried to protect their Jews. Bullshit. There wasn't a single militarily significant resistance movement in all of Western Europe. And none of them - _none of them_ made any effort to protect their Jews, or have done anything to face that fact now. The only country in Europe that I can think of that made even vaguely acceptable efforts to protect its Jews was Bulgaria - and they were a Nazi ally, for God's sake. Here's the crux of the problem, to paraphrase Timothy Garton Ash, the _Oxford_ historian. The _same countries_ that eagerly butchered their Jews 60 years ago are telling Israel it doesn't have the right to defend itself today - and they, and you, don't think that there's anything wrong with that. Here's the simplest reason we should support Israel, as Glenn Reynolds wrote. 1. If the Palestinians put down their arms, they would get an independent state. 2. If the Israelis put down their arms, they would be massacred as they were 60 years ago. 3. Most of the world doesn't care which of those two things happens. I'll go farther. Most of the world would prefer option 1. But it is not going to happen this time. If the Jews of Europe could have defended themselves the way the Jews of Israel can today, there would be a lot fewer Europeans. They know that, and in the end, they are willing to expiate their shame, their shame from colonialism, their shame from the Holocaust, their shame at appeasing yet another group of dictators hungry for the murder of the world's Jews - as, again, they did 60 years ago - by acquiescing in the murder of another 6 million Jews, and pretending - as they did 60 years ago - that those Jews deserve what they got. Gautam
