Monday, July 20, 2009

European Taxpayer Money for Israel's Critics

A number of European countries have been supporting "Breaking the Silence", an Israeli organization which collects stories about how bad the IDF is. This is actually not new; Europeans support the radical corner of Israeli society as a matter of routine, and have been doing so for many years. I know this because I'm sort of friendly with some of the people in these organizations and they're quite free with the information; my response has been to wish them luck and suggest they ratchet up their fundraising efforts, since in essence what they're doing is exporting Israeli services to Europe.

The funny thing about the report this time is that the Europeans aren't getting their money's worth. I've read many of the reports in the recent case, and they're mostly comfortably within the norm for warfare. Nothing NATO soldiers aren't routinely doing in Afghanistan. But for that, you have to know what NATO soldiers are doing in Afghanistan, on the one hand, and you need to read Hebrew, on the other. Not qualifications most Europeans are likely to have.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

and even if Europeans were qualified it probably wouldn't help, because:

I've by now listened to a number of 3 minute (state financed) Radio snippets (dradio) about the recent riots in "Uigur-Land". All extensively described the grievances of the Uighurs, none mentioned that the first round was actually by the Uighurs doing the killing -

I wonder why people who are just spreading what they think the public wants to hear are allowed to call themselves journalist. I call them propagandists and what they did in the case of the Uighur riots i.e. Chinese are bad Uighurs are suffering, they also do whenever Israel does as much as bet an eyelid. All they are interested in is pretending they are in the know of whatever they think might sell

rgds,
Silke

The Realist said...

As a British citizen, it's increasingly disturbing for me to see the level of discourse about Israel in my country reduced to the level typically found on the other side of the Channel, and to see my government taking a position of such equivocation. I only hope that the Conservative admninistration which we will have within a year will acquit itself with more honour, but our principles are increasingly abandoned as a craven and ignorant political class try to appeal to the most basic instincts of a population even more ignorant about the true state of affairs in the Middle East. This act by our Embassy, with my tax money, frankly beggars belief; I hope it marks the low point.

Anonymous said...

EU backs 95% of UNRWA's budget...so there are still 5% left to support real righteous Israel critical organizations.
We love such things in EU, especially in Germany: more details why?: the Bundersverdienstkreuz to Mrs. Langner, whose Israel critics can be told as clearly anti-Semitic, Mr. Polenz (CDU - conservative party) who insists that Israel shall freeze any building activity in East Jerusalem because East Jerusalem shall be the capital of a future Pal. State and Israel will deconstruct it's own democracy only with such activity.

I think EU did a tremendous successful step to assure that our own silence towards Israel will remain covered as we invested money in "Breaking The Silence".

It never came out of fashion to blame the Jews for anything...and it is easy too because everyone will belief you immediately and start applauding and nodding his agreement (only my personal experience).

BR

Carl