Wednesday, Jul 9, 2008
As tensions between Israel and Europe rise, Israeli victims of a Palestinian attack are suing the European Union for giving money to the Palestinian Authority.
Jun 1, 2002 | One hot August night last year, the Blumberg family from the Jewish settlement of Karnei Shomron in the northern West Bank were driving their car along one of the dark, winding roads of the area when a hail of bullets suddenly rained down upon them. Tehiya (Hebrew for "renaissance") Blumberg was killed and her husband, Steven, and their 14-year old daughter, Tzipi, were left paralyzed by the attack, which Israeli authorities say was carried out by two Palestinian police officers.
Almost eight months later, the attack and its aftermath have come to highlight the sharp deterioration in relations, not between Israelis and Palestinians, but between the Jewish state and Europe. Steven Blumberg and his five children are suing the European Union for $20.7 million over his wife's death. The case was filed recently and is expected to go to court in Israel later this year. Blumberg and his injured daughter are also suing over their wounds.
The Blumbergs' lawyer, Nitzana Darshan-Leitner, accuses the 15-member E.U. of recklessly providing the Palestinian Authority with money that it knew would be used for attacks on Israelis. "I can safely say that if the E.U. had not provided that money to the Palestinians, hundreds of Israelis would still be alive today and maybe thousands would not have been wounded," says Darshan-Leitner. She is adamant that the Israeli government has warned the E.U. time and again that its funding of the P.A. was endangering lives. The U.S., she says, stopped giving money to the P.A. after the start of the Al-Aqsa intifada when the Palestinians were not able to account for where it went. (The U.S. provides $75 million a year in indirect humanitarian aid to the Palestinians, none of it to the P.A.) Darshan-Leitner says she is also looking into the possibility of bringing suit against the P.A. and the E.U. in the United States.
The case goes to the heart of two sensitive, and highly emotional, issues that have come to play a central role in the conflict: the degree to which the P.A. is responsible for attacks against Israelis, and the moral status of such attacks. The Israeli position is that the attacks, whether inside Israel itself or in the occupied territories, are directed and funded by the official P.A. structure. Earlier this month Israel's minister of parliamentary affairs, Danny Naveh, presented a report that officially leveled the same accusation brought by the British-born Blumbergs. The report contained purported P.A. documents that Israel claims prove that E.U. money sent every month to pay P.A. salaries and other expenses was used to finance terrorist attacks against civilians.
"There are hundreds of terrorists who get their monthly salary from the Palestinian Authority and, indirectly, from the European Union. Arafat allowed this European money to be used to pay the salaries of these people," Naveh said.
The P.A. called the documents "forgeries." E.U. officials denied that E.U. aid was being misused, saying that the documents did not prove that E.U. money went to militant groups. The officials added that P.A. expenditures of all E.U. monies are closely monitored by the International Monetary Fund.
The charges against the E.U. throw into sharp relief the profound historical and philosophical differences between Europe's view of the conflict and the United States'. The Europeans see the occupation as the underlying problem and tend to regard Palestinian violence as an understandable if not necessarily justified response to it, while the U.S., following the logic of its war on terrorism, has unequivocally condemned Palestinian terrorism.
An episode in April made starkly clear how much Israel mistrusts the E.U. compared to the U.S. At the height of the offensive in the West Bank, Israel refused to let E.U. foreign policy coordinator Javier Solana and a delegation of Europeans meet with Arafat -- but only days later, the American special envoy, Gen. Anthony Zinni, was granted access to the beleaguered Palestinian leader. The snub caused a storm of government-level indignation in Europe, possibly contributing to the severe criticism the continent leveled at Israel during the West Bank invasion.
Some of the harshest of that criticism came from an unlikely source: Germany. Highly sensitive to its Holocaust-haunted past, Germany has traditionally been more friendly to Israel than many other European nations have. So when several political leaders of a conservative political party bitterly attacked Israel for its military actions in the occupied territories, tensions rose both in Germany and in Israel.
Juergen Moellemann, the deputy leader of the German Free Democratic Party, a staid and conservative party known for its free-market beliefs, accused Israel of "trampling international law" with its military actions in the West Bank. This would perhaps not have been so objectionable, but he followed it up by apparently condoning suicide bombings, saying, "What would one do if Germany were occupied? I would also resist, and resist by force. It would then be my mission to resist. And I would do it not only in my own land, but also in the land of the aggressor." Moellemann also sponsored and backed a former Green Party member, Syrian-born Jamal Karsli, who moved to the FDP and then accused Israel of using "Nazi methods." Karsli was removed from the party but Moellemann was not reprimanded.
All the main parties in Germany, including the ruling Social Democrats, the conservative Christian Democrats and foreign minister Fischer's Greens strongly condemned the FDP's stance. The FDP was accused of employing anti-Israel sentiments to curry favor with the far right in the run-up to September's general elections. Israel was outraged: The FDP's leader, Guido Westerwelle, who was in Israel this week, was snubbed by Israeli politicians, with even the head of the Israeli opposition, Yossi Sarid of the left-wing Meretz Party, canceling a meeting with him. As for Westerwelle, he defended his party's stance, saying that criticism of Israeli policies did not constitute anti-Semitism and adding, "Israel has a friend in Germany. Anti-Semitism has to be fought everywhere."
In a meeting with Westerwelle, Israeli President Moshe Katzav repeated what has become an Israeli refrain in recent months. "The European countries have a right to criticize Israeli policy," Katzav said, but he added, "There is no justification for any kind of outbreak of anti-Semitism, as I sense it taking place in Europe in recent months."
The European view that the occupation, not terrorism, is the real issue has made the E.U. very unpopular in Israel. In addition, Israelis -- many of whom already have deep-rooted suspicions about European anti-Semitism -- have been disturbed by anti-Semitic incidents in Europe during the intifada, such as attacks on synagogues in Germany and France in recent months. Israelis' mistrust of Europe was reinforced even by the gaudy Eurovision song contest this week, when presenters in Belgium and Sweden and a Danish singer are alleged to have influenced viewers of the live event not to vote for the Israeli entry, because of "the situation" and "what Israel is doing to the Palestinians." The event may not have meant much even to most Europeans, but in the Israeli press it was front-page news and the anti-Semitic connection was quickly made.
Some Israelis, however, don't agree that European criticism of Israel's actions is necessarily anti-Semitic, and warn of the dangers of using the epithet too freely. "Every government that criticizes the occupation is automatically branded anti-Semitic. Every European newspaper that publishes accounts of civil rights violations is automatically added to the list of Jew haters," wrote Akiva Eldar in Ha'aretz, Israel's most prestigious newspaper.
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