What the polls in Europe mean:It is really a matter of culture [Archives:2003/683/Opinion]

A European friend once told me that the Americans are loosing ground in Europe because of the backwardness of American culture, when it comes to the basic issues of human rights and civil liberties. Oh sure, there is a problem when it comes to economics and military might, but the trend for the future is that these criteria for prominence in the world are now going to step back and more humanitarian concerns will take on the lead as the essential elements for world leadership. This was very interesting to the observer, because one recalls how Europe once represented the setting for the establishment of prominence in the world based on power, might makes right and the White Man’s Burden, etc. Moreover, Europe was the birthplace of Imperialism and the Industrial Revolution with all their detestable social attributes and oppressive properties, culminating in a depressive urban culture that destroyed all the semblance of family ties and social kinship and harmony, to be replaced by narrow interests, selfish ambitions and an economic system that encourages stratified social systems, in which the destitute are left without hope or relief from being able to fulfill the minimal needs of sustenance.
Now Europe has outlived that era and after directly observing the ugliness of wars and actually being a sponsor of man’s inhumanity to man, the people of Europe have again shown that the essence of human existence must be based on a refined human order that must take into considerations the prominence of human rights and relief from oppression and transgressions of man against man.
For sure, the results of the most recent poll in the European Union about the ranking of nations as to which represents the worst threat to world peace should be viewed in keeping with the progress in the European conceptualization of European social and legal justice and the rights of man as understood by the most advanced principles, which truly seek to arrest all forms of oppression and man’s inhumanity to man, and to try to achieve a balanced world in which all can find their chance for a free and prosperous existence.
The fact that Israel was chosen as the worst threat is not born out of “anti-Semitic” feelings or hatred for the Hebrews or whatever one might want to call it. The fact is that Israel has the arsenal to represent a serious menace to the stability of the world, with two hundred or so nukes at its disposal and God knows only how many other sums of weapons of mass destruction, which represent the only way that Israel can guarantee its illegitimate existence at the expense of the rights of the Palestinian people and the determinant of the peace and stability of the neighboring states.
The people of Europe plainly said to the Israelis and their faithful American friends, “Enough is enough”, and it is time to look at things in their proper perspectives, if we are truly to achieve any meaningful peaceful order in the world. Enough lies, distortions and innuendoes, the Europeans said, we now see what Israel is really all about and we are getting tired of being taken for gullible fools, to believe that the intentions of the Israelis coincide with our understanding of what genuine human decency is all about. Israel is a hoax and we are tired of being misled into believing that Israel means well, but…, etc. The Europeans also said that we are also tired of arm twisting from Uncle Sam, who wishes the world to only believe that Ariel Sharon and his Zionist thugs or George W. Bush and his neo-con demagogues are ready to put the rest of the world on the right track to international peace and economic and social cohesion. For three years these war mongers have torn the world to shred, while at the same time they wish the people of Europe to believe that they and the latter are thinking along the same wavelengths.
The Israelis have shown themselves to be nothing, but butchers, but not in any kosher way, and they have been acting like evil demons wrecking any hope for peace and common goals for development to work in the Middle East for the common good of all. Three years they have been killing innocent children and destroying every semblance of livelihood and culture, just so the naive and chauvinistic aspirations of religious demagogues can be fulfilled. For three years the Europeans have seen the almost blind support that Mr. George Bush has given to Israel and the blindness the former has shown to the suffering of the Palestinians and were just unwilling to keep their opinions clamped down anymore: Israel is a dangerous villain that must be checked if any hopes for world peace can be realized in due time.
The Europeans were also tired of the continuous and sometimes even rude arm-twisting that they have been subjected to by the Americans for the sake of Israel, and there has to be a time when one says enough is enough (Remember Belgium and the Sharon Massacre Investigation).
More important the overwhelming majority of the Europeans saw it imperative that unless matters in the world are dealt with with some degree of cultural finesse, there is no point in enjoying the fruits of world leadership.
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[archive-e:683-v:13-y:2003-d:2003-11-06-p:opinion]