From yesterday’s Opinion Journal BOTW, “Pals No More?”:
“New public opinion surveys conducted among ‘opinion elites’ in Europe show that support for the Palestinians has fallen precipitously,” according to a fascinating report in the Jerusalem Post. The surveys, conducted by Stanley Greenberg, an American Democrat who has also worked for Israel’s former prime minister Ehud Barak, found that attitudes had changed most dramatically in France:
Three years ago, 60 percent of French respondents said they took a side in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and of that 60%, four out of five backed the Palestinians. Today, by contrast, 60% of French respondents did not take a side in the conflict, and support for the Palestinians had dropped by half among those who did express a preference.
If we read this correctly, French support for the Palestinians has declined to 16% from 48%, while support for Israel has increased to 24% from 12%. Here’s the pollster’s explanation:
At the root of the change, said Greenberg, was a fundamental remaking in Europe of the “framework” through which the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is viewed.
Three years ago, he said, the conflict was perceived “in a post-colonial framework.”
There was a sense “that Europe could cancel out its own colonial history by taking the ‘right’ side"--the Palestinian side. Yasser Arafat was viewed as “an anti-colonial, liberation leader.” The US was seen as a global imperial power, added Greenberg, and the fact that it was backing Israel only added to the “instinctive” sense of the Palestinians as victims.
France, with the largest Muslim population—moreover an entirely Arab Muslim population—with the direct experience of Algeria and the most anti-US positions, was most prey to this mindset.
Today, by contrast, the Europeans “are focused on fundamentalist Islam and its impact on them,” he said. The Europeans were now asking themselves “who is the moderate in this conflict, and who is the extremist? And suddenly it is the Palestinians who may be the extremists, or who are allied with extremists who threaten Europe’s own society.”
An increasing proportion of Europeans are concluding that “maybe the Palestinians are not the colonialist victims” after all.
If Greenberg’s analysis is right, it underscores a crucial contrast between America and Europe. Americans overwhelmingly support Israel, in substantial part because it reminds us of ourselves: Like America, Israel is a nation of immigrants, many of whom fled persecution or discrimination in their native lands, and who beat the odds to build a thriving, dynamic, democratic country. Americans also wish the Palestinian Arabs well, and we believe that if they behave like civilized human beings—granted, a big “if” based on evidence to this point—they can also build a thriving, dynamic, democratic country.
Europeans, by contrast, have long scorned Israel because it reminds them of themselves: of their own guilt over colonialism, as Greenberg says (and, one might add, over their abhorrent treatment of European Jews). But increasingly they are scorning the Palestinians because guilt is giving way to fear: Israel’s adversaries remind Europeans of their own unassimilated Muslim populations.
To put this more pithily, America’s approach to the Middle East is based on self-confidence, while Europe’s is based on self-loathing. America not only is a true friend of Israel but a truer friend of the Palestinians than are the Europeans.
[my emphasis]
It remains to be seen how European elites will gracefully extricate themselves from years of framing the conflict in the post-colonial affectations of the late Edward Said —or rather, how they will do so without revealing themselves as gullible dupes who bought into the pernicious strain of Otherness fetishizing that not only relativized cultural difference, but that further provided justification for the intellectual avoidance it then ironically turned into a both a cultural movement and a philosophical bedrock.
Not surprisingly, once the threat that I’ve been arguing naturally arises as a result of giving a particular culture complete control over its own defintional parameters and identity—marking those who dare criticize it from within as “inauthentic,” and those who criticize it from without presumptuous and unfit to judge— threatens, literally, to blow up in the faces of those who have until now uncritically adopted the theoretical paradigm that allowed the threat to become flesh and blood and strapped with semtex-stuffed vests, the pretense to refuse judgment of the Other is dropped in favor of self-preservation.
But conceptual frames like the one Said and his army of cynical relativists managed to create—essentially establishing a worldview around which much of Europe has spent the last quarter century constructing a social apparatus that acts as reinforcement—are difficult to shed. And so the question becomes, will Europe awaken from its (ironically) dogged intellectual lassitude in time to undo the damage it helped to bring about as the result of adopting a set of philosophical principals that for a long time afforded them the luxury of not having to pronounce on difficult issues, using as their dodge the refusal to “presume” to understand that which, by dint of some sort of bogus essentialism disguised as multi-cultural “tolerance,” they claimed they were in no position to properly understand.
Or maybe I’m just engaging in a bit of critical overdetermination here. Which happens sometimes when you compose posts directly after emerging from large paper Safeway bags, having just spent fifteen minutes of quality time with a tube of airplane glue.
If so, my sincerest apologies to the Other.
(h/t Terry Hastings)
I’m a little confused. Does the title refer to shifting paradigms of European perfidy or the fact that you’ve switched from Elmer’s Paste to airplane glue?
Sharp, there’s no shift involved in going from Elmer’s to Testor’s. One is for eating, the other for breathing.
Geez. Kids these days.
and when you shift paradigms aren’t you supposed to use a clutch?
Nothing like a little existential threat to wake one up. Even better than coffee and croisant.
I, like you, will wait and see what the Europeans do. I still fear that this won’t resolve well. Or peacefully.
Sounds like they’ve started feeling the “cold grinding Grizzly bear jaws hot on their heels.”
Fascism has many faces. Today, it wears a mask of Islam.
SB: all
or nothing
Not if you’re speed-paradigm-shifting.
Consequences !?! – no one said anything about consequences!
Well if history is any guide, these ideas should become fashionable among the Left in America by 2010 and Canada by 2020.
Does anything in Europe ever resolve itself well or peacefully?
And Jeff, airplane glue? I think you may have lost track of how many klonopins you have been taking. Everyone knows for a nice head buzz the only way to go is nitrous oxide. If you have trouble convincing the guys at the compressed gas retailer near you that you are A) a dentist or B) opening a bakery in your garage, you can always go with the EZ Whips. They are kind of a pain in the ass but get yourself a nice whip cream dispenser and it’s all systems go.
Double clutch more like it.
I disagree with many of Taranto’s (BOTW’s author) conclusions as well as Greenberg’s.
There may well have been post-colonial guilt or or such high-falutin’ terms in play among the various intellectuals, psuedo-intellectuals, and fellow travellers in certain European countries. But that explains nothing for the rest who (never) had (any significant number of) colonies.
As far as I’m concerned, most people supported the Israelis through the 60s because they were the underdogs. After the ‘73 war and the continued support by the US, that underdog status was perceived as transformed by many Europeans to a lapdog status. Most of the communist parties in Europe (especially the French, Italian, and Scandinavian) were local representatives of the Sovier Union. As the USSR built up its relations with the Arab/Muslim nations (and was embarrassed by the flight of its own Jews to Israel), the European Left in general inspired by the Communist parties in particular began building a new mythology of a Zionist and American imperialism.
Combined with the down-but-never-out European anti-semitism and the ubiquitous anti-Americanism (but not anti-American dollars!), Europe soon produced a brand new history of the Middle East.
Edward Said may have inspired some intellectuals after the fact, but he’s a latecomer to this shindig and a pretty lame one at that.
And the reason the US is a friend of Israel is not because of our self-confidence (amusing line tho’ contrasting self-confidence with self-loathing…).
It’s because it’s the effin’ right thing to do.
… oooh, sorry, about the bandwidth
No kidding.
What’s always fascinated me is how Europe and the left in this country have continued to play down the rise of Islamofascist violence when they, the terrorists, have been quite candid about their goals and the violent means to achieve them. As Steyn and others have posited, “why can’t we take them (the terrorists) at their word?”
Kelly – Of course it was downplayed – the violence was over there and happened to those people. Until it happened over here and happened to us.
Suddenly it’s a paradigm shift.
word: look “Gotta look out for number 1.”
We can’t take them at their word because of the intentionalist evil!! Must turn it into something good!!
The left needs to wake up and smell the coffee before the freaking house burns down.
Pair a dime shifts. eh?
Well, I just got back from lunch at the Chinese Buffet ($5.25 including drink) and happened to see one of the BIGGEST females i’ve ever seen ambulatory. She made one trip to the grazing land herself and then sent her kid up…oh, I lost count and interest at about six trips.
I figure she’s gonna need about a dollar’s worth of those shifts…if she can get someone to sew ‘em together for her.
Wow. The Israelis now have France on their side.
France.
I bet that makes Israel feel ..uh,.. safer.
“and when you shift paradigms aren’t you supposed to use a clutch?”
– The left always “automatically” shifts when the heat gets too hot, I mean screeds are one thing, but your neck is real.
Shifting paradigms with a clutch? Jeez you people, get into the 21st century!
Manual paradigm-shifting is so last millennium.
It always seemed to me that the Left abandoned Israel as soon as they succesfully defended themselves – proving that they were no longer helpless underdogs. There’s nothing the Left likes better than a victim, or abhors more than a success.
Arafat saw this, and moulded the Palestinian people into the perfect victim fetish. With, you know, enough photogenic violence to give them a little of that Che radical chic.
Perhaps the Europeans are finally figuring out they have been played for fools (and robbed blind) by Arafat?
Better late than never.
Those cunning Zionist BASTARDS!
Diabolically refusing to riot in the streets of Paris and failing to burn Renaults and Peugots. How can innocent brown folk of the Third World cope with such insidious scheming?
It’s more subtle than that. More nuanced, if you will.
For the first twenty years Israel was a main location for leftist experimentation. The kibbutz, which is a commune right out of (some interpretations of) Marxist theory, was the primary form of social organization outside the cities.
After the ‘67 war the kibbutz system began to wane, replaced by private ownership, with the land divided up among the kibbutzim. Productivity soared, as did the incomes of the former communalists—except, of course, the few that were free riders, who were and remain bitter about the whole thing. (There weren’t many. Israelis are nothing if not sincere, and they gave communalism an honest try.)
So once again a Leftist experiment is tried and found wanting compared to the capitalist competitor, and the Left can’t forgive that, ever. It’s especially galling that the Israeli Leftists were among the founders and theorists of the whole system, and those are precisely the ones who drifted away from it. To the Left, the whole thing is an insult of gargantuan proportions, which is why many of you probably never heard of the whole contretemps. It’s not all the reason for the split, but it’s a major contributor.
Regards,
Ric
ric  to be fair, the kibbutzes still have communal bunkers, so socialized foxholes haven’t failed, they just haven’t been tried yet…
Personally, I prefer the superior control of shifting paradigms with a stick. A five-speed, of course.
paradigms here, paradigms there, pretty soon you’re talking about real money…