Israel Matzav

EU trying to teach Israel how to integrate Muslims

A secret EU paper, reported on by Haaretz on Friday, shows that the Europeans want to 'help' Israel to do as good a job as they have done in integrating their Muslim populations.

The European Union should consider Israel's treatment of its Arab population a "core issue, not second tier to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict," according to a classified working paper produced by European embassies in Israel, parts of which were obtained by Haaretz.

This is an unprecedented document in that it deals with internal Israeli issues. According to European diplomats and senior Foreign Ministry officials, it was written and sent to EU headquarters in Brussels behind the back of the Israeli government.

The original document also included suggestions for action the EU should take, but these were removed from the final version at the insistence of several countries.

Among these were the suggestion that the EU file an official protest every time a bill discriminating against Arabs passes a second reading in the Knesset, and that the EU ensure that all Arab towns have completed urban plans, "with each member state potentially 'adopting' a municipality to this end."

The contents of the 27-page report were kept under wraps, and a number of European diplomats contacted by Haaretz over the past two weeks refused to disclose any details. Foreign Ministry officials said they had heard about it unofficially from some European diplomats a few weeks ago, but to date no Israeli official has been able to obtain a copy.

According to a European diplomat involved in drafting the report, work on it began more than a year ago at Britain's initiative. The idea was to write a report that could be debated by a forum of EU foreign ministers. At some point, however, several countries, among them the Czech Republic, Poland and the Netherlands, expressed objections to its contents.

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The document also relates to the demand made by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to recognize Israel as a Jewish state.

"We do not believe that recognition of Israel as a Jewish State should detract in any way from the vision of equality for all its citizens enshrined in its founding documents," the report says.

"It is in the interests of all Israelis to demonstrate that Israel is not only Jewish and democratic, but tolerant and inclusive, and that these are patriotic values. We believe in common with most Israelis that Israeli nationality is an inclusive concept which can accommodate equally those of other faiths and ethnic origins."

Omri Ceren comments:

The European Union has done such a good job integrating its own Arab and Muslim minorities – British mass honor attacks being covered up by the BBC, German multiculturalism bring declared a failure by Chancellor Merkel, Belgian schoolgirls being beaten to cries of “dirty Jew” by Moroccan girls, etc. – that they’re seeking to offer their expertise to Israel.

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As a pretext for delegitimizing the Jewish State, it’s long been clear that anti-Israel partisans would transition to issues revolving around Israel’s “Arab minority” [PDF] as soon as they could no longer point to Israeli peace process intransigence. The old expectation was that they’d wait until after there was a successful formal peace deal, because until then they could always unblinkingly blame Israel for any lack of progress.

Apparently, Palestinian rejectionism has become so overwhelmingly undeniable during the last two years, with Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu repeatedly offering to start negotiations without preconditions and PA leader Abbas repeatedly declining, that the Europeans felt they had to brainstorm new ideas ahead of schedule.

Soon, all of Europe will be Muslim anyway, and then it will be easier to disregard 'recommendations' like these.

What could go wrong?

Labels: Eurabia, Israeli Arab

posted by Carl in Jerusalem @ 3:31 PM