How American Jews and Europeans blind themselves to the jihadist threat

In the below passage from her article at FrontPage Magazine based on a recent presentation to a body of the French Senate, Bat Ye’or makes a point similar to Stephen Steinlight’s striking anecdote in his recent blockbusting article for the Center for Immigration Studies, “High Noon to Midnight: Why Current Immigration Policy Dooms American Jewry.” Steinlight writes about leaders of Jewish organizations who, in order to enter their offices in New York City, must navigate cordons of high-tech security that have been put in place to protect them from Moslem terrorists, yet who, once they get safe and sound into their offices, focus all their thoughts on the great anti-Jewish danger of … Protestant evangelicals. Similarly, Bat Ye’or writes of a Europe which is beseiged by—and turning itself into a security state to protect itself from—Moslem terrorists, yet which blames the terrorist problem on … America and Israel.

So it appears that America and Israel serve the same escapist (or scapegoating) function for the Europeans, that Protestant evangelicals serve for American Jews. How much less it costs to hate and fear your friends than to defend yourself from your actual enemies!

Excerpt from Beyond Munich – The Spirit of Eurabia
By Bat Ye’or
FrontPage Magazine, July 2, 2004

… In fact, for the past 30 years France and Europe are living in a situation of passive self-defense against terrorism. This began with Palestinian terrorism, then Islamic terrorism, not to speak of the local European terrorism, including the IRA in Great Britain, ETA in Spain, the Baader-Meinhof group in Germany, the Red Brigades in Italy.

One need only look at our cities, airports, and streets, at the schools with their security guards, even the systems of public transportation, not to mention the embassies, and the synagogues – to see the whole astonishing array of police and security services. The fact that the authorities everywhere refuse to name the evil does not negate that evil. Yet we know perfectly well that we have been under threat for a long time; one has only to open one’s eyes and our authorities know it better than any of us, because it is they who have ordered these very security measures.

In his book, La Vie Quotidienne dans l’Europe Médiévale sous Domination Arabe (Daily Life in Medieval Europe under the Arab Domination), published in 1978, Charles-Emmanuel Dufourq, a French specialist on Andalusia (Islamic Spain) and the Maghreb, described under the subheading “Une grande Peur” (“A great Fear”) the conditions of life for the indigenous non-Muslim peoples in the Andalusian countryside. Today, Europe itself is living with this Great Fear.

At Munich war had not yet been declared. Today the war is everywhere. And yet the European Union and the states which comprise it, have denied that war’s reality, right up to the terrorist attack in Madrid of March 11, 2004. If there is a danger as Europe proclaims urbi et orbi [to city and world], that danger can only come from America and Israel. What should one understand? For can anyone seriously maintain that it is the American and Israeli forces that threaten us in Europe? No, what must be understood is that American and Israeli policies of resistance to jihadist terror provoke reprisals against a Europe that has long ago ceased to defend itself. So that peace can prevail throughout the world, those two countries, America and Israel, need only adopt the European strategy of constant surrender, based on the denial of aggression. How simple it all is…

Posted by Lawrence Auster at July 11, 2004 11:59 PM | Send