RSS | Advertise With Us | Blogs | Judaica Gifts |  4 Kislev 5770, Saturday, November 21, 2009 13:17 IST |
WebJPost.com 
Subscribe! Judaica Gifts
RSS Feeds E-mail Edition
HomeHeadlinesIranian ThreatJewish WorldOpinionBusinessReal EstateLocal IsraelBlogsArts & Culture Français Classifieds
IsraelMiddle EastInternationalHealth & Sci-TechFeaturesTravelCafe OlehMagazineSportsIsrael GuideSubscribe
Specials
Eldan Rent a Car
Israel's leading car rental company offers a 20% discount on online reservations
Israeli Basketball
Watch Live Israeli Premier Basketball Games
Jerusalem Post Lite
Light Edition of the Jerusalem Post for English improvement
Desert lodging & activity
Tents, camping & cabins, various activities and meals in the Negev
The Best Jewish Charity
Learn how Efrat saved 30,000 lives of Jewish children
Tamir Rent a car
Car rental in Israel, special prices
ג'רוזלם פוסט לייט
עיתון חדשות באנגלית קלה התורם לשיפור השפה האנגלית
Tour guides in Israel
Choose you’re your tour guide in Israel
Israel guide
Your guide to Israel
Green Israel
Protecting Israel's environment
ג'רוזלם פוסט לייט
עיתון חדשות באנגלית קלה התורם לשיפור השפה האנגלית


Middle East & Israel Breaking News » Opinion » Columnists » Article
CAROLINE GLICK CAROLINE GLICK

Column One: As Europe self-destructs


PrintSubscribe
Toolbar
+ Recommend:
facebook twitter del.icio.us reddit fark
What's this?

Decrease text size Decrease text size
Increase text size Increase text size

Wednesday's decision by Britain's University and College Union to call for a boycott of Israeli universities and colleges was not only hypocritical. It was suicidal.

It is not simply that the British prefer to boycott Israeli universities than say, Palestinian, Egyptian, Syrian, Iranian, Saudi and Jordanian universities where students are indoctrinated to seek the annihilation of the Jewish people and the subjugation of Christianity through the destruction of Western civilization.

It is not merely that they ignored the poor, brave Iranian students who just three weeks ago were brutally attacked by regime forces as they sought to hold elections for their pro-democracy campus organizations.

By calling for a boycott of Israeli universities, Britain's academic establishment is turning its back not only on Israel, but on Britain. When Britain's professoriate rejects Israel's right to exist as a Jewish, democratic nation-state and glorifies Palestinian society which supports global jihad and the destruction of Western civilization, it is rejecting the British state.

They are embracing a culture founded on a rejection of the culture and traditions that have formed Britain since the Magna Carta was issued in 1215. For the past 800 years, Britain has stood for individual liberty and freedom of inquiry - at least for the British themselves. In universities like Oxford and Cambridge, it was this humanist spirit and the justified national and cultural pride it nurtured which facilitated Britain's rise to international power. By boycotting Israel, which itself embodies these British ideals, the British are abrogating their own traditions of openness. Consequently, they are destroying themselves.

AND BRITAIN is not alone in its self-destruction. Britain's rush to oblivion is part of a wider trend overtaking all of Western Europe. Take Sweden for example.

Sweden is upheld by leaders of the Israeli left like former foreign minister Shlomo Ben-Ami (who now devotes himself to attacking the US and Israel from his academic perch in Toledo, Spain), Education Minister Yuli Tamir, Defense Minister Amir Peretz, Meretz chief Yossi Beilin and former Labor chairman Avrum Burg. They extol Sweden as a social democratic wonderland which Israel must emulate.

Some 12.5 percent of Swedes are immigrants and around half of Sweden's immigrants are Muslims. Muslims will soon comprise the majority in many of Sweden's cities.

The intrepid Scandinavian blogger 'Fjordman' recently penned an essay, "Jihad and the collapse of the Swedish model" in the on-line Brussels Journal. In it he relates the significance of Sweden's Integration Act of 1997 to Sweden's national self-destruction. The act officially proclaimed Sweden "a multicultural society."

Notes to the act stated, "Since a large group of people have their origins in another country, the Swedish population lacks a common history. The relationship to Sweden and the support given to the fundamental values of society thus carry greater significance for integration than a common historical origin."

As 'Fjordman' explains, the act was nothing less than national suicide. "Native Swedes have… been reduced to just another ethnic group in Sweden, with no more claim to the country than the Kurds or the Somalis who arrived there last Thursday. The political authorities of the country have erased their own people's history and culture."

Fjordman cites authors Jonathan Friedman, Ingrid Bjorkman, Jan Elfverson and Ake Wedin who explained in their 2005 book Exit the People's Home of Sweden - The Downfall of a Model of Society, that multiculturalism, as the "dominant ideology in Sweden, which has been made dominant by powerful methods of silencing and repression, is a totalitarian ideology, where the elites oppose the national aspect of the nation state."

The authors explained that "the problem is that the ethnic group… described as Swedes implicitly are considered to be nationalists, and thereby are viewed as racists."

Like the totalitarian ideologies of the 20th century, multiculturalism identifies the Jews and the Americans as its chief enemies. Both must be defeated for their refusal to destroy themselves and merge into the post-national thought stream. And like their 20th century predecessors, the multiculturalists of today embrace radical Muslims who share their rejection of Judaism and Americanism.

The multiculturalists convince their societies to accept their own destruction by indoctrinating their fellow citizens through their education systems and media. A recent poll of Swedes between the ages of 15-20 showed that 90% had never heard of the Soviet gulag.

NEEDLESS TO say, the consequences of this state of affairs are not localized to Europe. As they do towards their own people, the European elites work tirelessly to subvert American and Israeli cultural confidence and to undermine every action the two nations take to combat the forces of global jihad. Whether by condemning the US incarceration of jihadists at Guantanamo Bay, claiming that Zionism is racism, attacking the US campaign in Iraq, financing Israeli anti-Zionist pressure groups and the Palestinian Authority, or insisting that Iran should be negotiated with, the EU works to compel the US and Israel to stand down rather than defend themselves and to convince American and Israeli societies that we are unworthy of being defended.

Disturbingly, rather than face up to Europe's self-destruction and give it a wide berth, led by our own post-national elites, Israel and the US are adopting the European model of cultural collapse.

The most recent example of the Israeli elites' subversion of their country is Attorney-General Menachem Mazuz's assault on the Jewish National Fund.

Since it was chartered by Theodor Herzl in 1901, financed by donations from Jews throughout the world, the JNF has purchased land to promote settlement of the land by the Jewish people. The JNF owns some 2.5 million hectares of land.

Continued
1| 2 | Next»

RATE THIS ARTICLE
PrintSubscribe
Toolbar
+ Recommend:
facebook twitter del.icio.us reddit fark
What's this?
Post comment | Terms | Report Abuse

LATEST STORIES BY CAROLINE GLICK

Most Original
eTeacher
Nefesh B'eNefesh
Kadish
JPost.com
KKL Picture of the week
Got a Question?
Have a question about something in this story? Ask it here and get answers from other users like you.

 
 
 
© 1995 - 2009 The Jerusalem Post. All rights reserved.    About Us | Media Kit | Exclusive Content | Advertise with Us | Subscribe | Contact Us | RSS
The online edition of The Jerusalem Post – JPost.com – provides first class news and analysis about Israel, the Middle East and the Jewish world. Whether news about Iran, Gaza, Syria, Fatah, Hamas or Hezbollah, JPost.com covers the burning issues of the Middle East and the Israeli-Arab conflict.