My dad tipped me off to this important article in the latest issue of Reform Judaism (!) by Richard L. Rubenstein (who's certainly earned the right to use the title "Rabbi" but doesn't). It's a disturbing analysis of the relationship between the EU's longstanding dependence on Arab oil, the immigrant influx and the proliferation of the "new" European antisemitism.
On Yom Kippur, October 6, 1973, Egypt and Syria attacked Israel. Ten days later, in the midst of the war, Saudi Arabia, Iran, Iraq, Abu Dhabi, Kuwait, and Qatar announced a stunning 70 percent rise in oil prices, from $3.01 to $5.12 a barrel. On October 17, the Arab oil producers reduced production by 5 percent and threatened further cuts of 5 percent a month until Israel withdrew completely from the occupied territories. A day later, October 18, Saudi Arabia announced that it would cut production 10 percent until Arab terms were met. On October 19, Saudi Arabia, Libya, and other Arab oil producers imposed a total oil embargo on the United States and the Netherlands in retaliation for their support of Israel during the war. (The US had airlifted arms to Israel in response to the Soviet Union's attempt to supply Egypt with a sufficient number of weapons to defeat Israel and become the Middle East's dominant superpower.) France and Great Britain were effectively exempt from the embargo--a reward for having denied US access to their airfields to resupply Israel.
The European response to the Arab oil weapon was both swift and craven. Meeting in Brussels on November 6, 1973, two weeks after the war's end, the nine foreign ministers of the European Economic Community (EEC) issued an unambiguously pro-Arab statement listing what they regarded as essential requirements for Middle East peace. These included the termination of Israel's 1967 occupation of Arab territory and recognition of the "legitimate rights of the Palestinians," a condition mild by today's standards but not so in 1973 when the PLO was engaged in international terror. The European foreign ministers also asserted the "inadmissibility of acquiring territory by force," a doctrine they applied exclusively to Israel. And, employing an old trick in diplomacy--mistranslation--they distorted the intent of UN Resolution 242. Originally formulated in English, the resolution referred only to an unspecified Israeli "withdrawal from territories" in exchange for an end to the Arab-Israeli conflict. The French translation improperly altered the original meaning to "from the territories" (des territories), creating the false impression that under the UN resolution Israel had no legitimate claim to any part of the occupied West Bank. In spite of American opposition, the EEC had signaled to the Arabs that it would meet their demands.
The Europeans also attempted to convince the United States to join them in pressuring Israel to withdraw from the occupied territories. According to then US Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, European leaders complained that the United States was to blame for the Yom Kippur War because of its failure to force Israel into a settlement. In their view, America had put vital European interests at risk because of "domestic politics." In reality, this was a nasty bit of code language in which the Europeans blamed the United States for allegedly pandering to the Jewish lobby at Europe's expense.
Dr. Rubenstein is probably best known for "After Auschwitz," his seminal and controversial collection of essays that sought to reexamine Jewish theology in a specifically post-Holocaust context.
