PrintJanuary 13, 2007
Why Europe Abandoned Israel
Why is Israel viewed so differently in Europe than in the United States? To argue as the title of this article does, that Europe has abandoned Israel, is to suggest that it was once in its corner. And in fact, this is true. Prior to the Six Day War in 1967, it was France which was Israel's primary military supplier, not the United States. In the War of Independence in 1948-49, it was arms smuggled from Czechoslovakia that enabled the Zionists to fight on. Most European nations, including some Soviet satellites, supported the partition resolution in the General Assembly in November 1947. European nations supported Israel at the UN through the late 1960s and in some cases well beyond then. Clearly, some of this support in the post World War 2 period-was a reflection of European guilt over the murder of six million Jews in their midst from 1939 to 1945. As Raul Hilberg has written, most Europeans and most European nations fell into one of two categories during...(Read Full Article)
