Europe: Inflamed and haunted by Israeli-Palestinian conflict

“There is now growing identification of the EU countries with Israel based on this immigration,” Menachem Zoufalá said, speaking by telephone.

In the past, much of Western Europe often took the side of Palestinians, a policy rooted in Europe's reliance on Arab oil.

After Israel's victory and land gains in the Six-Day War in 1967, European countries, then constituted as the European Community, developed what scholars say was Europe's first common approach on foreign policy.

By the 1970s, this policy saw European leaders argue they were ideally placed to bring about peace between Israelis and Palestinians. The crux of their plan was to pioneer a two-state solution — a Palestinian state coexisting with a Jewish state.

A shift in position

But in recent years, Europe's officialdom has shifted toward a more pro-Israeli approach in line with American policy, though it's a position opposed by many younger Europeans who see Palestinians as the victims.

This pro-Palestinian position is embodied by Greta Thunberg, the Swedish climate activist and poster child of Europe's rebellious youth.

Since the war erupted, Thunberg has championed the Palestinian cause. At protests, she has worn a black-and-white Palestinian scarf, the keffiyeh, and chanted, “No climate justice on occupied land.” Her Fridays for Future protests now feature signs reading: “Free Palestine,” “Stop the genocide” and “Justice for Palestine.”

Her position has been attacked by fellow climate activists and spawned criticism from progressives. “Persona non Greta?” asked Die Tageszeitung, a left-leaning German newspaper critical of her support for Palestinian causes. A columnist at the newspaper accused her climate movement of “pure antisemitism.”

Mostly, European leaders have expressed steadfast support for Israel, lit up government buildings with the colors of the Israeli flag, and uniformly condemned Hamas, besides a few exceptions, most notably France's far-left political leader Jean-Luc Mélenchon.

“The immediate reaction of what we call the West was very quick, and let's say very unified,” Menachem Zoufalá said. “I would even talk about this as quite unprecedented support for Israel.”

She attributed that partly to the high “level of the atrocities” committed by Hamas in its Oct. 7 attack, which saw about 1,200 people killed, most of them civilians.

“This was so shocking to see for the Western leadership that the response came very quickly,” she said.

However, it's become harder for many Europeans, in particular those on the left, to support Israel as it carries out its onslaught on Gaza, and to hear top Israeli officials make alarming statements about wanting to drive the Palestinian population of 2.3 million people out of Gaza.

In recent days, French President Emmanuel Macron has exemplified Europe's tormented spot.

Historically, France has kept good relations with Arab nations and taken a balanced approach to the Palestinian-Israeli conflict. France has the largest populations of both Jews and Muslims in the EU.

But in the space of a few days, Macron went from calling for a cease-fire and condemning Israel's bombardment of Gaza, saying there was “no justification” for the killing of “babies and women,” to quickly backtracking after Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu accused him of making “a serious factual and moral error.”

Within hours of Netanyahu's scolding, Macron was on the telephone with Israeli President Isaac Herzog to say he “unequivocally supports Israel and its right to self-defense.”

But Macron's pro-Israeli position has infuriated many of his own Middle East ambassadors. In a letter to the Élysée, several French ambassadors in the Middle East and North Africa warned that his pro-Israeli stance broke with France's long-standing approach and risked damaging the country's credibility in the Arab world for years to come.

An increase of political friction

This conflict is especially vexing for the left in Europe.

Earlier this month, the Labour Party in Great Britain was torn apart over an amendment in Parliament calling for a cease-fire. Keir Starmer, the Labour leader on pace to become the next British prime minister, wanted his party members to abstain, but 56 defied his wishes and supported a cease-fire. Several frontbenchers angry at Starmer's refusal to back a cease-fire even resigned their leadership posts.

Differences over the war have caused friction in left-wing alliances, parties and circles in the Netherlands, Germany, Spain and Italy too. Generally, more radical left-wing politicians want Israel to stop the war while left-leaning centrists are in line with EU and U.S. calls for “humanitarian pauses.”

Gidley said supporting Palestinians has become “part of a kind of package” for people who see themselves as concerned about injustices.

“It's become a sort of truism that the Palestinian cause is one of those great, just causes; just in the way that the anti-apartheid movement was,” he said. “It doesn't require that much thought. It arouses passions and it is seen as a black-and-white issue for many people.”

On the flip side, many on Europe's right and far right back Israel because they cherish it as standing up to Islamic forces.

“Israel is seen as on the front-line against Muslim civilizations or what's perceived as Muslim barbarism,” Gidley said.

Gidley said the events in the Middle East have become linked to “the culture war against Islam and against migrants that has been a real motor of the right.”

A rise in fear and hate

Sina Arnold, a scholar at the Technical University of Berlin's Center for Research on Antisemitism, said the war is fueling both antisemitism and Islamophobia.

“Jews in Europe are actually afraid again, more than they've ever been probably in the last few decades,” she said.

In Berlin, she said it was shocking to see Islamist extremists in the streets cheering the Hamas attack.

“There was sheer celebration of mass murder,” she said, speaking by telephone.

Following Israel's bombardment of Gaza, she was stunned to witness what she called pro-Hamas riots break out in her left-wing hipster district of Berlin, where a sizable Muslim community lives.

“In the the first two weeks, those were actual riots,” she said. “Overturned garbage cans, barriers in the streets, firecrackers and rocks thrown at police; people walking by and filming getting their mobile phones torn out” of their hands.

She said Jewish friends told her they no longer felt safe to speak Hebrew, walk outside or send their children to school.

“These are all left, liberal people who have always cared about Palestinian rights, who always called out anti-Muslim racism in Germany,” she said. “It's a very tense atmosphere and it's scary.”

She added that the mood has turned dangerously foul against Muslims too.

“We see extremely racist debates that kind of lump all Palestinians together,” she said.

It was worrying to hear politicians, and even Germany's center-left Social Democratic Chancellor Olaf Scholz, talk about expelling foreigners in large numbers, she said.

“Politicians of all stripes shamelessly talk about the need to quickly deport migrants on a large scale,” she said. “We have this really toxic mix of rising antisemitism and a rise in racism and racist politics, and those reinforce each other and they can also be played out against each other.”

A fundamental role

Europe has played a pivotal — and guilt-ridden — role from the start in the conflict between Israelis and Palestinians.

Zionism, the late 19th-century movement to create a Jewish homeland, grew from Europe's pogroms.

Then in 1917, Britain declared it would support a nation for Jews in Palestine, a territory it conquered from the collapsing Ottoman Empire in World War I. Britain's plan for Palestine and the arrival of large numbers of Jews in the ensuing years sparked outrage and revolt among Arabs. The seeds of conflict were sewn.

The Shoah, Europe's genocide against Jews, led to Israel's creation in 1948. After the war, Jewish Holocaust survivors flooded into the new Jewish state, doubling its population in the space of a few years. And the Israeli-Palestinian conflict intensified after Arabs lost their lands, towns and villages following the first Arab-Israeli war in 1948. Hundreds of thousands of Arabs ended up as refugees in Gaza.

Starting in 1952, billions of dollars in war reparations from West Germany helped turn the impoverished and agricultural state of Israel into a modern industrial powerhouse. To atone for the Nazi genocide, Germany's political establishment has made standing by Israel a core tenet.

Starting in the 1970s and in keeping with its trust in a two-state solution, Europe began funding Palestinian authorities in a bid to build a future Palestinian state. European funds have continued to flow to Palestinian authorities to the present.

Throughout this history, the conflict has tested and divided Europe.

“It's a crazy challenge for the European Union to remain on the side of humanitarianism and human rights both in Gaza but also protect Jewish lives,” Arnold said. “It is so morally contested and so heavily loaded. This has always been a dividing issue.”

Courthouse News reporter Cain Burdeau is based in the European Union.

Follow @cainburdeau

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