JERUSALEM — “It’s only Europe that gives us a hard time,” an Israeli minister told me last week, genuinely puzzled. “Yesterday, I had the Canadian foreign minister sitting where you’re sitting now. I had a cross-party delegation from the U.S. Senate. I had ministers from India and Japan. All of them understood that Israel was facing a terrorist threat. But the EU starts from the assumption that we’re in the wrong. Why?”
Good question. Many Israelis have two pat answers at the ready: anti-Semitism and Muslim immigration to Europe. I almost wish it were that simple. It’s true that anti-Semitism lingers in parts of the European Union: I have heard comments on the Continent that would be unthinkable in Britain or America. But only from a handful of blockheads. France roared its approval when, in a moving speech, Prime Minister Manuel Valls told the National Assembly that “without French Jews, France would not be herself.” Many of those doing the roaring are supporters of the Palestinian cause, and it won’t quite do to say that their applause was forced.
