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David Vance is the editor of , an online Unionist newsletter that seeks to help maintain Northern Ireland as an integral part of the United Kingdom.
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By David Vance
February 4, 2003
The European Union (EU) likes to portray itself as a benign institution dedicated to advancing the humanitarian quest for peace and harmony around the world. Yet the facts indicate that the EU more accurately resembles a font of financial largesse for terrorist groups around the world. This begs the question how can such a malignant organization play any constructive function in the "Quartet" currently interfering in Israeli affairs?
Over the years the EU has merrily channeled vast sums of money into sweaty Palestinian Authority hands without any degree of accounting propriety. It is reported that over 540 million euros have been sent in Yasser Arafat's direction since 2000 and, as one would expect, the Palestinian Authority (PA) has failed to produce audited accounts showing what this money has been used for. Tragically, Israel knows only too well. The price paid for reckless EU generosity to the PA can be counted in lost Israeli lives.
IDF discovery of incriminating documents proving that Palestinian terrorists are on the Arafat payroll should have been sufficient to immediately halt all further funding. Not so! Even when the families of Hamas bombers are generously compensated by Arafat along with terror operatives in Fatah/Tanzim, the EU resolutely refuses to take any action. Why the EU inertia?
When a British MP lobbied to bring about a thorough investigation into this matter, EU Commissioner Chris Patten swiftly moved to ensure it did not happen. Patten passionately defended failed EU efforts to keep track of the more than 1.4 billion euro spent over the past decade on projects in the so-called "occupied" territories. Repeated failure, it appears, is no basis for changing policy.
Patten informed the European Parliament's foreign affairs committee: "We have found no evidence of EU funds being used for any purposes other than that for which they were intended." He warned that the committee risked undermining EU credibility if it blocked assistance approved by the 15 member states. What credibility, we may ask? "If we turn our back on this, any words about Europe having a part in the Mid East peace process are pretty worthless," he said. But Israelis, Americans and Britons already know that EU words are worthless!
Mr. Patten has developed quite a reputation for his sensitivity towards the needs of terrorists, as his pivotal role in the destruction of Northern Ireland's police force (the RUC) demonstrated. At the behest of IRA terrorists he produced a report that conceded the lawbreakers demands whilst ignoring the law-abiding people's wishes. He may preen and pose as a civilized man of reason but the causes he enthusiastically supports betray all virtue.
Of course Patten is just one small cog in the vast apparatus that constitutes the corrupt EU machine. Post September 11th, the EU has behaved disgracefully when it comes to the freezing of terrorist assets. It has grudgingly blocked assets of only two out of twenty eight terrorist groups provided by the United States.
When President Bush was alerted to the activities of Hamas in the U.S., he immediately moved to freeze the assets of Hamas and closed the offices of a Texas-based foundation allegedly providing finance to the militant Palestinian group. By way of contrast the EU responded by drawing a fine distinction between Hamas' military wing and its so-called political leaders. Moral equivocators to the core, the EU also refuses to block funds of Hizbullah!
Arafat has successfully manipulated the EU in the same way as he has manipulated many other world leaders into believing that the PA really wants peace. They do, of course, but they define peace as the elimination of Israel. The coded language spoken by Arafat is understood by the EU, and under the guise of the search for "peace," the EU bankrolls his terror regime. In this respect they follow a pattern previously established in Northern Ireland where for years they have bankrolled the IRA and other terror groups. Always sympathetic to the perpetrators of violence, often hostile to the victims of violence, the EU stands as a discredited sham.
Having gratefully swallowed Arafat's lies, EU endorsement of Palestinian statehood gives Arafat the acceptable political leverage he needs to portray himself as a man of reason, as the poor victim. Most EU member nations continue to lavish praise upon their hero Arafat whilst spewing condemnation upon Prime Minister Sharon. His resounding democratic re-election has caused resentment amongst the political elite in their Parisian and Berlin salons.
In 2003, the European Union does nothing to dispel the sinister shadows cast by its own historical antipathy towards the Jewish people. A good starting point would be to stop bankrolling Palestinian terrorism.
Views expressed by the author do not
necessarily reflect those of israelinsider.
 
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