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Doron Kescher , originally from Emek Hefer, is currently based in the Asia-Pacific region, working for a corporate advisory firm. A fluent English and French speaker, he has spent much of his time since September 2000 explaining the current conflict to non-Jewish work colleagues.
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By Doron Kescher
May 4, 2004
"Europe is yellow" - so sang the local fans as Maccabi Tel Aviv clinched its fourth European League championship in front of a home crowd at Yad Eliyahu. The meaning of the song in Hebrew was that Maccabi had conquered Europe (Maccabi's team colors are yellow and blue). In English, the phrase had a far more apt and resonant meaning.
As an Israeli, seeing Israeli basketball teams win both the European League championship and the European League Cup in the same year fills me with pride. (A fortnight prior to Maccabi Tel Aviv's victory, Hapoel Jerusalem won the European League Cup.) It reminds me that in spite of all the economic, military and historical hardships, Israel has built a vibrant, modern, Western democracy capable of first world living-standards, and even producing sports teams that can win European sports championships.
Despite everything that Israel has been forced to go through in the last 56 years, we have still produced a nation that makes the news for reasons other than terrorism and war: the Israeli high-tech industry has revolutionized the Internet and telecommunications. Israeli agricultural technology is world-best. Largely through necessity, Israel's security and military products are second to none. Israeli medical innovations can be found in almost every hospital in the world.
For me, as for many Israelis, winning in Europe is a special source of pride, since most Israelis, even on a subconscious level, consider themselves 'European.' (Consider the alternative - are we Middle Eastern? Are we an example of the perennial backwaters of dictatorship and repression? Do we oppress our women? We hardly fit the mold of other Middle Eastern nations. As a liberal Western democracy, we Israelis see ourselves as a natural outpost of Europe or, as the rift between it and Europe widens, the United States.)
This may go someway to explain the particular hurt and betrayal that many Israelis feel due to Europe's rejection of Israel in the last decade, a decade in which Israel has been clearly and unambiguously the victim of aggression and terrorism as almost never before.
For us to be rejected and spurned by our dictatorial, oppressive and backward neighbors is hardly an emotional burden; indeed, it is flattery. But to be spurned, rejected, chastised and abandoned by those whom we consider our cultural kin is a deep blow.
Israelis - facing an onslaught by a murderous, backward society of misogynistic religious persecutors - expected the support of the birthplace of liberal Western democracy, whose values we have helped shape and imported. In Israel, as in Europe, we find representative parliamentary democracy, women's rights, religious freedom, gay rights, and the valuing of the individual. We would therefore expect Europe's support in our struggle against regimes and societies which are the very antithesis of purported European values.
But this has not been the case.
Far from supporting its fellow liberal democracy in the Middle East, Europe has turned on Israel with full fury, openly siding with the Palestinian Arabs, delegitimizing Israel and its actions, and steadfastly refusing to criticize egregious and frequent Palestinian atrocities.
It is natural therefore for Israelis to feel anger at the Europeans, and betrayed by their desertion of an ally. It is natural for Israelis to feel contempt for those Europeans whose moral fiber is so weak and cowardice so profound that they dare not condemn evil when it appears nightly on their television screens. What is curious however, is that many Israelis also feel abandoned and, in a very real sense, unloved. We want Europe to love us and support us, even of they do not physically aid us. Subconsciously, we want Europe's support as a validation of all that we have achieved here in Israel.
It is a classic love-hate relationship: we love Europe as a fellow Western society, and yet despise Europe for unjustly rejecting us. As in the last 2000 years, and with the exception of the United States, Micronesia and the Czech Republic, we feel we are once again alone in the world.
By winning the European basketball championships, by participating in the European cultural institutions (such as the Eurovision Song Contest), we place Israel in the spotlight not as a news item, but as a member of the European family. We remind ourselves that we are not like the other Middle Eastern nations - we are European. We also remind Europe that we are European.
The camera-pans of the crowd in Tel Aviv did not show segregated seating for men and veiled-women. There were no mukhabarat (religious police) beating inappropriately dressed fans (or athletes). It could have been anywhere in Europe - screaming fans, face paint, banners, men, women, children, hype and pizzazz.
Our hope - thus far in vain - is to jolt Europe's conscience that Israel is a European nation facing a terrorist threat. As distinct from Europe though, we are fighting our terrorists, not appeasing them. The European elites find this distasteful, but as Madrid painfully reminded anyone willing to think open-mindedly, Milan and Paris may lead European fashion, but Tel Aviv and Jerusalem lead Europe in counter-terrorism. Once again, Israel has literally been a light unto the nations: showing post-9/11 America how to fight terrorism. The U.S. will in turn show a post-9/11 Europe how it too will have to fight Islamist terrorism.
Until Europe has the courage to accept and support a fellow democracy and island of freedom, and the courage to oppose those who seek its destruction, Europe truly will be 'yellow.'
Views expressed by the author do not
necessarily reflect those of israelinsider.
 
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