WHAT JEWS? :

Why Europe Sides Against the Jews : Why do so many Europeans reject America's view of the Middle East? (Michael Elliot, Apr. 22, 2002, TIME)

[U]ndeniably, past European anti-Semitism has had a bitter effect on present European attitudes. Put at its crudest, most Europeans know very few Jews; they killed too many of them. In America there is a thriving community for whom the survival of Israel is a passionate commitment; in Europe there isn't. No number of school lessons or church sermons about the Holocaust can overcome that humdrum truth.

Given the extermination of Europe's Jews during WWII and the explosive growth of Europe's Arab population since, we have to recognize that American and European interests in the Middle East are divergent. Europe seems destined to grow more and more hostile to Israel and supportive of even the worst excesses of Arab regimes as a simple function of trying to satisfy their own blocks of Arab voters and if they are going to be allied with the Arabs instead of Israel, it's time to question whether they are our allies any more. Posted by Orrin Judd at April 23, 2002 3:19 PM