Europe Is Slouching Toward Arabia Even as Some in the Mideast Side With Israel and America

As anti-Israel and Anti-American sentiments grow in Europe, the continent increasingly seems to coalesce behind sentiments that once united the Arab world — but no longer do. For nearly a century, even as Mideast countries were at each other’s throats, Arabs would unify behind condemnations of Israel. It kept the 22-member Arab League intact. Now several countries, including the United Arab Emirates, are benefiting from ever-tightening relations with the Jewish state. Israel is sending the UAE “Iron Dome batteries and personnel to help operate them,” the American ambassador to Jerusalem, Mike Huckabee, disclosed Monday. And even while American and European airlines continuously suspend flights, he added, “the one nation whose planes continued to fly regularly in and out of Israel were the Emiratis.” Consistently attacked by the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps, the UAE is secretly striking Iranian targets, including oil refineries, the Wall Street Journal reported on Monday. On Tuesday the paper reported that Saudi Arabia is also bombing inside Iran.Some in the Arab Mideast, though, are maintaining ties with Tehran, so which side is the Arab League on? International groupings from the United Nations on down have long been paralyzed by disagreements. “The Arab League is like the UN. Does the UN solve anything?” the Moroccan ambassador at Turtle Bay, Omar Hilale, tells the Sun. While Morocco, Bahrain, the UAE, and other Arabs break a long-held anti-Israel consensus, Brussels is moving toward unity on punishing the Jewish state. On Monday the European Union announced a new set of sanctions targeting “violent West Bank settlers and far right Israeli politicians.” The EU move, long opposed by Hungary, was seen at Jerusalem as a signal that the new prime minister at Budapest, Peter Magyar, is less inclined than his predecessor, Viktor Orban, to block anti-Israel action at Brussels. Future measures, introduced in April by France and Sweden, would boycott or impose European tariffs on all products from Judea and Samaria, but are yet to reach consensus. As European cities are flooded by immigrants from the Mideast and as extreme left and right political movements gain power, Brussels hostility to Israel is growing. “The center of gravity is shifting away from Israel in Europe and in the U.S.,” a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, Dalibor Rohac, tells the Sun.Mr. Orban “was cozy with Bibi but he also maintained a creepy special relationship with Iran,” Mr. Rohac says. “It’s wrong to think he was somewhat a bulwark of pro-Israel policies, or sentiments in Europe.” Consensus among the union’s 27 members is hard to come by, he adds, because “each country has its politics.”As Europe’s demography and political attitudes shift, meanwhile, Germany “is going to keep a lid on whatever anti-Israel sentiment continues to percolate in in the European Union,” the executive director at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, Jonathan Schanzer, tells the Sun.Yet “we are seeing signs of the far right in Germany gaining strength,” Mr. Schanzer says. If anti-Israel and antisemitic parties assume power, Germany will pivot “into something that I think was hard to imagine even a few years ago,” he says, “and that will be the moment that Europe collapses.”Things are also not all rosy in the Mideast. Even as Abraham Accords signatories tighten relations and others cooperate clandestinely with Jerusalem, anti Israel and antisemitic sentiments grow in Jordan and Egypt, two countries that have been at peace with Israel for decades. Moreover, a group of anti-Israel and anti-American Sunni Muslims is coalescing, including countries like Turkey, Pakistan, and Qatar.“I think we are seeing the beginnings of maybe a new regional construct that would exist outside of the Arab League and would represent aspiring or ascending Sunni powers,” Mr. Schanzer says. “We continue to see these countries talking about new alliance structures, we see them taking meetings, we see them issuing statements as it relates to Israel and even the United States.” The UAE broke away with traditional Arab consensus, and left OPEC to boot. Turkey and its allies, though, are becoming ever-more aggressive, spreading anti Israel and anti American propaganda even as they boast of a tight alliance with Washington. Europeans are also growing ever more hostile as America and Israel wage war against the Islamic Republic of Iran. Whether an Arab counterweight to these forces wins the day “will depend entirely on a successful conclusion of this war,” Mr. Schanzer says.

Europe Is Slouching Toward Arabia Even as Some in the Mideast Side With Israel and America

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