4 february 2010, silvio and me

Thursday 4th February 2010

I've never had much in common with silvio berlusconi, but now he’s talking about israel joining the eu. Not only is this not eu policy, it’s several miles from any serious agenda. The last attempt to upgrade a rocky bilateral relationship fell with the 2009 gaza invasion. However, if you take a large step back, its not a ridiculous idea. Israel lies just 160 miles from its number one trading partner and shares a great deal of cultural and social values, not least a commitment to democracy. More than a third of its population - the primary builders of the state - has european roots. Tel aviv is a world-class showcase of bauhaus, built by a clutch of leading german architects. Israel plays its soccer in the european league, sings in the eurovision song contest and is a member of most european economic, political and cultural organisations. In the 1960s the israeli cabinet held a serious discussion about joining, and even took the first step. At that time, israel had no firm alliance with the usa. Instead, the young, vulnerable state was helped by europe. In 1956 (suez), israel conspired with britain and france to bring down egypt’s nationalist leader, nasser, and was resolutely opposed by eisenhower’s america, which strongly rebuked israel and used its massive financial muscle to force the abandonment of an otherwise-won war. Recent archive opening shows that in 1967, the us still had a contingency plan, critical incident no. 14 to invade israel on the arabs’ behalf - not knowing that Israel had already built its first nuclear weapon, from french know-how. Still today, 75% of israeli jews, and 40% of its arab citizens would like to join europe. Yet how utterly other worldly that seems. You can read much more about all this here.