DISCUSSING THE DUTCH ELECTION

The following is an e-mail exchange.
It is somewhat gloomy (sorry about that), but it does clarify my points of view regarding the recent Dutch election and the European situation in the future. I am keen to continue the discussion, or have my bleak vision disproven.

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R wrote: Note the lead article re:Netherlands
http://www.israpundit.com/2006/


BOTH: Not quite as clear and blatantly put as my various scribbles - but it still boils down to the same things.

Which are:

1. Nearly one out of every six Dutch people support Hezb and Hamas.
2. If forty percent of the Dutch are leftwing, we can assume that a roughly identical percentage are anti-Israel (and given the close strategic ties between Israel and the Netherlands, what that really means is anti-Semitic -- try walking around a Dutch city with a kippah, and you'll see what that means).
3. The Dutch left wing are a security problem. Which is why US and Israeli co-operation with Dutch state security services must always be through a veil of plausible deniability and nudge nudge wink wink. No exposure and no transparency.
4. Even if it weren't for the Muslim minorities, the Netherlands is no longer a comforting sanctuary -- and with the Jewish population outnumbered twenty times over by Muslims, forty to one hundred times over by the anti-Israel side, it may be time to call it quits and bail out to the land or the states.

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R wrote: I rather suspect that with further Islamisation, the local Dutch opinion may change. Remember, Moslems are dry and intolerant and this is the Netherlands we're talking about.


BOTH: Best scenario: the Dutch tell the Muslims to stop being such a pain in the achterend.

Worst scenario: acts of violence make both sides seize up and rigidify - and the Muslims eventually lose the battle, because the Dutch have a murderous streak a mile wide underneath the thick veneer of apathy and civilization.

Most likely scenario: by the time the Muslim minorities are largely third generation locals, Dutch society will have changed enormously - more people emigrate than immigrate, and pro-Israel sentiment is very much an older generation thing.


Many Dutch believe that the Israel-Palestine problem is based on religious fanaticism only, and discount the possibility that Arab society is proto-Fascist, with a strong streak of bigotry and hate. Nor are many Dutch aware that precisely like them, the Arabs and Muslims are absolutely convinced of their own superiority, and have concomitant negative praeconceptions of everyone else.

The typical Dutch superiorist shmuck has so much in common with the typical Arab superiorist shmuck that they often recognize each other as kindred spirits. Or at least think alike.

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R wrote: Are we ignoring the idea that the Europeans, over all, might be educable?


BOTH: I am largely discounting that idea.


The two or three decades that Europeans were pro-Israel were a fluke. A post-war phenomenon.

European society is not naturally multi-cultural. And there are now two things that make them less willing to be multi-cultural towards Jews.

The first one being the oil situation - the embargo in the seventies was the turning point, at which time they realized to their shocked surprise that the world no longer belonged to them. Since then they have swung towards the Arabs, as now they are starting to look towards Russia.

The second one is the Muslim presence in their societies. Xenophobia towards Muslims, while it has some minor benefit as regards Israel, also rubs off on Jews. Europeans dislike foreigners - Moroccans, Turks, Americans, Jews - all foreigners look alike and talk funny.

The openness towards immigrants in the post-war period was fuelled by a sense of guilt about what happened to their biggest minority (up to that point), a memory of how the Jews had blended in and been inoffensive, and a belief that immigrants would shut up, sweep the streets, and fade from view when no longer needed.
That mindset has pretty much been destroyed.


The paranoia of the nineteenth and early twentieth century was towards Jews, Masons, other types of Christians, and Communists.

They've dropped religious sectarianism somewhat (now it's Christian Europe vs The Muslim world).
The Masons have faded (and anti-Masonic ideas have been subsumed into a weird form of anti-Americanism).
Jews are now considered either secular crypto-Nazis or religious fanatics (not enough Jews over there to prove those praeconceptions wrong).
And the communists have survived to such an extent in liberal western Europe that they are now an accepted part of society.


The Europeans, are, over all, indeed educable, though it's a bit of an up-hill battle.

But it isn't the educable ones who are a problem.

It is the very large percentage who despise everything outside of their village and kin. The ten or twenty percent hickville slope-brows, who are happily tolerated by the rest, because they are so splendidly natural and native, unlike the "furreners".


The Dutch term for people who belong in Dutch society is 'autochthonous'.
All foreigners are 'allochthonous'.
There is a sense that Jews are 'allochthonous', and that Israel is a very un-European place filled with that type of people.
The Arab world is entirely 'allochthonous', and that merely proves how unpleasant the 'allochthonous world' is.


Did I mention that Jews have a habit of pointing out uncomfortable truths? That doesn't make the Europeans very happy.

The Persians and the Arabs are so much more.... comfort-zone-ish. Accomodating in their diplomatic chatter.

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R wrote: I have wondered whether when the "oil weapon" is defused either through technolgy or simple depletion whetherthe world will hold a grudge against the Arabs that used the threat of the "oil weapon" so arrogantly. Once that cash pipeline is disrupted, all thats left is the intolerant arrogance. Maybe that'll be enough to wake up the Europeans. Or perhaps a legislative move to impose Sharia in the Netherlands.


BOTH: I'm afraid that by that time, patterns will have set.

The Jews will be "those people", as also the Americans.
European Muslims will be either ghetto dwellers looked down upon and occasionally whacked by the authorities, or hopeful and obsequious middle-classes heading into consumer-public member beatitude.
The Arab countries will be war-zones whose existence proves the European conceits, and whose funds are safely in European banks.
And Israel will be "that place", whose people are crude, brash, and have an overblown sense of their own worth - unrealistic, of course, because they are just not "us Europeans".


For Sharia to be imposed in the Netherlands, there would have to be enough fervent Muslims to make it possible. Not likely. Already the majority of Dutch Muslims are more culturally Muslim than religiously so. If there are even a thousand burqa-wearers there I would be much surprised. The danger is not religious nuts so much as people who have religion-based praeconceptions. Europe has been praedominantly secular since the French revolution - the Nazis, Ukrainian Nationalists, Communists, skinheads, and Pan-Arabists all were/are secular -- but with worldviews that come from their underlying faith culture.


I very much suspect that many Muslims in Europe in twenty years will be beer-drinking, jeans-wearing, ultra-agnostic - but with that anti-Semitic flair which flourishes so well in European soil. And the Europeans will not view such Muslims in the same way as the ghetto-dwelling Islamic fanatics. They'll be "just like us".


Again, I do not see the Muslims in Europe as nearly so much of a problem as the Europeans themselves. The fact that those Muslims are anti-Semitic is more of a fortuitous coincidence than in any way objectionable to the generation which feels no connection whatsoever with the events that happened during the bad old imperialist days. To many Europeans, anything before the sixties was 'not their fault, they've already paid for it, the victims are living in the past, and in any case no big deal'. Besides, the destruction of Europe more than balances out whatever the Europeans may have done.


Two key phrases that define the European mindset:
1. Wir habn es nicht gewust!
2. Ve suffered also in ze war!


I'm just not very optimistic about Europe.

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R wrote: Grim predictions. Perhaps for the time being we can struggle for the soul of San Francisco.


BOTH: One last point: The Europeans do not want Turkey in the EU - because it is a Moslem country.
But they do want Bulgaria and Rumania - where corruption and anti-Semitism flourish.
That speaks volumes.

So indeed, for the time being, we'll struggle for the soul of SF.

Why? Because we live here - and for me especially because I'll be damned if I allow myself to be silenced. As a foreigner in the Netherlands I was always reminded that I really shouldn't have any opinions that disagreed with the host-population, and as a foreigner I should be grateful and subdued.
Here I can speak, so here I will speak.

Even if I have to club someone with a heavy protest sign in order to do so.