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Thursday, December 22, 2016 | by Bat Ye’or

Originally published by Gatestone Institute. Republished with permission.

During WW II, the alliance of Pétain and Hitler with the Mufti of Jerusalem sought the extermination of the Jewish people, whom they accused of being the cause of evil. Today, this same policy, this same alliance, has set itself the same objective with the same motivation: Israel must be wiped out.

Today we are witnessing the coming of the worldwide caliphate. This expression means that the Muslim view of history is currently prevailing in international institutions. We see it with the Jerusalem Declaration of UNESCO, this palace of revisionism. The Jerusalem Declaration seeks to Islamize, with the help of many governments in Europe and other Christian countries, the ancient history of the people of Israel.

The Venice Declaration of 1980, issued by the European Community, which tried to force Israel to survive in an indefensible territory, already prescribed its disappearance and replacement with a people that had never even manifested itself before 1969 — and all with the assistance of the Soviet Union and especially France. The Islamization of Jerusalem and the delegitimization of the State of Israel were already set out in the Venice Declaration, which to this date the European Union has continued to view as valid.

The Venice Declaration of 1980 was a gift from the European Community to the Arab League, aimed at reestablishing good economic relations with Arab countries, which had been angered by the peace treaty between Israel and Egypt in 1979, a peace Europe had not been able to prevent. Jewish holy sites and the survival of the Jewish State were sacrificed by the European Community in exchange for petrodollars.

Since that time, the European Union has expressed remorse for the Holocaust and love and compassion for Israel, but has continued to support, fund and encourage a population whose mission is the destruction of Israel, as proclaimed in its doctrine, and with which Europe is quite familiar. European countries zealously spend billions to promote a worldwide Palestinian campaign of hatred against the State of Israel. They recognize terrorism everywhere except in Israel, where they themselves are allies of these terrorists, whom they call “freedom fighters” or “militants”, against “occupation”. The so-called “Jewish occupation” of Judea and Samaria refers to land that was conquered by war and occupied by Jordan from 1949 to 1967, and from where Palestinian Jews were killed, or dispossessed and expelled.

Does not this policy, championed by France, remind you of something? During WW II, the Pétain-Hitler and the fascists’ alliance with the Mufti of Jerusalem, head of the Muslim Brotherhood in Palestine, sought the extermination of the Jewish people, whom they accused of being the cause of evil. Today, this same policy, this same alliance, has set itself the same objective with the same motivation: Israel, to them, is the cause of the wars in the Middle East and must be wiped out. Men from the 1940s have passed away, but their heirs kept their policy, disguising it under compassion and love, driving Israel to suicide “for its own good”. Of course!

Now, with the declaration of UNESCO, we are witnessing the suppression of the history of the Israeli people – the “Holocaust of Memory”, as defined by Giulio Meotti — with the EU joining in.

But what does UNESCO’s declaration mean for Europe and Christianity? Wasn’t Christianity born out of Israel? Don’t churches tell the history of the people of Israel in their paintings, sculptures and stained glass windows? And isn’t the Bible, this historical shrine of the people of Israel for more than two millennia, left open on every pulpit of these churches? Hasn’t it been read? Commented on for twenty centuries? Wasn’t Jesus a Judean Jew, as were the apostles and evangelists?

Or was it Islam that Jesus was preaching, in Arabic and in the mosques?

If Israel never had a history in Judea, then Christianity and the Bible are lies. Are the ancient texts attesting to the existence of Israel from the time of the Pharaohs, Assyria, the Greeks, the Romans all lies? And the Arch of Titus in Rome, did that Menorah on there come from the mosque? There were not even any mosques around at that time — not even in Arabia.

What the UNESCO’s declaration is forcing us to accept is not just the destruction of our identity and culture, and the replacement of Christianity — a graft of Israel — with the Muslim faith, but also the destruction of the principle underlying Western civilization itself: reason, the very thing that lifts man above the beasts. We see that Israel, in its defense of the historical principle of its legitimacy, is also theologically protecting the legitimacy of Christianity, also linked to the Bible.

But if this declaration is not true, then the Jewish State’s sovereignty over Jerusalem is legal. And if it is legal, why has no one heard the protests of human rights defenders? How many Christians are there in the world? Two and a half billion? How many of these protested? A million? A hundred thousand? Ten thousand? Fifty, if that? And where are the great Catholic or Protestant voices to protest against this Islamization of Christianity? This passivity, this indifference, makes you think that Europe will soon look more like Lebanon.

This UNESCO declaration, to which Europe raised no objections — with the exception of four countries, whose abstention was not a protest, but an act of cowardice — is the very charter of the Islamization of Europe and of Christianity. It details a policy that dovetails with what we see unfolding with mass-immigration and its consequences starting in 1973, the date when the European Community allied itself with the enemy of Israel, the PLO. It is this policy of alliance with the enemies of Israel that led to the abandonment of the Lebanese Christians when they were attacked by the Europe-supported Palestinians. It was this policy that led to the denial of the history of jihad, of dhimmitude and of the tragedy of Christians, hostages in the Arab world — because Palestinians embody jihadist and dhimmitude values against Jews, Christians and Europe.

Europe’s alliance with the enemies of Israel, for the purpose of delegitimizing and destroying it, has simply continued the policies of Hitler and Pétain; but how can you destroy Israel without destroying Christianity? What would Christianity be without the Bible, the prophets, a Jewish Jesus, the universal values that these teach? This alliance has ruined Europe — because the enemies of Israel are also enemies of Christianity and of Europe. How can you ally yourself with those who want to destroy you, without in fact dying yourself?

The same obsessive hatred Hitler had for Israel, which led to the ruin of Europe, has persisted today in the European Union against the Jewish State. The great irony is that in trying to destroy Israel, Europe has destroyed itself.

The people of Europe will regain their freedom and identity by extricating themselves from this Euro-Arab alliance that joins them in a genocidal scheme against Israel and the West, in which they themselves are both protagonists and victims. Then and only then will they be able to help those Muslims who are bravely struggling to release their brethren from the hatred disfiguring the human face — jihadi hatred — and persuade them to accept human diversity. We have neglected these Muslims. They have been fighting alone for both them and us. It is imperative to help them.

Bat Ye’or is the author of several books on dhimmitude, including “Eurabia: The Euro-Arab Axis”. Her forthcoming book, “Understanding Eurabia”, will be published by Gatestone Institute and RVP Publishers in 2017.