European Sentiments

The CS Monitor reports that pro-Arab sentiment throughout Europe, once dominated by French diplomacy, is dwindling.  

Support for the Palestinian plight, once seen as a struggle for independence and a right of return, is now seen in "shallower emotional and humanitarian grounds . . . forgetting the old issues of substance and Israeli occupation," said one European diplomat.  

Among other factors, many contribute the decline to the friction caused throughout much of Europe in the past decade or so brought on by abrupt increases of Arab and Muslim immigration into Europe, as well as a reaction to 9/11.  

Some are rehashing the "Clash of Civilizations" theory put out by Samuel Huntington, as if this were an inevitability. For those unschooled, please read Huntington's 1993 Foreign Affairs article "The Clash of Civilizations."

I think the thing to remember is that there are moderate groups and extreme groups in every civilization, and there is a fundamental common humanity that need not clash; this is the basis of diplomacy.  

Anyway, read the CSM article, an excellent piece on the worldview of Gaza.