An interview with Bat Ye'or

One of the most important historians today is Bat Ye'or, who wrote the book "Eurabia: The Arab-Europe Axis. Here is an excerpt of an interview of Bat Ye'or by Pamela Geller.

PG: And here we are today, and there is talk about Bush reaching out to talk to Muslim Brotherhood. What do you think about that?

BY: Well, because there is a policy now which is totally different from before, from the 1970th . The policy is that we don’t want any more war. And in order to avoid having war we have to speak to the enemy and we have to defuse the conflict through pacific means. This is the policy of Europe.

PG: Do you believe in that?

BY: Well, I think that it goes in a certain way, but if one insists that one can not defuse the conflict, that the enemy will have its way -- like with Hitler because this policy was used with Hitler too; appeasement; the appeasement policy -- so it goes until a certain point but no more, because then afterward the conflict will be, anyway, but it will be even more terrible with more victims and more violent.

PG: Now in “Eurabia” you outlined the Euro-Arab axis, that it wasn’t an accident, but there was a deliberate plan? What was the objective?

BY: Well, in this book I examined particularly this policy of appeasement that was conducted by Europe, the European community. This time it was the nine countries, and it started in part after the Kippur War in 1973, and it was in fact a French plan. France didn’t want to lose their colonies, and they want to have good relations with their Arab colonies -- you know that France had huge Arab colonies -- and after the Algerian war of liberation they lost all their colonies. They lost Morocco, Tunisia, Algeria, the last one. They wanted to have good relations with these countries, and they went along [with] the plan drawn by the Mufti, the Mufti of Jerusalem [Haj-Amin al-Husseini].

PG: Right, and he was with the Nazis?

BY: He was with the Nazis. There were many Nazis in Egypt, and Egypt was part, also, of this plan, and the plan was to build up a strong alliance with France and the Arab countries, and against America and against the Protestant people.

PG: Now, why against America? As a counter-power?

BY: Yes, first of all as a counter-power. It is thanks to America that the dictatorships like fascism, like Nazism were defeated. So America was the big enemy. It was a democratic and it was the big enemy of dictatorship and of the fascism regimes. Now, there were many Nazis who immigrated to Egypt and lived in Egypt under the Nasser regime, and of course they were very friendly with the Mufti, so this plan was built up against America and against Israel. Now de Gaulle thought to bring it not only to France, but to the European community. Then the nine countries. Because this time de Gaulle and Germany were building together the European community; the integration.

PG: Yes, the integration, it would eliminate the European countries, so to speak.

BY: Not only that. It would make out of Europe a huge block because it would not be only France, it would be nine countries allied with twenty-two Arab countries. It would have make a fantastic block which would be more powerful than America, and this was the object, and for the Arabs, not so much for the French although there were many anti-Semites still in France. France was an ally of the German regime, the German Nazi regime, so it has collaborated in the deportation of Jews and the extermination of Jews.

PG: But the people in Europe really were not onboard with this, they didn’t know that this was happening.

BY: No, they didn’t know but still there were people who were very favorable to such a position because from the beginning of the century there was such an anti-Semitic climate in France and in whole of Europe. If it wouldn’t have been, there wouldn’t have been also the genocide of the Jews, if the climate was not so anti-Jewish. And it is not as if the Allies succeeded in crushing down Nazism [and so] all those feelings disappeared from one day to another.

PG: Oh no, it could never happen!

BY: So it has continued under another name, and this was of course the anti-Zionists and the hate of the state of Israel, but it was the same anti-Semitism and anti-Americanism. So what happened then? After the Yom Kippur War, the European countries that were reluctant to follow the French plan [finally] accepted [it] because they were faced with the oil boycott.

PG: Yes, in the 70s.

BY: Yes, and not only that but with Palestinian terrorism which started in 1968 in Europe, in several cities of Europe.

PG: And they handled it very badly.

BY: Yes, and they didn’t know. It was the first time it happened so they didn’t know how to answer on that.

PG: They should have crushed it!

BY: Yes, but how to crush it? They didn’t know, so they thought: “Okay, we’ll go into that plan, we do this appeasement policy“ because this was the European countries who wants to have good relations with the Arab world, and with the countries now producing so much oil, so they needed oil for their economy. So they say: “Okay, we go into this alliance with the Arab world, and we shall do business with them”.

But the Arab League put as a condition to open a dialogue with the European countries two conditions: that Europe will (1) recognize [Yassir] Arafat as the only representative of the Palestinian people and that they will support the PLO, which was a terrorist organization and (2) have a policy contradict to that of America. So they enter into this dialogue.

PG: Yes, the deal with the devil.

BY: Yes, the deal with the devil. And from that moment Europe changed it policy against Israel, but I think its soul changed because…

PG: Europe's soul changed. That’s important; an important quote.

BY: Yes. Because it has to support the Palestinian war, jihad against Israel.

PG: It has to support barbarism.

BY: Which is support barbarism, which is to support jihad ideology which is, as well, as much anti-Jewish as anti-Christian, and which is legitimized by the evilness of the Jews and Christians or of the infidels also. It is based on that, so when Europe support this and legitimize it intellectually, and also with its heart, its soul and heart support the destruction of the state of Israel, it supported also its own evilness and its own destruction. And since this moment it follows therefore the Palistinization of Europe, of the whole mentality of Europe -- the whole vision and interpretation of history and of events according to the Palestinian vision , which is the eternal evilness of its enemy Israel, which is linked also to the Christian and the West. So Europe destroyed itself. It destroyed its own, first of all, Christianity, and gave in to the Palestinians [who] attack Christians in Lebanon. The Palestinian war was not only against Israel. The Palestinians, you have to see them as a tool or as an instrument of the Arab world to destroy Israel, and also as a channel to penetrate into Europe and Islamize Europe. It is exactly what they have done.

PG: I understand, but even the word Palestinian is a marketing term. What was really the Palestinians? The Arabs living in Gaza, but were Egyptian Arabs.

Yes.

PG: So they came with this term in 1967. It’s a myth. It’s an Arab narrative.

BY: Yes. You phrase it totally. I think the Palestine and the myth of the Palestinian was created by European anti-Semites like Jacques Berque, who is a great islamologue and arabist who is teaching on the Institute Francaise. He’s very well known because he was he champion of this anti-Israeli policy of the French government, but there was others also in England and in other countries. But in Europe the leftist movement was behind the Palestinians, so all the communists and the leftist movement supported the Palestinians, supported this vision because they were anti-American. So at this moment there was a real polarization of the political life in Europe, with the left, the communists, the socialists supporting the Palestinian and the destruction of Israel and the fight against America.

PG: Yes, but there are people, the people of Europe, they don’t like what’s going on. I mean, do you think they can actually, at any point wall off their cities? I mean, this is evolving, this is not static, this is fluid…

BY: Yes. I mean what happen to people, the European people, it is that all this is a policy that was created by networks and went through -- was imposed -- to the European through the universities; through institutes that were created, through media…

PG: It’s America!

BY: Exactly, and with false justification, a mythological justification.

PG: Yes, it’s an Arab narrative.

BY: Yes, with a political agenda, supporting the Palestinians, and whoever would say the contrary, would oppose, would lost his work, would be boycotted, he wouldn’t be able to be published and so on. So this was a censorship. Now, what the European people thought of that were many intellectual people saw very well, and many religious also - the priests in the reform churches. They were totally opposed to that, and they fought very strongly against it. They saw it. They saw that the ancient anti-Semitism, which they had so strongly voted against in the preceding years and the Nazism. There were many people who opposed that movement, but they were taken into it and they were prisoners of that. You know, when you see a blockage of everything; you can not write in the newspaper, you can not speak on the television. Your voice is not, has not…

PG: Is silent.

BY: Is silent! They silence you through censorship all the time. But nevertheless these people fought with whatever possibility there was. So the resistance against anti-Semitism, against anti-Americanism, against this policy was there, but was not listened to; do not appear.


PG: I agree. Don’t you think that the Arabs have something of a free pass? Don’t you think these mosques must be monitored? I’m talking about going after the Islamists, the preachers who preach the terror, but it’s not enough to just be there when a bomb goes off. I mean you got to go to the incubator of hate.

BY: Yes, but English government has never done that. This is very strange, because this is the result of ten years of policy of Blair and of the Labour government. Terrorism is everywhere in Europe, and, you know, Europe buys its security since 1973 -- since Europe has made this deal with the Palestinian terrorism, to recognize them, to receive them, to honor them. So Europe has lost the control of its own security. It relies for its security on the honor it give to the terrorist, and to ransom money. We are paying billions to Palestinians without even knowing what they are doing with this money.

PG: We know, they are buying weapons and so on.

BY: Yes. So the taxpayers are in fact paying to terrorist gangs for its security. This is what we are doing in Europe. Like the dhimmi we are paying for our security. We live under the regime of dhimmitude without Europeans knowing it because the whole of the West is doing that. The whole of the West is paying because we haven’t fought this war against terrorism.

“Get rid of Israel…, it’s only Israel and that's finished“. We saw it, and from a small angle. We didn’t saw the enormous implication in morality, in political strategically angels but also culturally. Because our universities are submitted to the cultural jihad.

PG: Oh, our universities has been submitted to cultural jihad!

BY: Yes, because we adopt the Islamist view of history, which deny the history of the dhimmitude, the history of the dhimmis. This is why we don’t know it in the West. Before that -- this change in policy 1973 -- this history of Islamic expansion and Islamic treatment of the countries I has conquered, and the population it has conquered and submitted, they were known. It was told in universities.

PG: It was told in universities.

BY: Yes, this was 40 years ago, 50 years ago, this was because it was texts on it, it was books on it. Muslim books.

PG: OK. Fatah was fully armed with American munitions, they were armed to the teeth, FATAH. They didn't fight, they gave them, HAMAS , .....

BY: Yes, because I don't believe there is such a big difference in fact between FATAH and HAMAS because each one wants to control, to have the power.

PG: He never wanted peace. Without Israel, it would've been, "Next, next, next".

BY: No, without Israel! Peace without Israel. That means that Palestine would be from the Jordan to the Mediterranean....

PG: Right.

BY: ...and Israel would have disappeared, and this is peace.

PG: Even then it wouldn't have been peace. They would have had another goal.

BY: Yes, of course, because there is no peace with jihad. I think that the way to defeat jihad is a war, a military war.

PG: Yeah, terrible.

BY: It would be difficult for Israel, it would be difficult for the whole world because these events in the Arab countries would have repercussions on, in the West, in the Muslim communities which number millions and millions.

PG: Yes.

BY: There will be certainly more terrorism in Europe because terrorist cells would be activated. From one moment to another our whole economy, which is based on oil, can crumble. So there are political elements, economic elements, security elements, because we are becoming a "global" world, and so one event in one part of the world has repercussions everywhere.

PG: Every rally that I go to, every anti-America rally, every anti-Israel rally, I have to tell you who was there: the Islamis are there, the Commies are there, the Socialists are there, and the Democrats are there. There is a Leftist-Islamic Alliance now, Bat.

BY: Yes, of course, there is, and we see this particularly in Europe. So these are working because also there are a lot of petro-dollars going around.

PG: Right.

BY: A lot of corruption, money, which is floating, and therefore either in Universities or to organizations, so-called humanitarian organizations who are very vocal.

You will never win the soul and heart of your enemy unless you agree to what they ask from you, what they want from you.

PG: And you're assuming that Islam has a heart and a soul. I don't see that. Their perspective is not a Liberal perspective, it's not a secular perspective, or a Judeo-Christian perspective, it's not.

BY: No, of course, but they want, by doing that they want to Islamize America.

PG: Yes.

BY: America will win the heart and soul of Islam when it will accept to be Islamized. No way out. So it shouldn't, America should not do that, it should in the contrary remain what it is, fight for it's values -- Judeo-Christian values, secular political institutions and so on -- and democracy, of course, equality of rights, and it should bring lots of Muslims towards those values, rather than Islamize itself and go into a way, a policy of justifying the aim of those who want to destroy it.