Since the beginning of the Oslo War, member countries of the European Union (EU) have targeted Israel with actions that have negatively impacted the country. For example, Germany suspended arms sales to Israel, Belgian Foreign Minister Louis Michel issued an order to do the same, and the French continue their fabrications about Israel occupying Palestine, feeding a frenzy of Jew-hatred in the ever-growing Parisian-Muslim state.
While on a tour of the Middle East earlier this month, Italian Premier Silvio Berlusconi met with Israeli Prime Minister Sharon and President Moshe Katzav to discuss the possibility of Israel’s joining the European Union. (Berlusconi’s country takes over the 6-month rotating presidency of the EU in July.) The Italian leader told Sharon that “Israel’s natural place is in the EU.”
It happens that the EU has an official liaison to Israel, Ambassador Giancarlo Chevallard. The honorable Mr. Chevallard has spoken of Israeli ‘atrocities,’ and in his newsletter has complained that “Europeans feel disconcerted and increasingly uneasy about being accused of all sort of anti-Israeli sins.”
Just one year ago the EU funneled 50 million Euros to Palestinian Authority Chairman Yasir Arafat to pay his “security officers” and meet other “salary obligations.” When criticized for supplying the PA with funding allegedly used for terrorist causes, Chevallard stated, “I find it hard to believe that we harm Israeli security by providing aid to the Palestinians.”
This is the same man who once declared that Israel is not up to the standards of the Western world in practicing “basic behavior in terms of human rights and human dignity.” Chevallard has also chastised Israel for a “spotty human rights record.”
Chevallard speaks of Israel in this manner while conversely entertaining the idea of Israel belonging to the EU. It leads one to wonder whether the EU might want the “bad” state of Israel to join up in order to give the Europeans some measure of control over the Jewish state.
One of the great threats to Israel’s sovereignty in any EU scenario would be the potential replacement of the Shekel with the EU’s pan-European currency, the Euro. Austria, Belgium, Finland, France, Germany, Ireland, Italy, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Portugal, and Spain have already accepted the Euro as their official currency. Proponents of the Euro stated a few years ago that a European currency would strengthen European identity. That may be true, but what benefit does this have for Israel? Israel is not a European clone of Germany or Belgium. Israel must remain a Jewish country, an individual nation made up of Jewish values and Jewish people.
There is no reason to make the Jewish state strengthen its “European identity” when its Jewish identity is the sole guarantor of its survival. Assimilation is bad enough when it’s due to cultural and social catalysts; we certainly do not need a monetary paradigm added to our destruction.
The simple act of converting from the Shekel to the Euro carries tremendous risks. A study by the Harvard World Model United Nations, a research group, stated that when a country uses Euros, it “loses its ability to fight inflation, control interest rates, and go into deep budget deficit in order to fight its way out of a recession. The monetary policies of the entire Euroland are controlled not by their respective national governments but by the European Central Bank. Euroland is particularly susceptible to asymmetric shocks, whereby one region is beset by economic woes while others are booming. In this instance, the ECB, which has to oversee the health of the entire Euroland, cannot lower or raise interest rate simply for that one region alone.”
Because there is only one Europe-wide interest rate, any EU country that increases its debt will raise interest rates in all other countries. Were Israel to belong to the EU, other EU countries might, if they so desired, decrease their intra-EU transfer payments to hurt the Jewish state. Israel would then be held hostage at the hands of the UK, France, Germany or other member nations. If governments such as these were to exert pressure on Israel to reduce borrowing, or even pay fines if the budget deficit exceeded a reference value, it would have the perverse effect of increasing an existing economic imbalance or deepening a recession.
To compound this, in a case where Israel already was in a recession, it would no longer be able to stimulate its economy by devaluing the Shekel and increasing exports. Who would Israel complain to if the EU, as master of the house, was the one instituting the sentence against the Jewish state? Israel would thus become a slave at the feet of the European Union.
The Shekel offers us, as Jews and Israelis, more than mere independence from the EU monetary system. The Shekel is a tremendous symbol of Jewish nationality, pride and freedom. First spoken of as the Jewish monetary unit in the Book of Shemot (30:11-16), various Jewish coins were later minted with this same name.
With the rebirth of modern Israel in 1948, the Shekel was re-instituted, for the first time in 2,000 years, as the Jewish system of currency. Will it soon be added to the list of now-extinct national currencies such as the Franc, Mark, Peseta, Drachma, Schilling, Lira and Guilder?
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