LOVE means never having to say you are sorry. Or to put it differently in Brussels-speak, even if Israel maims and murders, never get Tel Aviv to say sorry. Adoration for another never reached such an apotheosis.
What is worse, it was declared in the most public of manner on Sept 2 in an op-ed in Israel's English daily Haaretz by Sven Koopmans, a man supposedly on a European Union peace mission to the Middle East.
If this wasn't enough, the "all love for Israel and no sorry for the Palestinians" was posted on the website of the delegation of the EU to Israel. Interesting. How the Middle East has been transformed into Israel. Call it European irony in black and white.
Let's be brutally frank. There will be no peace in the Middle East so long as Brussels remains Palestinian blind, deaf and dumb. Didn't the EU hear the frequent shouts of "Death to the Arabs" on the streets of Israel and Palestine? If the lawyers in Brussels missed the letter of the law, here is our advice, pro bono publico: threat of genocide is itself genocide.
To Koopmans, Israelis are living in a tough neighbourhood, Brussels' way of mixing fact and fiction. In this EU language, the aggressor becomes the victim. Koopmans's narrative puts it thus: "We see the terror attacks in your streets and we face them in ours, so we established close security cooperation.
We see antisemitism in your region and we see it in ours, so we launched a strategy to support Jewish life in Europe. Let us now see what more we can do." Hypocrisy has failed Koopmans as it has failed the EU.
A man and an institution on a mission to broker peace shouldn't be so broke on reality. Instead of just "seeing" Palestinian terror attacks, the EU must also see Israel's terror attacks. Not only that.
Brussels and Washington must stop money and munitions flowing to Tel Aviv if they honestly desire to put a halt to Israel's persecution of the Palestinians. If you rob a people of their land, lives and limbs wouldn't you expect them to fight back?
Hypocrisy fails the EU in another way, too. Brussels seems to think only the Palestinians bear the burden of bringing peace to the Middle East. Not Israel. But who is the aggressor? Not Palestinians.
Who keeps breaking international law? Not the Palestinians. We tell Brussels to count the number of United Nations resolutions that Israel is breaching.
Not one or two, but numerous. Brussels is deluding itself by telling the world that there is no peace in the Middle East because there is no "better peace partner" (Koopmans's phrase, which we take to be the EU's, too) on the Palestinian side. Here is the real reason why there isn't peace in the Middle East: Brussels is so lost in the adoration of Tel Aviv that it finds it very hard to be honest. Beware, we tell the EU.
Such worship, the EU must be reminded, breeds Israeli impunity. And the EU must know, too, it is choosing to stand with Israel on the wrong side of history. Love, an honest one that is, means never to be in the position of saying sorry.