How would you like being seated in a movie theater with a
quack seated behind you, commenting on what he sees and predicting what will
happen every time that the scene changes, which is every few seconds?
Because the movie is screened for the first time, the quack
never saw it before and his predictions come out random, which means that some
prove correct but most turn out to be wrong. However, the quack remains
undeterred, and continues to comment on each scene as well as try to predict
the unpredictable.
This is the metaphor that comes to mind almost every time
that you read an article by Benny Avni. Looking at the nations as they act on
the world stage, he does not see a drama unfold, and does not try to understand
the motivation of each player. What he does is predict who will be saved and
who will be doomed at the end of the day. He does so based on a single act that
a player commits or a single word they utter. It must be noted that Avni often
reverses his predictions when, in the next scene, the same player does or says
something different.
This time, Benny Avni has taken on Europe. He wrote: “Europe
turns away from the US––and bites the hand that feeds,” a column that was
published on June 5, 2018 in the New York Post. Oblivious of the recent history
of Europe when Donald Rumsfeld was prompted to make a distinction between “Old
Europe” and “New Europe,” Avni treats the continent as a non-historical and
non-evolving static bloc of nations.
The man happens to believe that each member of the bloc
determines their fate by what they do or say at this instant. Accordingly, he
believes that each member will be saved or doomed at the end of time depending
on a single act they commit, or a single word they utter right now. But of
course, you must always expect that he will change his mind on the spot if and
when the player will do or say something different.
The column being about Europe, you can tell into which
static situation Benny Avni froze the continent by reading a telling
description he inserted in the first sentence. It is this: “America, the
country too many on the [European] continent love to hate.” Well, he did say
that Trump was wrongheaded for starting a trade war with Europe, but his intent
being to unload on the Europeans, he quickly absolved Trump by remarking that,
“well before the [trade] restrictions, Trump had slaughtered some of Europe's
sacred cows.” He thus put the ball in their court and nudged the reader to
believe that the Europeans could have accommodated Trump but did not.
And there is one more anomaly which adds color to this
otherwise colorless story. It is this: “Trump offended the Euro's collective
sense of decorum by moving the US embassy in Israel to Jerusalem … on that, the
Europeans are far from united.” Mention of disunity among Europeans happens
to be the first glimpse which gives a hint that there may be a hidden pattern
in Benny Avni's vision as to who will be saved and who will be doomed at the
end of time. To find out, you look for the evidence in the column, and discover
the following:
“Romanian Prime Minister visited Israel and her government
tentatively approved moving its embassy to Jerusalem. Romanian President called
on her to resign, accusing her of making 'secret deals' with the Jews. Germany
privately sided with the President. The US ambassador in Berlin advised the
Germans against interfering. Other US envoys should advocate the move to
Jerusalem. None of the five European nations on the Security Council supported
a text proposed by America that would solely blame Hamas for recent deadly Gaza
clashes. France and Sweden sided with Hamas to protect Gaza's Palestinians from
the evil Israelis. German Chancellor Angela Merkel said the continent can no
longer rely on America”.
This says that Rumsfeld's “New Europe” has developed a
distaste for America similar to what “Old Europe” had developed long ago. To
understand what happened here, we need to recall that New Europe comprises the
former Warsaw Pact satellites of the old Soviet Union. They were happy to leave
the old alliance but were also ignorant of what they were getting into. And so,
their original stance pleased Donald Rumsfeld.
But after embracing what they thought was a genuine system
of democratic values, the Europeans of New Europe discovered that it was
nothing more than a protection racket cobbled together to defend and promote
the organized crime syndicate that's coalescing around the New-York/Tel-Aviv
axis of wars, blackmail, ethnic cleansing, neo-colonialism, looting and slandering
the innocent while blaming them for the horrors that the syndicate commits. Not
only that, but they pretend to be the cops that can restore civility to the
planet.