The European Union has Muslims aplenty, and I dare say we are in the main richer for it. But we are unlikely to be as enlightened as to allow substantially more to come in from Palestine, in large part because they would likely not be particularly wealthy Muslims, and in some part because some of us seem to believe they'd be heading directly and intently towards the Gates of Vienna, as it were. And they would not come, at any rate.
As for the Israeli, there's an anecdote I saw Amos Oz once telling about his childhood that may shed some light into the problem. His parents had been Europeans, of the wealthy, cosmopolitan, polyglot Ashkenazi type not uncommon in the East before the war, and to the end of their days they could not come to entirely accept Jerusalem. They listened to Mozart, they read Schiller, that sort of thing. Jerusalem was drab, it was not civilisation they could feel was their own. They taught Mr Oz many languages, but they avoided the so-called great European ones they themselves knew so well and used so fluently. This was not because they had become nationalists, but because they had not become so. They dreaded that Mr Oz would discover Europe, and fall in love with Europe, and go to Europe, and that Europe would do its thing and kill him.
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Date: 2009-01-09 12:21 am (UTC)As for the Israeli, there's an anecdote I saw Amos Oz once telling about his childhood that may shed some light into the problem. His parents had been Europeans, of the wealthy, cosmopolitan, polyglot Ashkenazi type not uncommon in the East before the war, and to the end of their days they could not come to entirely accept Jerusalem. They listened to Mozart, they read Schiller, that sort of thing. Jerusalem was drab, it was not civilisation they could feel was their own. They taught Mr Oz many languages, but they avoided the so-called great European ones they themselves knew so well and used so fluently. This was not because they had become nationalists, but because they had not become so. They dreaded that Mr Oz would discover Europe, and fall in love with Europe, and go to Europe, and that Europe would do its thing and kill him.