By Giorgos Harvalias (link here to dimokratia.gr for the original Greek article)
The first piece of advice I would offer Israel’s new ambassador to Greece—given her stated interest in improving her country’s image—would be this: beware of Israel’s “declared friends.” Especially the recent converts.
I mean political mountebanks who once made a living peddling antisemitism, and former doctrinaire communists who have suddenly seen the light and now pose as heavyweight columnists, singing hymns to the achievements of the Jewish nation.
Both camps do enormous damage to Israel’s public image—at least in Greece. They are, after all, very well known to those familiar with the local scene, who have every reason to question the purity of their motives.
Ms. Pinat Yanai might profitably take a closer look at Adonis Georgiadis’s record, at the credibility his pronouncements enjoy among the Greek public, and at the scale of the negative sentiment surrounding him. Perhaps then she will understand—and alert her government in time. Her country has no need of such self-appointed publicists.
Now to the substance.
Is the State of Israel worthy of admiration? From many points of view, certainly. Anyone who today denies Israel’s military, technological and educational superiority is either ignorant or blinded by prejudice. And that superiority owes less to an abundance of resources or capital than to the ability, patriotism and iron discipline of the Jewish people.
Is Israel today committing a Nazi-style genocide against the Palestinians? The answer cannot be reduced to an effortless, unexamined “yes.” Israel is unquestionably waging a war of total character, with scant concern for the human losses suffered by the other side.
But this war is defensive—or, more precisely, preventive—in nature. Its purpose is not the mass extermination of a people for its own sake, nor imperial expansion into foreign territory for the economic exploitation of other peoples’ resources, beyond what Israelis themselves regard as a “vital security perimeter.”
If one also takes into account the deep historical trauma of the Jewish people—the repeated persecutions they endured and the unimaginable genocide inflicted upon them in the last century—then one can, up to a point, understand the disproportionate response to perceived threats, particularly when those threats revive the terror of civilians being murdered without warning.
The State of Israel has been quite explicit on this point: whoever harms our people will receive a response many times more powerful.
That kind of instinctive, implacable resolve does not evoke Nazism. If anything, it evokes the Old Testament.
A second crucial question follows. Whatever one thinks of Israel’s objectionable military conduct, are Jews today closer to the values of Western civilization than Muslims, Arab or otherwise?
Here the answer is yes. Unequivocally.
Strip away the Left’s humanitarian grandstanding, much of it steeped in hypocrisy and double standards, and the conclusion is not difficult to reach: in outlook, temperament and cultural background, the average Israeli is closer to the average conservative European or American than to the average Muslim of the Middle East.
It is no accident that so-called Judeo-Christian civilization, grounded in the perceived moral proximity of Judaism and Christianity, has become one of the pillars of the new anti-woke, anti-globalist conservative platform—above all in the United States, but increasingly in Europe as well.
Now let us turn to Greece.
Is there some deep-rooted, innate antisemitism in Greek society? No. Emphatically not—at least not by comparison with the overwhelming majority of European countries.
Even under the Metaxas regime, Jews were not persecuted by the Greek state, and whatever prejudice existed was largely confined to fringe or quasi-religious circles. Some gentlemen at the Central Board of Jewish Communities would therefore do well to stop repeating such misleading stereotypes at every opportunity. They do nothing to advance relations between the two countries.
Is there, however, a more recent and acquired hostility toward the State of Israel and Israeli citizens among a section of Greek public opinion?
Yes, there is.
The latest events on the battlefield have provided fertile ground for hostility that is being cultivated by forces of the Left across its entire ideological spectrum, as well as by the tiny number of neo-Nazi sympathizers still to be found in this country.
Unfortunately, tensions are also fueled by a small number of Israeli visitors or investors who behave with the arrogance and entitlement of settlers.
The Postwar Record
Was Greek foreign policy in the postwar era friendly toward the State of Israel?
The answer may surprise you: no.
For reasons that are difficult to explain, Greek diplomacy—going back even to the days of the infamous Pipinelis—was imbued with a distinctly pro-Arab bias, in sharp contrast to Turkish diplomacy.
Warm feelings toward the Arab world were supported by neither reciprocity nor any particularly compelling historical foundation. Nor did they necessarily reflect popular sentiment in Greece.
If nothing else, the bitter experience of Egypt’s Greek community—uprooted under Nasser—should have encouraged a certain reserve toward the Arab world.
The contrast with Israel is striking. In August 1953, when catastrophic earthquakes struck Kefalonia, an entire Israeli naval squadron taking part in exercises changed course to assist the victims. The Arab world, by comparison, hardly distinguished itself through gestures of solidarity toward the Greek nation.
Now consider the paradox.
Turkey moved as early as 1950 to recognize the State of Israel de jure and went on to develop strategic cooperation with it. Greece, meanwhile, perhaps dreaming of an illusory geopolitical “counterweight,” eventually went so far under Andreas Papandreou as to host a PLO diplomatic mission in Athens.
Between 1981 and 1989, with Karolos Papoulias at the Foreign Ministry, the pro-Arab orientation peaked. Fantasies were cultivated about “a flood of petrodollars coming to Greece,” even as major Greek engineering and construction companies were going bankrupt because Arab regimes simply failed to pay what they owed.
The imbalance in Greece’s relationship with Israel was finally corrected, and very late in the day, by Konstantinos Mitsotakis, who formally recognized the State of Israel—making Greece the last member of the then European Economic Community to do so.
But by then Athens’s long-standing pro-Arab orientation had already prevented the emergence of a genuine strategic relationship.
Between 1993 and 1996, Gerasimos Arsenis made a serious effort to build a defense partnership between Greece and Israel. The initiative, however, was cut short by a veto from Andreas Papandreou, who continued to maintain close ties with Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat.
That episode, among other factors, contributed to Israel’s gradual rapprochement with Turkey and to the signing of a military agreement between the two countries in 1996.
Their cooperation became close enough to resemble an informal defense alliance, built around a common enemy—albeit for different reasons: the Assad regime in Syria.
The landscape, however, has changed dramatically in recent years. Turkey has rebuilt its relations with the Arab world, helped install a friendly regime in Syria, and positioned itself at the forefront of the campaign against Israel, going so far as to proclaim an uncompromising struggle for the “liberation of Jerusalem.”
This reversal may prove temporary.
But it raises the critical question that the next part of this article must confront.
