The Telegraph, Europeans view Israel as the No 1 threat to world peace, ahead of Iran and North Korea, according to a European Commission survey yesterday.
The results prompted a furious reaction from the Israeli government, which has already accused the European Union of turning a blind eye to rising anti-Semitism.
The Eurobarometer poll of 7,500 EU residents found that 59 per cent deemed Israel “a threat to peace in the world”, with the figures rising to 60 per cent in Britain, 65 in Germany, 69 in Austria and 74 in Holland.
Franco Frattini, Italy's foreign minister, apologised for the results on behalf of the EU, saying they sent “a false signal” and would not shape Middle East policy.
The Simon Wiesenthal Centre said the poll was proof that Europe has swallowed the media's vilification of Israel “hook, line and sinker”. The EU has long been accused by hardliners in America and Israel of tilting to the Arab side.
The list of 15 countries that might be a threat to peace was put together by a low-level EU unit in concert with Belgian members of EOS Gallup Europe. It was not cleared by foreign policy experts working for Chris Patten, the external relations commissioner. “We had nothing to do with it,” said his spokesman.
In a twist that left analysts scratching their heads, the poll suggested that the British have turned against Washington even more sharply than the French or Germans. Asked if America posed a threat to peace, the “yes” response was 55 per cent in Britain, 52 in France and 45 in Germany.
In Greece, the figure reached 88 per cent, with 96 per cent calling the Iraq war “unjustified”. But the EU itself is deemed a threat to peace by 18 per cent in Britain compared with eight per cent for the whole union. Only Denmark continues to back the Iraq war.
In Britain, a comfortable majority still thinks that the Government should keep troops in Iraq now that the country is committed. While the Dutch were the most worried about Israel, they were also alarmed by America, North Korea, Pakistan and China.
“This is the strangest poll I've ever seen. The Dutch have always been very pro-Israel and so I ask myself how can this possibly be?” said Ben Van Der Velde, European editor for the Rotterdam-based newspaper Handelsblad.
The poll was part of a regular series by the commission's press service and was intended to investigate views on the Iraq crisis.
Gallup questioned 500 people in each EU state – the same for 82 million Germans and 350,000 in Luxembourg – although the final results were “weighted”.
The Israeli embassy in Brussels blamed the anti-Israel mood on reckless reporting by the European media, saying: “We are not only sad but outraged. Not at European citizens but at those who are responsible for forming public opinion.”
The World Jewish Congress said Europe's elites had been playing with fire by routinely treating Israel as the Middle East villain.
In a recent case, Gretta Duisenberg, the wife of the departing president of the European Central Bank, called the Israeli occupation of Gaza and the West Bank worse than Nazi rule in Holland. Almost all of Holland's 100,000 Jews were exterminated by the Germans.
