A recently leaked internal European Union document details a plan to help facilitate the creation of a Palestinian state by building settlements on the part of the West Bank controlled by Israel, in contravention of Israeli law. As Alan Baker explains, such construction violates the Oslo Accords, to which the EU is a witness and signatory; moreover the document itself displays a misunderstanding of the Accords while making various false claims about Jerusalem’s behavior. Baker tries to answer the question of why Brussels is so intent on undermining the Jewish state—as made clear both by this policy and others:

It would appear that the EU’s extreme and illogical fixation with Israel is not necessarily shared by state members of the EU. It seems to represent and echo the long-held personal aversion and hostility to Israel that the EU high representative for foreign affairs and security policy Josep Borrell has displayed long before taking up his EU post.

Regrettably, this aversion to Israel is faithfully implemented by the EU External Action Service whose major purpose and staff seem to be devoted to undermining and seeking to delegitimize Israel. So much so that it is patently clear that the tail appears to be wagging the dog, rather than the opposite.

It is high time that the state members of the EU play a greater role in determining EU policies regarding the Middle East peace process, rather than allowing the biased, partisan, and fixated EU External Action Service to dictate policy regarding Israel and the territories.

By the same token, it is high time that Israel’s government take a far more assertive role in clarifying to the EU and its member states that the anti-Israel fixation of its staff and its actions in undermining Israel’s legitimate authority and jurisdiction in Area C [of the West Bank] will no longer be tolerated and must cease.

In October, a young Mauritanian national murdered an Orthodox Jewish man on his way to synagogue in Chicago. This alone should be sufficient sign of the rising dangers of anti-Semitism. Nathan Diament explains how the Anti-Semitism Awareness Act (AAA) can, if passed, make American Jews safer:

We were off to a promising start when the AAA sailed through the House of Representatives in the spring by a generous vote of 320 to 91, and 30 senators from both sides of the aisle jumped to sponsor the Senate version. Then the bill ground to a halt.

Fearful of antagonizing their left-wing activist base and putting vulnerable senators on the record, especially right before the November election, Democrats delayed bringing the AAA to the Senate floor for a vote. Now, the election is over, but the political games continue.

You can’t combat anti-Semitism if you can’t—or won’t—define it. Modern anti-Semites hide their hate behind virulent anti-Zionism. . . . The Anti-Semitism Awareness Act targets this loophole by codifying that the Department of Education must use the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance’s working definition of anti-Semitism in its application of Title VI.