Oxford Chabad Society had the honour of hosting during February Daniel Cohn-Bendit, a Franco-German Jewish politician, famous for being a student leader during the unrest of May 1968 in France. During that time he was known as Dany le Rouge (French for "Danny the Red", because of both his politics and the color of his hair). He is currently co-president of the group European Greens–European Free Alliance in the European Parliament, becoming "Dany le Vert" (French for "Danny the Green", because of his new fight for ecology), and co-chair of the Spinelli Group, a European parliament intergroup aiming at relaunching the federalist project in Europe. In 2010, he was involved in founding JCall, a European advocacy group to lobby the EU Parliament on foreign policy issues concerning the Middle East.
Mr. Cohn-Bendit gave a fascinating talk entitled "EU and Israel Relations." Mr. Cohn-Bendit argued that EU policy toward Israel cannot be divorced from its views on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and that in his view solving this conflict is the best way to secure a stronger relationship between the EU and Israel. Mr. Cohn-Bendit referenced a number of cases in which societies with historical tensions solved seemingly intractable conflicts, including the Franco-German project that laid the groundwork for the European Union four decades later, and the Dayton Accords that ended the war in the Former Yugoslavia. He spoke on his travels and efforts in a variety of contexts, including meeting with Israeli settlers in Hebron, European parliamentarians in Brussels, and various stakeholder communities in Europe.
Mr. Cohn-Bendit, an accomplished debater, then responded to an extensive round of questions with enthusiasm, covering his past as a student leader, his involvement in Israeli activities since the late 1960s, the nature of European peace agreements, and other topics. He advocated for structural incentives to end the conflict between Israelis and Palestinians, arguing that upon the achievement of peace, Israelis and Palestinians should be offered accession to the European Union as a reward.
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