ABSTRACT
This chapter examines the roots of socially constructed relationship between Christian Europe and Jews over time, and how this sociocultural association has been transformed from being a historically adversarial relationship into one based on friendship and collaboration. The bilateral perceptions of both Europe and Israel would define the steps and policies followed in Palestine, including more recently by Hamas as a movement that contradicts the basis around which this strong Euro–Israeli coalition is constructed. Before the early religious reform movements in Europe during fifteenth century and onwards, Jewish people living under Catholic hegemony in Europe and elsewhere, were barely able to gain their religious freedom due, inter alia, to the common belief in Europe that they were the killers of Jesus Christ. The European Union (EU) foreign policy towards Hamas, which oppose the existence of Israel or its policies in Middle East and elsewhere, has been affected by events that occurred in Europe in the first half of twentieth century.
