By Latheef Farook
Several European lawmakers slammed the European Union of being complicit in Israel’s war crimes in Gaza during the recent European Parliament session while leading columnists warned EU of disastrous consequences.
Speaking at a session of the European Parliament on the situation in the besieged Palestinian enclave, Abir Al-Sahlani, an Iraqi-born Swedish Member of the European Parliament (MEP), symbolically protested against Israel’s attacks by raising her hand, which she had painted red, and covering her mouth with her other hand.
Al-Sahlani said: “Mr. president, there are no words left to describe what is happening in Gaza.” “Israel has violated every rule it could violate. We have no other authority to appeal to. The hypocrisy is obvious. Human rights have a color. The darker your color, the less your rights,” she added.
Also addressing the session, French lawmaker Manon Aubry said: “As we speak here, 1.5 million people know they will die in (the city of) Rafah if we don’t do anything (to stop the Israeli attacks).”
“People are dying because we are providing weapons to Israel to kill Palestinians. They are dying because the EU chooses to turn a blind eye to this and chooses to renew the partnership agreement with Israel for the sake of a little profit,” she added.
Spanish lawmaker Miguel Urban Crespo said Israel is organizing a new Nakba with the complicity of European governments. He was referring to the Nakba, or “catastrophe,” when around 700,000 Palestinians were forced from their homes in the 1948 Arab-Israeli war that led to Israel’s creation.
Mentioning his recent visit to Rafah border crossing, he said: “There were people filling the area just a few meters away. While 600 (aid) trucks need to pass a day, only five are allowed to pass. Israel uses hunger as a weapon of war.”
The Israeli war has pushed 85% of Gaza’s population into internal displacement amid acute shortages of food, clean water and medicine, while 60% of the enclave’s infrastructure has been damaged or destroyed, according to the UN.
Marco Carnelos former Italian diplomat said the latest stage of the Israel-Palestine conflict in Gaza has revealed an unexpected moral bankruptcy on the part of the European Union’s institutions and almost all of its member states.
Under these circumstances, logic would dictate that European support for Palestinians should have increased. Instead, Europe has become increasingly pro-Israel, or in the best case, indifferent to the Palestinian cause. The EU’s political discourse on Palestinian rights has slowly adjusted to Israel’s increasingly far-right narrative, with dissent and different opinions silenced or strongly criticised by mainstream media.
UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres had to shake the Europeans from their guilty torpor by reminding them that “the attacks by Hamas did not happen in a vacuum”.
He said: “The Palestinian people have been subjected to 56 years of suffocating occupation. They have seen their land steadily devoured by settlements and plagued by violence; their economy stifled; their people displaced and their homes demolished. Their hopes for a political solution to their plight have been vanishing.”
Meanwhile, a procession of European leaders have rightly travelled to Israel to express their solidarity, including United States leaders , the presidents of the European Commission and European Parliament, the German chancellor, the French president, the British prime minister, and the Italian prime minister. But we have not seen a similar procession of visits to Ramallah as Israeli bombs continue to rain down on Gaza.
Hamid Dabashi, Professor of Iranian Studies and Comparative Literature at Columbia University in the City of New York said the reason Zionists have the full support of European and US leaders is because the genocidal drive to ‘exterminate all the brutes’ is embedded deep in their psyches
In the Israeli settler-colonialism now on violent display in Gaza and the rest of Palestine, European colonialism is living up to its murderous infamy and has returned to the global stage with a vengeance. Israel has put the entire history of Euro-American settler-colonialism and its genocidal instincts on full global display.
What the Israelis are doing in Palestine is what the French did in Algeria, the British did in India, the Belgians in the Congo, the Americans in Vietnam, the Spaniards in Latin America, the Italians in Africa and the Germans in Namibia, another chapter of European genocidal history.
Things there are very simple: a pernicious European settler-colonial madness of conquest, colonisation and genocide is unfolding right in front of our eyes. Zionists have the loyal and unreserved support of other settler colonists from Europe, the US, Canada and Australia behind them.For that reason, the entire world, long brutalised historically by European savagery, has become Palestinian.
Taha Ozhan academic and writer based in Turkey said the West will pay a heavy price for expending its credibility on Israel . American and European leaders must disentangle themselves from Israel’s outsized influence – or risk an even bigger catastrophe in the days ahead
He said that Israeli occupation is not limited to Palestine. The response from western elites to Israel’s ongoing massacre in Gaza shows how Tel Aviv is also occupying the mindsets of American and European leaders. Beyond setting up colonies on Palestinian lands, Israel has gone further, establishing political settlements in western capitals.
Such developments can be understood only through the lens of Israel’s enduring influence in the US and Europe. Tel Aviv’s influence on Middle Eastern governments is also clear, as they have mirrored its policies when confronted with the “threat” of democracy at home.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu encapsulated the situation aptly when he said : “To the leaders of the Arab states, leaders who worry about the future of their countries and of the Middle East, I say one thing: You must come out against Hamas … I am convinced that many Arab leaders understand this.” Clearly, they do.
Unless the West extricates itself from Israeli occupation and redirects its interests towards the rules-based international order, the crisis will only intensify. This situation jeopardises the delicate global stability that emerged after World War Two.
Well know British columnist Jonathan Cook said The West’s hypocrisy towards Gaza’s breakout is stomach-turning.There will be little sympathy in the West as, yet again, besieged Palestinians are bombed by Israel, the immense suffering justified by the term ‘Israeli retaliation’.