Israeli arms firms, such as Rafael, and the Israeli defence ministry remain eligible for the EU’s ‘Horizon’ science-programme grant
Von der Leyen’s proposed trade sanctions could be adopted by a qualified majority of EU countries, but Germany and Italy were among those who blocked them, even at the height of the Gaza war.
Israel/Palestine is such a distraction for Western politics. Loads of wars and territorial changes in the world, including in Europe (Nagorno Karabakh, Ukraine before 2022) and no one bats an eye.
But anything in this old conflict, that Israel wins military each time, and we’re all up in arms as if it’s essential to our continent.
Spoiler: it’s not and we’re being played by foreign agents and stalinists. Enough. Our focus should be Ukraine, that’s our war.
The main thing about Israel/Palestine is that Europe (and especially the US) has significant leverage over one of the parties, which gives it more responsibility for its transgressions.
I guess Europe’s leverage is over the Arab territories, as the main sponsor of all infrastructure in Gaza and the West Bank. The leverage over Israel is minimal as relations are only getting worse. But do we really have any leverage over Hamas? The same Hamas who executed dozens of Europeans on the October 7th? I doubt it, millions of euros in subsidies and zero diplomatic gains, the infrastructure is also ruble.
People would probably care less if western politics took the appropriate consequences (sanctions, not doing new defense contracts with Israeli firms etc.) instead of doubling down by enforcing Israel’s point of view at home. Especially the EU countries and the EU institutions themselves are constantly talking about human rights, yet they pretty much ignore it with Israel.
Oh I forgot the part where we or the EU cared about the genocide going on in Sudan and all the sanctions we applied to the United Arab Emirates (Dubai) for being its main sponsor. I must have been distracted.
Same for the sanctions against Azerbaijan for the effective genocide that whipped up the Christian population of Nagorno Karabakh in less than 72 hours. I just probably missed that news. /s
If anything Europe should petition the Arab territories to admit defeat and move on, the Israeli-Arab wars are going on for too long always with the same result.
But maybe, just maybe, we’re simply not prepared to let Jews win a war… :/
At least I’m pretty sure that no in the west is going to jail for advocating against genocide in Sudan, and neither Sudan nor UAE is run by western immigrants which definitely changes the optics.
Ah the Western immigrants! Of course, slowly bit by bit the hate against the Jews always ends up showing up…
Quick history refreshers:
there were always Jews in Palestine (historically just a synonym of Israel), there were even Jews there before there were any Arabs!
more Israelis descend from Jews expelled from Arab countries after the WWII (a genocide we tend to forget) than from Jews who survived genocide in Europe, so yeah, most Israelis are and always have been Middle eastern.
20% of Israelis are even Arab, surprise. It’s a multicultural state.
PS: but should we fear Middle eastern migrants becoming too influential in our politics, then? Or migrants in general?
How long do you have to live in the west until you become western? Jews definitely had a large degree of separation from the Christian majority populations, but it still clearly had an impact on their way of thinking, even if not necessarily on their genetic makeup.
My dear, if you read my comment you would know I don’t deny that Jews who survived the Holocaust in Europe were Westerners. They simply don’t make up the majority of the population in Israel. Most Israelis are middle eastern of Middle eastern descent, even if you count the descendants of the European migrants as western… which is a bit silly since they’re born and raised in Israel for a few generations in the meantime.
So yeah, it’s quite ignorant and quite racist to suggest that Israel is run by western migrants.