Original title: ‘Moreel faillissement van onze buitenlandpolitiek’: organisaties woedend over uitblijven EU-sancties tegen Israël, from Dutch newspaper NRC. Translated using DeepL.
European sanctions
Amnesty calls the decision by EU ministers not to impose sanctions on Israel for the time being ‘one of the most shameful moments in the history of the EU’. Israel calls it a success.
Human rights and aid organisations reacted angrily on Tuesday evening to the European Union’s decision not to impose sanctions on Israel for the time being, despite violations of humanitarian law.
In a written response to NRC, Oxfam Novib referred to ‘a political charade’ in which ‘a few crumbs of aid are used to create the impression that there will be a substantial improvement in the terrible situation facing the Palestinian civilian population’. According to Oxfam, this reflects ‘the moral bankruptcy of Dutch and European foreign policy’.
According to Oxfam, outgoing Minister of Foreign Affairs Caspar Veldkamp (NSC) continues to ‘hide behind European divisions over concrete actions against Israel’. According to the NGO, he uses these divisions as ‘an excuse for this cabinet not to fulfil its own international obligations’.
Postponement
Veldkamp himself told the ANP news agency that it was a ‘win’ that all measures the EU could take ‘remained on the table. There are member states, large and small, that would have preferred to remove such options from the table.’
Israel has been given more time by EU ministers to show that it is allowing sufficient aid to reach the starving population of Gaza. Israeli Foreign Minister Gideon Saar called the EU decision ‘an important diplomatic success’ on social media and thanked ministers who prevented sanctions.
Amnesty International states that the failure to impose sanctions, such as suspending the EU-Israel Association Agreement, will be remembered ‘as one of the most shameful moments in the history of the EU.’ It is ‘a cruel betrayal of the European project, which is based on the enforcement of international law.’
The director of human rights organisation The Rights Forum called the decision ‘cowardly and shameful’. ‘Israel is violating international law, but the EU once again does not dare to impose sanctions. This is not diplomacy and enforcement of international law – this is shameless complicity in genocide,’ said The Rights Forum.
The Dutch pro-Israel lobby group CIDI calls it ‘good to see that the EU is not bowing to anti-Israel hysteria’. According to CIDI, not imposing sanctions is ‘the only correct decision’.
Reactions in The Hague
In the Dutch political arena, the parties that have already criticised Dutch policy on Israel are particularly vocal. GroenLinks-PvdA [green/social democrats] MP Kati Piri says that ‘the moral authority of the European Union is evaporating’. Piri calls for national sanctions. CDA [christian democrats] MP Derk Boswijk finds the decision ‘incomprehensible’. ‘The Netanyahu government has so far shown little sensitivity to reasonableness.’
‘Ethnic cleansing is taking place in Gaza,’ writes D66 [social liberal] MP Jan Paternotte. ‘This way, Europe is allowing this to happen.’ ‘Shortly after commemorating the genocide in Srebrenica, European leaders announce that they will not take action against Israel,’ says Christine Teunissen of the Party for the Animals. ‘While we witness genocide in Gaza on a daily basis.’
The EU is not only harming the people in Palestine, Lebanon, Syria, Yemen, Iraq and Iran with this atrocious complicity in Israeli crimes.
The EU is also harming Ukraine and helping Russia, by undermining itself as a legal, leave alone moral authority, while making it easy for regimes like Putin to always just point the finger back and call out the lies and hypocrisy.
Furthermore it is harming the EU citizens massively, as the EU is abandoning the former strategy of attempting a rules based international order in favor of an order, where no crime is prohibited as long as it serves the states interests. The crimes abroad are already internalized more and more, where freedom of speech, the right to protest and freedom of science and culture are more and more repressed to serve the loyalty to Israel and continued support for Israeli crimes.
Especially the Netherlands recently reached a shameful new low as evidence of Maccabi Tel Aviv hooligans rampaging through the streets of Amsterdam has “disappeared” and charges were dropped. The Netherlands allowed thugs to come down on their city, beat up their citizens and destroy their property, now getting away with impunity.
The strategy if a rules based international order is dead already. Not due to the EU, but the US was the center point of that and they just broke the system. There will also always be flaws in the EU, which will be pointed out by Russian propaganda. There is plenty of racism in the EU and it is not going away. There places like New Caledonia, which are in a very complex limbo of colonialism with France, which half the population loves and the other half hates. Easy to turn that into propaganda.
The right to protest has not been destroyed by foreign policy either, but by big fossil fuel. The first massive crack downs were not on anti Israel protests, but on climate protests.
EDIT: Just to be clear, it should be done to do the right thing, but not because it would actually help the EU. It just is not going to.
I believe “doing the right thing” always helps in the long run. A principled society has something to strive and fight for. The past 40 years of Neoliberalism has eroded that core fabric of society, placating the notion one should only strive for oneselve. And that lack of unifying principle is being abused by the Fascists and short-of-fascist far-right to fill the void with a twisted nationalism.
I’d argue that the US never was center of a rules based international order. It was just the selective enforcer of some of it, but only tied to its own immediate interests. The EU needs to emancipate itself from the US either way. Doing so on a serious striving for a rules based international order could make the EU diplomatically relevant and an unifying force in the world.
If countries like Qatar, with a few million people can be a serious diplomatic force in the Middle East, there is no reason why the EU shouldn’t be able to reach that on the world stage without the US. Stepping out of the shadow of the US would make it easier for the EU to be taken serious diplomatically, as so far most countries know that there is little point talking with EU countries, if Washington is calling the shots.
“Doing the right thing” basically means pissing of all Arab countries as well. They are all authoritarian regimes right now. So any principled stance against them would mean being hated by the entire Middle East.
I think there is a fundamental misunderstanding of what “doing the right thing” means here. Invading and forcing regime change like the US and various EU countries did in the past is not the right thing as it violates the countries sovereignity. systematically starving millions of people like with the sanctions against Iraq is also certainly not the right thing.
First the relationship between the countries have to be built in adherence with international law, then on this basis steps can be taken to work towards improved situations in the specific countries.
If sanctions against Israel for violating human rights is “doing the right thing”, then it would imply sanctions against other countries for violating human rights as well. Basically that would mean some form of sanctions against the entire Middle East. Certainly that does not mean good relations with those countries.
Israel is violating other countries sovereignty and their rights as an entire people, in particular other people. This is different from the question of individual rights such as the right to freedom of speech or the abolition of the death penalty. The Iranian or Saudi regime sentencing dissenters to death is something that ultimately the Iranian and Saudi people have to resolve. Foreign interference is not going to resolve it. Obviously that means that military weapons, police equipment or the like must not be given to countries such as Iran and Saudi Arabia.
Israel on the other hand is illegally occupying Palestinian territories, subjugating the entire Palestinian people as a people to ethnic cleansing and genocide, waging multiple wars of aggression at the same time and murdering people outside its recognized territories. This warrants an intervention on the level between states.
Exactly. Even in the best case there are sanctions against them. Worsed case something like Syria, Sudan or Yemen is going on and they commit war crimes.