The EU know what is happening in Gaza – so why no action?
JVL Introduction
On 18 November, responding to a request by Spain and Ireland, the Foreign Ministers of the EU met to consider a proposal by the EU’s head of foreign policy to suspend political dialogue with Israel. The recommendation was based on an evaluation that the war in Gaza violated the human rights articles in the EU-Israel Association Agreement, which among other things, includes some €46.8 billion of trade in 2022. Had they identified a breach, the agreement would have been suspended. The EU’s President, Ursula von der Leyen, however declined to act.
At the meeting, the ministers had been presented with a detailed internal assessment prepared by the EU’s special representative for human rights, Oleg Skoog, that has now come into the hands of journalists on the Intercept. It is a forensic and scathing confirmation of everything we know about the ongoing genocidal assault and could have far-reaching implications for future war crimes trials of EU politicians judged to be complicit in the assault on Gaza (and by implication, those of other countries, including the UK). As Yannis Varoufakis comments, the Europeans will not be able to plead ignorance: “The world now knows that they knew they were in breach of international law because they were explicitly told so by the EU’s own special representative on human rights. History will judge them harshly. And perhaps so will the ICC.”
This article was originally published by The Intercept on Mon 23 Dec 2024. Read the original here.
EU Officials Will Claim Ignorance of Israel’s War Crimes. This Leaked Document Shows What They Knew.
The internal EU document may strip European foreign ministers of “plausible deniability” in Israeli war crimes in Gaza, experts said.
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“They cannot [now] plausibly deny that they were privy to the facts given the contents of the EU’s special representative’s report that they had a duty to take under consideration,” Varoufakis said. “The world now knows that they knew they were in breach of international law because they were explicitly told so by the EU’s own special representative on human rights”.
Varoufakis’ bleak and realistic assessment gives SOME hope there will one day be proper retribution against individual wrongdoers for whatever wrongs they’ve committed.
General Pinochet was eventually punished for his misdeeds – though far too late. The Serbian-Bosnian war criminals faced justice more quickly, as did those in Rwanda. Perhaps EU ministers should now worry more than they do about the future consequences for them of their acts and omissions?
We can only hope that Varoufakis’ assessment gives hope that there will one day be proper retribution against individual wrongdoers.
Unfortunately, the facts on the ground are bleak indeed.
In the UK, it is clear that former Trilateral Commissioners, Starmer and Mandelson, are America’s men.
EU Commission’s pro-Israel, President Ursula von der Leyen, appears to use her position to support USA and Israel.
The organisations, EU, UK and NATO, appear to be increasingly one and the same on important foreign-policy positions.
If you support the view that NATO is the military arm of American foreign policy in Europe, then this explains a great deal about the evil that is currently being facilitated in our name.
We must continue to expose the complicity of our political institutions in support for Israel’s settler-colonialist, apartheid regime and the associated slaughter in Gaza.
But – We must also challenge the vassal mentality of UK and European leaderships when it comes to assessing American foreign policy in Europe and the Middle East.