Europe’s Proxy War against Israel

How The EU Ignores Hamas’ Crimes

by Bassam Tawil, GATESTONE  •  February 13, 2023

Head of the European Union’s mission to the West Bank and Gaza Strip Sven Kuhn von Burgsdorff (R) visits the illegally-built Palestinian community of Khan al-Ahmar near Jerusalem, on January 30, 2023. (Photo by Ahmad Gharabli/AFP via Getty Images)

• What is even more painful and humiliating for the Palestinians, is that EU officials who regularly visit the Gaza Strip intentionally ignore the suffering of the Palestinians living under Hamas.
• On February 2, fifteen EU Heads of Mission visited the Gaza Strip without saying a single word about any of the victims of Hamas’s crimes and human rights violations.
• Notably, the EU did not state that it is Hamas, whose wealthy leaders live comfortable lives in Qatar, Turkey and other countries, that is mainly responsible for the bad “humanitarian situation” in the Gaza Strip.
• Instead of working to strengthen the economy after it violently seized the Gaza Strip in 2007, Hamas has since been investing the millions of dollars it receives in building tunnels, and manufacturing and smuggling weapons to attack Israel.
• Hamas, in addition to its disproportionately large military budget, also diverts aid money from Europe and the US to fund its military ventures.
• When Hamas threatens that Israel will “pay the price,” the Iranian-backed group is actually saying it will continue to murder Jews for daring to enforce the law against those who violate the law.
• The EU show of solidarity with the residents of Khan al-Ahmar not only emboldens Hamas, it also incentivizes Palestinians to pursue their illegal attempts to seize territory that, in the Oslo Accords, they had agreed did not belong to them, as well as to continue launching terrorist attacks against Israel.
• Recently, a confidential document composed by the EU mission in east Jerusalem revealed that Brussels is actively working with the Palestinians to take over all of Area C by building scores of other illegal “facts on the ground.” By doing so, the EU has disqualified itself from playing the role of an honest broker in any future peace process between the Palestinians and Israel.
• What right does any European official have to tell Israel that it is not permitted to enforce the law against illegal squatters? Would any European official tolerate it if, for example, an Israeli government official told the authorities in Paris or Madrid that they are not entitled to take action against those who break the law in their cities?
• The actions of the EU finally expose its deep hostility toward Israel in Europe’s proxy war against the Jewish state, as well as its undisguised bias in favor of the Palestinians.
• By obsessing about Israel and ignoring the crimes of Hamas in the Gaza Strip, the EU is doing a massive disservice to the two million Palestinians living there. The EU’s actions always seem more about hating Israel than helping the Palestinians.
• If the Europeans truly cared at all about the Palestinians, they would raise the roof about the crimes committed by Hamas against the residents of the Gaza Strip. And they would be calling out their cohorts in the Palestinian Authority for abusive governance, corruption, embezzlement of public funds, and especially the Palestinian crackdown on human rights activists and journalists, who are trying to tell the EU, the international community and the so-called human rights groups about the brutal conditions under which their leaders keep forcing them to live.

By obsessing about Israel and ignoring the crimes of Hamas in the Gaza Strip, the EU is doing a massive disservice to the two million Palestinians living there. The EU’s actions always seem more about hating Israel than helping the Palestinians.

On January 30, representatives of the European Union and several other countries, including Belgium, Brazil, Denmark, Ireland, Spain and Sweden, visited the Palestinian community of Khan al-Ahmar in the West Bank “to express their concern at the threat of demolition facing the village.”

Khan al-Ahmar, home to 38 Palestinian families, was illegally built more than a decade ago as part of the Palestinian Authority’s plan to illegally seize land near Jordan in Area C of the West Bank, which is exclusively controlled by Israel in accordance with the Oslo Accords signed between the Palestinians and the Israeli government.

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