After the clashes in Gaza that cost the lives of 62 Palestinians Arabs (a Hamas official, Salah Bardawil, said on television that 50 of the victims were members of the terrorist group), a series of diplomatic crises have taken place. While the African National Congress, the ruling party in South Africa, compared Israel to Nazis, Turkey humiliated the expelled Israeli ambassador at the airport.
However, another rift between Israel and European public opinion is being defined on Gaza.
The Süddeutsche Zeitung, the best-selling newspaper in Germany (one million copies), has published a cartoon with Benjamin Netanyahu dressed as Netta Barzilai and in military boots, a missile in his hand and the star of David instead of the “V” of Eurovision – and a cloud saying “next year in Jerusalem”. After the clamor, the newspaper published the apologies by the director Wolfgang Krach, according to whom the cartoon was a “mistake”.
Britain’s The Guardian came out the day after the events in Gaza with a cartoon by Steve Bell. You see an Israeli tank who goes fishing, except that in the net instead there are dozens of Palestinian bodies.
The Volkskrant, one of the most important Dutch newspapers, has published the cartoon of an Israeli soldier wearing sunglasses and a star of David, shooting against unarmed masses of Palestinians on the border of Gaza to celebrate the 70th anniversary of the independence of the Jewish State. After putting a disarmed Palestinian to the wall, the Israeli shoots a burst to write “Happy Birthday to me”.
“Nakba, the Palestinian disaster” was the title at the Deutsche Welle, the German public emissary. The Irish Times, one of the most quoted Irish newspapers, published an editorial by Omar Barghouti: “The boycott of Israel is the best answer to Israeli illegal killings”.
In France, the weekly Nouvel Obs had an editorial on the “massacre of the forgotten”. In Cannes, meanwhile, the Franco-Lebanese actress Manal Issa, on the red carpet of the Croisette, brandished, in front of the cameras, a placard saying “stop the attack on Gaza”.lona, Ada Colau, called for a military embargo against Israel, on the social networks the photos that link Gaza to Auschwitz and Soweto, home to the famous revolt of the South African blacks, went viral.
Meanwhile, the poet Shailja Patel wrote: “The Palestinian resistance is not different from the French and Dutch and Polish resistance to the Nazi occupation during the Second World War. The Great March of Return is analogous to the revolt of the Warsaw ghettos against the Olocaust by the Nazis”.
In the meantime, demonstrations with hundreds of people took place in several French cities. In Lyon, Marseilles, Bordeaux and Rouen, where people silently protested outside the cathedral. In Paris they found themselves near the Israeli embassy: “Macron, sanctions, no speeches!”, shouted the crowd trampling the photo of Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu.
The French weekly Le Point, which has never been a bulwark of anti-Israeli sentiment, published the following survey on the homepage: “Is the international community too tolerant of Israel?”.
The Journal du Dimanche had another survey: “Should France recall the ambassador to Israel?”.
Meanwhile, the mayor of Dublin, Mícheál Mac Donncha, launched a boycott of the Eurovision in 2019, which will be held in Israel, and also in Iceland tens of thousands of signatures were collected in this sense. In Holland, pro-Palestinian activists were vandalizing the monument to the Holocaust in Utrecht with red paint and mud. people also took the streets in Oslo to demonstrate in front of the Norwegian Parliament and the Israeli embassy. “Israel celebrates its 70th anniversary by killing 62 Palestinians” the protesters said, including socialist MPs like Petter Eide.
Meanwhile, while Norway established that it is legal to selectively boycott Israeli goods by city councils, three Freedom Flotilla ships left the Swedish port of Gothenburg for Gaza to express “solidarity with the besieged”. The flotilla is driven by a vessel named the Awda (“return” in Arabic) and will stop in the ports of Denmark, Germany and the Netherlands.
And meanwhile, at the UN, Germany, France and UK were diverging from the United States and demanding an “independent investigation” on Gaza.
A malefic wind battles the west. That of abandonment of the Jewish people.
The writer, an Italian journalist with Il Foglio, writes a twice-weekly column for Arutz Sheva. He is the author of the book “A New Shoah”, that researched the personal stories of Israel’s terror victims, published by Encounter and of “J’Accuse: the Vatican Against Israel” published by Mantua Books.. His writing has appeared in publications, such as the Wall Street Journal, Frontpage and Commentary.
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