The state of Israel, governed by the country’s far-right, is in the process of exterminating a people and dismembering the Middle East. Neither the assassinations of more than 200 Palestinian journalists, nor the ban on foreign journalists from entering the crime scene – nor, also, the systematic self-censorship by the majority of the Western media – have been enough to prevent the horror from filtering through.
Hour after hour, the bombs drop on Gaza. Entire families are decimated, while almost all hospitals have stopped functioning and children are amputated without being anaesthetised. Mourning tents are burnt; people who rush to bring help to the wounded are killed at point-blank range; survivors are prevented from recovering the corpses of their loved ones, while a ship carrying aid supplies for Gaza was this month attacked off Malta by Israeli drones.
Employing any precaution of language is now a case of voluntary blindness.
Enlargement : Illustration 1
During this time, the Israeli regime occupies the Golan Heights and southern Lebanon. Since November 27th 2024, it has violated the agreed ceasefire in Lebanon on 1,500 occasions. Syria, having only just been unshackled from a half-century of bloody tyranny, has seen its army destroyed by the Israeli military without anyone saying a word. The Israeli air force has led attacks on Syria close to 1,000 times, with the result that the new Syrian regime is denied the means to establish its authority over the country.
Israel’s hostage-taking of the Syrian Druze population has added sabotage to the chaos. “There is no ‘massacre of the Druze’, but rather inter-community clashes which the new government is trying to contain,” wrote Gérard Araud*, former French ambassador to Israel and the United States. But with its manoeuvring, Israel puts the finishing touches to its plan of carving up the region. There is no question here of hypotheses or guesswork, instead this is about observations and the statement of fact.
If European leaders continue to wait – and to wait for what? –, if they do not take a stand for responsibility and dignity by applying sanctions against Israel and by cutting off relations with this incendiary regime, they will be among those subsequently accused by History. Graver still, by their inaction they will invalidate the very principle of a European union, and cosign the end of democracy and the triumph of fascism.
It should be underlined that about 30 countries are targeted by European Union sanctions, notably for serious violations of human rights. The legal framework for sanctioning Israel’s policy of terror exists. It remains unapplied.
“The objective is clearly to create the conditions to carry out the largest ethnic cleansing operation since the Second World War,” declared Josep Borrell, the European Union’s former high representative for foreign affairs. He has called for the return in all urgency of the application of international law, the recourse to levers of action against Israel, and the refusal of a “fait accompli”. Regarding the latter, if there is one power that is unrivalled in terms of the recurrence of its unilateral decisions imposed by force, it is Israel.
May France and Europe rescue themselves by saying, clearly and at last, “No” to this policy of destruction.
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* In 2022, Gérard Araud, the former French ambassador to Israel, the United States and the United Nations, cited in the above article, received a fine from the French foreign affairs ministry for not having applied for authorisation before joining, after his retirement, several foreign companies including Israel’s NSO Group, which produced the spyware tool Pegasus.
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- The original French version of this op-ed article can be found here.
English version by Graham Tearse