RUTHFULLY YOURS

The European Union’s dangerous bias on the Gaza conflict, where it constantly backs Iranian-backed terrorist groups at the expense of a democracy, Israel, has been exposed yet again by the latest anti-Israel stance adopted by Josep Borrell, the EU’s foreign minister.

In a move calculated to further strain the EU’s already problematic relationship with Israel, Borrell has announced that he has asked the bloc’s members to consider imposing sanctions on two Israeli cabinet ministers for “hate messages” against Palestinians, messages that he claimed broke international law.

Borrell did not name either of the ministers specifically. But it was obvious who he was referring to given that, in recent weeks, he has publicly criticised Minister of National Security Itamar Ben-Gvir and Minister of Finance Bezalel Smotrich for statements Borrell has described as “sinister” and “an incitement to war crimes”.

While Borrell said EU foreign ministers had held an initial discussion about his proposal during a meeting in Brussels, he conceded that his initiative was unlikely to succeed as the imposition of sanctions against Israel would require unanimity among all 27-member states, and many EU nations, such as Italy, were strongly opposed to the measure.

“The ministers will decide. It’s up to them, as always. But the process has been launched,” Borrell told reporters. He said he had proposed that the Israeli ministers be sanctioned for violations of human rights. EU sanctions generally mean a ban on travel to the bloc and a freeze on assets held in the EU.

Even so, the fact that the EU’s foreign policy chief has even suggested imposing punitive measures against Israel, a country smaller than the state of New Jersey, when it is involved in a desperate fight defending itself against the world’s largest sponsor of state terrorism, Iran, and its proxy terrorist groups — Hamas, Hezbollah, the Houthis, Palestinian Islamic Jihad and Iraqi militias, as well as Iran’s powerful Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps — on at least seven fronts, shows a woeful lack of understanding of the conflict.

Europe is just as much in danger as Israel, should Iran move to a nuclear weapons breakout, which US Secretary of State Antony Blinken has announced is only “one or two weeks” away.

The latest example of the continuing anti-Jewish racism exhibited by many European leaders is also bound to further strain relations between Israel and the EU at a time when the Israelis are in serious need of Western support.

Borrell’s move has already prompted an angry response from Israeli Foreign Minister Israel Katz, who accused Borrell of targeting him with false claims that he had called for Palestinians to be displaced from the West Bank. “I oppose the displacement of any population from their homes,” he said.

Borrell’s constant articulation of anti-Israeli views also raises questions about his suitability to continue holding such an important position in the EU. Earlier this year, he launched a blistering attack against the “Israeli occupation authorities” for imposing punitive measures against an openly genocidal Palestinian Authority (PA).

Speaking next to PA Prime Minister Mohammad Mustafa, Borrell listed the challenges facing the Ramallah-based PA government, including “a dangerous socio-economic crisis, impact on the humanitarian tragedy in Gaza, closures imposed in the West Bank, and other punitive actions such as the announcement of the Israeli occupation authorities to cut all tax revenues that belong to you.”

One explanation for Borrell’s virulent anti-Israel approach is that his home country, Spain, is taking the lead in the latest push for a Palestinian state – which would, at present, predictably, be a terrorist one. It is a step so far not backed by most other EU countries.

Even so, Borrell’s stance reflects the deep anti-Israel sentiment that exists within the EU bureaucracy, which was dramatically exposed after European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen visited Israel in the immediate aftermath of the October 7 attacks to demonstrate her support for the Israeli people.

After Hamas terrorists murdered more than 1,200 Israelis, rather than receiving support for her gesture of solidarity by visiting Israel, during which von der Leyen went to the Kfar Aza kibbutz (where at least 52 of 700 residents were murdered), she faced a barrage of criticism from EU insiders, with 800 EU staffers writing an official letter of complaint criticising her “uncontrolled” support of Israel.

The signatories of the letter said they “hardly recognise the values of the EU”, claiming there was a “seeming indifference demonstrated over the past few days by our institution towards the ongoing massacre of civilians in the Gaza Strip, in disregard for human rights and international humanitarian law”.

It is not only just the EU that is demonstrating a wilful anti-Israel bias in its response to the latest upsurge in violence between Israel and Iranian-backed Palestinian terrorists.

After the Israel Defence Force (IDF) mounted a series of raids to tackle terrorists in the West Bank, UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres denounced the operation as “deeply concerning”.

“I strongly condemn the loss of lives, including of children, and I call for an immediate cessation of these operations,” he said. He urged Israeli forces to “exercise maximum restraint and use lethal force only when it is strictly unavoidable”.

Guterres’s intervention came after the IDF confirmed that its special forces had killed Muhammad Jabber, also known as Abu Shujaa, in the city of Tulkarm after he had taken refuge in a mosque. Jabber was a leading commander of the Palestinian Islamic Jihad terrorist organisation, which, like Hamas, has links to Iran’s so-called “axis of resistance,” a euphemism for its long-term policy of “Death to Israel.” Four others, who were said to be “hiding inside a mosque” with Jabber, were also killed.

The IDF said that Jabber, who was the head of Islamic Jihad’s network in Nur Shams, was involved in carrying out “numerous terror attacks, including a shooting attack in which an Israeli civilian, Amnon Muchtar, was murdered in June.” Jabber was also involved in the planning of additional terror attacks.

Guterres’s willingness to focus his criticism on Israel, and not the Iranian-backed terrorists, is yet another example of the UN’s institutional anti-Israel bias. If the UN has any genuine interest in taking a balanced approach to the violence in the West Bank, then, instead of focusing its criticism exclusively on Israel, it would call on Iran to cease backing the network of terrorist groups it backs in the region, whose main goal is the destruction of Israel on the way to destroying the United States — the main representative of the West.

As Danny Danon, Israel’s Ambassador to the UN, commented in response to Guterres’s remarks, Iran is “actively working to smuggle sophisticate explosive devices” into the West Bank “intended for use in suicide bombings in the heart of Israeli cities”. Danon said Israel would not sit idly by and “wait for scenes of buses and cafes exploding in city centres”.

He added: “The IDF’s operations in Judea and Samaria [in the West Bank] have a clear goal: preventing Iranian terror-by-proxy that would harm Israeli civilians.”

The failure of international bodies such as the EU and the UN to demonstrate any pretence of balance when intervening on vital international security issues such as the Iranian-sponsored conflicts taking place in Gaza, the West Bank and southern Lebanon not only makes a mockery of their claim to be independent arbiters on the issue. It also runs the risk of making them utterly irrelevant, to the extent that they suffer the same fate as the League of Nations in the 1930s, whose inability to confront fascism condemned it to abject failure.

Con Coughlin is the Telegraph‘s Defence and Foreign Affairs Editor and a Distinguished Senior Fellow at Gatestone Institute.