¿Actuará alguna vez la UE contra Israel? — David Cronin

 

The Electronic Intifada – 25/06/2025

   Traducción del inglés: Arrezafe

Manifestantes en Bruselas exigen la detención del presidente israelí, 

Benjamín Netanyahu. (foto: David Cronin)

La Unión Europea no tiene prisa.

La situación en Gaza se ha vuelto tan terrible que las personas hambrientas son masacradas periódicamente cada vez que intentan obtener comida.

Sin embargo, en Bruselas, el debate sobre posibles medidas contra Israel acaba de comenzar esta semana, como confirmó Kaja Kallas, jefa de política exterior de la UE.

No debería ser necesario ningún debate. La evidencia de que Israel está cometiendo genocidio es irrefutable.

Sin embargo, afirmar tal hecho es tabú entre los diplomáticos occidentales. Una evaluación formal solicitada por los ministros de Asuntos Exteriores de la UE simplemente concluyó que existen indicios de que Israel está incumpliendo su obligación de respetar los derechos humanos.

Se supone que esa obligación es crucial para el acuerdo de asociación que sustenta las relaciones de la UE con Israel.

Este mes se cumple el 25º aniversario de la entrada en vigor del acuerdo.

A lo largo de estos 25 años, siempre ha sido posible encontrar mucho más que indicios de que algo anda mal. Para los palestinos, la negación de sus derechos fundamentales es una realidad cotidiana.

Durante los últimos 25 años, la UE ha señalado con frecuencia que Israel podría tener que afrontar consecuencias por su conducta ilegal. En 2013, por ejemplo, el gobierno de Tel Aviv acusó a la UE de causar un "terremoto" al elaborar directrices que establecían que las empresas e instituciones israelíes con sede en la Cisjordania ocupada (incluida Jerusalén Oriental) y los Altos del Golán no podían optar a la financiación de la UE.

Tales directrices fueron respuesta a las quejas de que Ahava –un fabricante de cosméticos con una fábrica en Cisjordania– estaba participando en las actividades de investigación científica de la UE.

Los efectos “sismológicos” de dichas directrices fueron exagerados. Ahava ha seguido operando en Cisjordania —aunque, según la empresa, su planta allí está temporalmente cerrada— y ha seguido recibiendo subvenciones de la UE.

Ecologizar la ocupación

En mayo, la UE aprobó dos proyectos de investigación con Ahava. Uno se centra en los cultivos oleaginosos sostenibles y el otro en los envases biodegradables.

A Ahava se le ha asignado un total de más de 880.000 dólares en el marco de ambos proyectos. Pero el problema es mucho mayor que la suma financiera en juego: la UE está ayudando a una empresa inextricablemente vinculada a la ocupación ilegal de Cisjordania por parte de Israel a promocionarse como responsable con el medio ambiente.

Israel es un importante receptor de financiación en investigación por parte de la UE, habiendo recibido 1.250 millones de dólares entre 2020 y el año pasado.

Entre los beneficiarios de estas subvenciones en los últimos meses se encuentra la Autoridad de Innovación de Israel, organismo estatal que trabaja con el ejército de Israel –el mismo ejército que ha destruido Gaza y cometido otros innumerables crímenes– para fomentar un mayor uso de la inteligencia artificial.

Dicha autoridad también promociona los drones israelíes —probados rutinariamente en palestinos— como herramientas para reducir la congestión del tráfico y la contaminación. Insinuar que las armas pueden ser limpias y ecológicas concuerda con el optimismo expresado recientemente por Dror Bin, director ejecutivo de la autoridad israelí que ha pronosticado un "baby boom" de nuevas empresas tecnológicas tras la guerra contra Gaza. Como consecuencia de este auge, apuntó, las armas utilizadas en el genocidio podrán adaptarse a fines civiles.

Mientras Bin especula sobre un posible "baby boom", Israel se dedica a masacrar y matar de hambre a bebés palestinos. La jerarquía de Bruselas considera abominable la matanza de civiles, pero no tanto como para expulsar a Israel de sus actividades.

Hydrolite, otra empresa que recibió una subvención científica de la UE en las últimas semanas, es una filial del gigante armamentístico israelí Elbit Systems.

Elbit es experto en encontrar oportunidades de venta en medio de un genocidio. Su cartera de pedidos está valorada en más de 23.000 millones de dólares.

Es cierto que Elbit sufrió un pequeño revés a principios de este mes cuando, junto con otras empresas israelíes, se le impidió exhibir sus productos en una feria de armas de París. La prohibición ofendió a Elbit hasta tal punto que se convirtió en víctima de opresión.

Si una filial de Elbit es considerada apta para una subvención científica de la UE, no es que haya sido exactamente excluida de Europa Occidental.

La UE tampoco amenaza con privar a Israel de más financiación. El debate sobre la posibilidad de hacerlo en un futuro no especificado apenas ha comenzado.

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Why did Brussels give VIP treatment to an Israeli war criminal?

 

The Electronic Intifada - 8 January 2025

David Cronin - Lobby Watch

Israeli war criminal Amos Yadlin (center) enjoys a drink in Brussels. 

(European Leadership Network)

With rare exceptions, the Brussels press corps has not bothered to examine how the European Union has mollycoddled Israel and its supporters amid the Gaza genocide.

One story that you surely did not see in the mainstream media during 2024 concerns how VIP treatment was given to a war criminal.

In April, the EU’s diplomatic service jointly hosted a "strategic dialogue" in Brussels with the European Leadership Network, a pro-Israel lobby group. The event was chaired by Amos Yadlin, who should have been taken into police detention upon his arrival in Belgium.

A decade earlier, an Istanbul court issued warrants for the arrests of several Israelis, including Yadlin. He was the army’s head of intelligence when it attacked a flotilla attempting to break the Gaza siege in May 2010.

At that time, Yadlin was nearing the end of his formal military career. He had spent part of the preceding decade pondering how Israel could wage war in an "ethical" fashion.

Yadlin did not pass muster as a moral philosopher. Doing so would require him to denounce the acts of aggression in which he had participated.

He was, for example, a warplane pilot during the 1982 invasion of Lebanon. In his book Pity the Nation, Robert Fisk observed how such pilots were responsible for "killing thousands of civilians, smashing families between the walls, floors and furniture of their homes with such total violence that their corpses often emerged from the rubble flattened into huge shadows."

"Powerful and painful"

In 2006, Yadlin – by then head of military intelligence – was part of the generals who oversaw another major offensive against Lebanon. He had a similar role in Operation Cast Lead, the first in a series of large-scale attacks on Gaza, during late 2008 and early 2009.

The massive destruction he and others inflicted then was inadequate from his perspective. In a 2018 interview with the Tel Aviv newspaper Maariv, he urged "powerful and painful actions" theoretically aimed at causing the collapse of Hamas.

A 2007 cable published by WikiLeaks indicates that he has said different things about Hamas in private than in public.

Yadlin, according to that cable, told a US envoy that Israel would be "happy" if Hamas took charge of Gaza’s administration. That would allow Israel to deal with Gaza as a "hostile state."

Later in 2007, Israel did indeed designate Gaza as a "hostile territory." The designation ushered in collective punishment against the strip’s inhabitants, culminating in the current genocide.

After retiring from the army, Yadlin has not been short of work as a "national security" analyst and consultant.

He has continued advocating measures that bring immense pain and suffering to Palestinians. In March last year, he sought to justify the bombardment of Gaza’s civilian infrastructure by claiming "we already know, by now, that Hamas always places command posts under hospitals, UN posts, schools, camps and so on and so forth."

It is not surprising that the European Union’s diplomatic service did not promote how it helped arrange last year’s "strategic dialogue" involving Yadlin.

The other hosts of the event, the European Leadership Network (Elnet), had taken umbrage at comments made by Josep Borrell, then the EU’s foreign policy chief, just a few weeks earlier. Elnet had described Borrell’s accusation that Israel had caused starvation as "false, unfounded and libelous."

The EU diplomats who arranged the event with Elnet were actually working under Borrell’s direction. Rather than defending their boss from the insults against him, the diplomats were teaming up with the organization hurling those insults.

One clue can be found in how Elnet’s summary of the event contains recommendations for future EU-Israel relations. One recommendation reads, "There is scope for Israel to build on the supply of Arrow 3 [missiles] to Germany by helping Europe develop a multi-layered air defense system."

Since that recommendation was made, Ursula von der Leyen has identified the development of such a system – tacitly modeled on Israel’s Iron Dome – as a priority for her second term as European Commission president.

All of this implies that lobbyists and diplomats have been chatting amicably about how Israel can benefit from the concerted push to make Europe spend more on weapons.

Such chats would be disturbing regardless of the circumstances. That they are taking place while Israel is waging a war of extermination makes them truly sinister.

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Gaza starves as EU helps Israel to fight binge-eating — David Cronin

 

THE ELECTRONIC INTIFADA – 10/09/2024

EU officials are now portraying genocide enabler Ursula von der Leyen as a champion of peace. (Dati Bendo / European Union)

As Gaza starved, the European Union decided to finance an Israeli project on binge-eating.

That fact says everything about the priorities of the Brussels bureaucracy and how it has continued cooperating with a state carrying out a genocide.

The binge-eating project is coordinated by the Weizmann Institute of Science. It is among the recipients of more than 150 grants to Israel which Brussels officials have signed since the exterminationist war on Gaza was declared in October last year.

I have found details of these grants by sifting through a database on EU research funding.

Binge-eating disorder is a serious problem that warrants careful research. Yet it is abhorrent that the EU should approve an Israeli project on overconsumption at a time when Israel had cut off the supply of food and water to Gaza’s inhabitants.

The grant to the binge-eating project reminded me of an 1890 cartoon captioned "Ireland wrestles with famine, while Mr. Balfour plays golf."

Arthur James Balfour headed Britain’s colonial administration in Ireland during a period of mass hardship and considerable unrest. He would later ink the 1917 Balfour Declaration, through which Britain offered its support for the colonization of Palestine by the Zionist movement.

The colonization drive not only continues in 2024 but has become more brutal than ever. Despite professing varying degrees of concern about the brutality, the US, the European Union and Britain are all accommodating it.

Balfour was lampooned for not allowing the misery caused by Britain’s policies to put him off his hobbies. Today, the West’s decision-makers are so unperturbed by the horrors visited on Gaza that they maintain a business as usual approach toward Israel.

Memory hole

By compiling a list of recent EU grants to Israel, I found out that a few colleges have benefited considerably from them. They include Hebrew University of Jerusalem, the Technion in Haifa and the aforementioned Weizmann Institute in Rehovot.

In her book Towers of Ivory and Steel, Maya Wind writes that those three institutions were "established to advance the scientific and technological development of Israel as a Jewish state in historic Palestine." During the period leading to the Nakba – the ethnic cleansing of Palestine between 1947 and 1949 – they were "directly recruited to support the violent dispossession required for Zionist territorial expansion."

The universities helped sustain the forces which attacked Palestinian towns and villages, as well as developing arms for them. They still perform such a function.

A "science park" operated by the Weizmann Institute, for example, undertakes joint research with some of Israel’s main weapons makers. A subsidiary of Elbit Systems – Israel’s largest arms firm – is even based in that "park."

The Weizmann Institute, lest it be forgotten, is named after Chaim Weizmann. A leading figure in the Zionist movement (who became Israel’s first president), he lobbied heavily for Britain both to issue the Balfour Declaration and deliver on the commitments contained in it.

The EU’s willingness to shower Israel with subsidies as it carries out a genocide offers tangible proof that something is very wrong in Brussels.

The truth is that the EU has been facilitating Israel’s crimes for a long time. Although that truth is not difficult to establish, there is a sizable number of people within the Brussels bureaucracy prepared to accept the illusion that the EU is committed to peace and justice.

After Ursula von der Leyen, president of the European Commission, gave her unconditional backing to Israel as the Gaza genocide got underway in October last, some Brussels officials expressed their displeasure by organizing protests. The protests were subsequently met with threats that those taking part could be punished.

The protests have continued but the message they are sending out is now misleading.

A flier circulated among EU staff

A flier for recent demonstrations stresses "our loyalty to the [EU] institution." Offering support for "our leaders in their fight to end the war," it quotes von der Leyen saying "the bloodshed in Gaza must stop now."

Any calls that von der Leyen has made for an end to the bloodshed do not erase her extremely recent history of greenlighting the bloodshed.

The protests were a direct response to her green light. Rather than demanding that von der Leyen be held accountable, the protesters are pushing her complicity down a memory hole.

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