Vandal of EU embassy endorsed by Netanyahu

Ali Abunimah Power Suits 16 September 2019

On Sunday, Israeli right-wing extremists vandalized the European Union embassy in Tel Aviv.

Sheffi Paz filmed herself and another activist spraying “EU get out” and “German money kills Jews” on the door of the European mission.

While there has been widespread condemnation of the action from European diplomats, no notice has been taken of how Paz comes from the very same far-right milieu whose favor the EU has been trying to cultivate.

Paz has been a leader of mobs targeting Black refugees and asylum-seekers in South Tel Aviv.

She and her cohorts have roamed the streets trying to foist condoms onto African men and women, a message that the African birth rate should be nil.

Platform for white supremacists

Last month another right-winger, Avishai Ivri, interviewed Paz to promote her latest racist campaign to expel Filipino caregivers whose children were born in Israel.

Ivri described Paz as Israel’s “number one anti-immigration activist.”

Ivri is a correspondent for TheRebel, the outlet of Canadian far-right extremist Ezra Levant.

Levant and his site have offered platforms for white supremacism, anti-Semitism and even Holocaust deniers.

TheRebel also promotes the views of British anti-Muslim agitator Tommy Robinson.

In the interview with Ivri, Paz recounts that she recently met Ayelet Shaked, the former Israeli justice minister who is notorious for publishing a call for genocide of the Palestinians.

Shaked, who has herself been warmly embraced by the EU, now heads the ultra-right-wing Yamina party in this week’s Israeli election.

“We have our conditions for supporting them,” Paz said of Yamina. “I hope they will meet our demands.”

Shaked apparently did meet those conditions, signing a deal with Paz that Yamina would only join a government that promised even harsher xenophobic policies.

Paz has previously been courted by Benjamin Netanyahu, a sign of how mainstream her racist politics are.

The prime minister met her earlier this year and endorsed her plans to target people from Africa.

EU hired genocidal racist

But who is Avishai Ivri?

In 2017, Ivri was hired by none other than the EU embassy in Tel Aviv to star in a propaganda video touting the benefits the European Union provides to Israel.

“The European Union. You think it’s anti-Israel, right?” Ivri began in the video. “Let me surprise you.”

The embassy was happy to employ Ivri as the face of its campaign despite – or more likely because of – how he openly advocated for genocide of Palestinians.

“Fuck it, wipe out Gaza,” one of his many tweets inciting wholesale slaughter of Palestinian men, women and children, states.

After The Electronic Intifada exposed Ivri’s repeated calls for mass murder of Palestinians, the EU embassy withdrew the promotional video.

But it never explained why it hired Ivri in the first place nor offered an apology.

It’s not hard to figure out, however.

The EU’s indulgence of Israel’s far right is part of its broader strategy of trying to appease Israel by offering unconditional political and economic support regardless of how brazen Israel’s war crimes and violations of international law.

But it hasn’t worked.

No matter how much EU diplomats pander to Israel, they still get compared to Nazis or told to go to “a thousand thousand hells” by Israeli ministers.

The slogans painted by Paz are a neat distillation of the anti-EU message that has been emanating from Israel’s government for years.

Hypocritical condemnation

There has been a wave of indignation from European diplomats about Paz’s vandalism of the EU mission.

Emanuele Giaufret, the EU ambassador in Tel Aviv, demanded that the incident “has to be condemned.”

We “strongly condemn the vandalic attack,” said the Spanish embassy.

The Danish ambassador called it “disgusting” and the Swedish ambassador said it was “deplorable and sad.”

The Italian embassy called Paz’s actions “vile.”

The Austrian ambassador demanded the swift arrest of the culprits:

The spokesperson for EU foreign policy chief Federica Mogherini also called it a “deplorable act of vandalism” and said the EU expected “swift results” from an investigation announced by the Israeli foreign ministry.
There’s a striking contrast between all this passionate fulmination over a spray-painted door and how calm and tolerant EU diplomats are when Israeli commanders order snipers to shoot children in the besieged Gaza Strip.

To this day, the European Union has refused to condemn this willful slaughter.

The message is clear: kill Palestinian children and European diplomats will sit down with you for lunch or a cozy chat.

Heaven forbid you should paint a slogan on the EU embassy door.

But even the rhetorical anger was not set to last.

As the EU embassy reopened on Monday, Ambassador Giaufret signaled clearly that his team would respond in the only way it knows how: by rewarding a government that embraces racists and incites hatred with initiatives to further “strengthen EU-Israel relations.”

Tags

Comments

picture

Frank Dallas replied on

EU for Israel? EU for democracy might be a bit better. Appeasement of an apartheid regime is hopeless. Collusion with a regime which defies the law is hypocritical. The EU should insist that UN resolution 194 is implemented. What would that mean? The return of the Palestinians to their homes would create a multi-ethnic Palestine. Israel, as Ilan Pappe has argued, as John Kerry has argued, cannot be a Jewish State and a democracy. What is the EU doing in claiming to uphold democracy and refusing to stand up to Israel for denying it?
When we say "the EU" what do we mean? We mean its leaders and bureaucrats, not its people. The people are told the EU believes in democracy but June 2106 in Britain showed the people aren't fooled. The vote to leave was a revolt against the elites. Let the people be heard. Let the people decide. The people of Europe are democrats, in spite of Marine Le Pen, the AfD, the EDL and others. The common folk know democracy is their only hope. What they are told about Israel is false because the Zionist lobby is powerful and clever, but if they knew the truth they would insist the law be adhered to. Resolution 194 is defied by Israel every day. That is, by the Israeli State. The common folk of Israel are subjected to constant lies and distortion. They too need to be liberated into true democracy. It is mandatory to teach to all pupils and students in Britain that the rule of law is a core British value. How can Britain accept Israel's illegality? How can any democratic country? The leaders of the EU are playing a foolish game they can't win. They should stand full-square for democracy and the rule of law. At least then they could face the hatred of the Israeli right with dignity.

picture

Peter Stedman replied on

I fully support your view, Frank. Laws, pacts and agreements have been carefully crafted over more than 100 years, designed to prevent regional hosilities and violations of human rights, laws which were initiated, supported and defended by entities such as the USA, the UK, and other members of the EU. These very same countries are now treating these same laws with blatant disregard where Israel is the perpetrator of their violations, under the pale pretext that to enforce them would amount to 'anti-Semitism'. Remember when racist white Afrikaner nationalists applied Apartheid in South Africa, the West rightly and loudly said "NO!!" Now it largely panders to racist nationalist Zionists who have defined the essence of their country's being as based on race; who have applied measures as discriminatory but with a much highter loss of life than anything the Afrikaners ever did, especially in the Palestinian territories; who have instituted measures that South African leaders have describe as being more draconian than anything in apartheid South Africa; and who have been progressing the Bantustanisation of the West Bank and the illegal imprisonment of Gaza, all in violation of the generalised international definition of Apartheid and its prohibition. And they condone all of this by swallowing the same mantra chanted by the Afrikaners - "terrorism!!", without discriminating as to who the real terrorists are, who the real practitioers of massacres, the real violators of countless U.N. resolutions, the real apologists for 15 years of rejection of the 2004 International Court of Justice advisory opinion, pretending that very senior legal representatives from the U.S., U.K., the Netherlands, etc., were all somehow corrupt U.N. lackeys.

picture

tom hall replied on

This pandering to fascism by EU officialdom illustrates why the BDS campaign remains the single most effective and necessary tactic available to civil society groups. The collusion between European states and Israel, as well as the EU's gushing tributes to the apartheid regime, have reached a point of total identification. More than ever, BDS is our weapon. Let's use it fully and wisely.

Ali Abunimah

Co-founder of The Electronic Intifada and author of The Battle for Justice in Palestine, now out from Haymarket Books.

Also wrote One Country: A Bold-Proposal to End the Israeli-Palestinian Impasse. Opinions are mine alone.