Rights and Accountability 14 May 2025
Johann Wadephul, the new German foreign minister, visits Benjamin Netanyahu.
DPARichness and vitality.
Remember those words. They appear in a European Union document, dated 26 March.
Eight days earlier, Israel resumed its full-scale attacks on Gaza, violating the ceasefire deal reached in January.
The resumption of attacks followed a blockade – still in place – on the entry of food and medicine. Hunger and malnutrition have soared as a result.
Despite all the deprivation and death in Palestine, some Brussels officials felt the time was right to celebrate the “richness and vitality of relations between the European Union and Israel.”
The 26 March document may have attracted little attention yet it was not merely an internal discussion paper. Rather, it was a formal proposal to extend an “action plan” on deepening EU-Israel cooperation.
The “action plan” – which requires renewal every few years – falls under the rubric of the association agreement underpinning EU-Israel relations.
Until recently, that deal seemed to enjoy solid backing from nearly all EU governments. During 2024, Spain and Ireland were the only two member countries which requested a review of the agreement, citing a clause stipulating that trade preferences and joint EU-Israel activities are conditional on respect for human rights.
Ireland and Spain are no longer the outliers. Over the past few weeks, France, the Netherlands, Portugal, Sweden and Slovenia have all called for a review or indicated they would be in favor of one.
Israel’s supporters are clearly disgruntled by the backlash. Old certainties – such as Israel regarding the Netherlands as one of its staunchest allies – are slowly unraveling.
The significance of what is happening should not, however, be exaggerated.
Most of those EU countries now calling for minimal action towards holding Israel accountable are only doing so 19 months after a genocidal war began.
If those states are really serious about defending Palestinian rights, they must not use the likelihood that no consensus on suspending the association agreement will be reached at the EU level as an excuse for continuing their complicity in Israel’s crimes. Instead, they must be prepared to sanction Israel either individually or as an ad hoc coalition.
“Great treasure”
Germany, the EU’s most populous country, is unsurprisingly absent from the list of governments belatedly asking that relations with Israel be reassessed.
Friedrich Merz, the new chancellor, has just described the German “friendship” with Israel as a “great treasure that must be preserved 80 years after the Holocaust perpetrated by Germany.”
To preserve this “great treasure,” Germany is arming Israel as it commits a 21st century holocaust in Gaza.Merz promised after his election victory that he would find a way to host Benjamin Netanyahu, Israel’s prime minister. By doing so he displayed contempt for the International Criminal Court, which has issued a warrant for Netanyahu’s arrest.
Johann Wadephul, the foreign minister in Merz’s government, has similarly lifted his middle finger to the ICC by paying a visit to Netanyahu over the past few days. On this trip, Wadephul voiced sympathy for how Israel – working closely with the US – wants to assert greater control over Gaza aid deliveries in the future.
Wadephul falsely suggested that Israel’s objective is keeping humanitarian assistance away from Hamas. The real goal is to weaponize aid by giving soldiers and private contractors responsibility for activities heretofore carried out by UN agencies and charities.That is part and parcel of the way Israel has engineered mass starvation, thereby committing a war crime.
Germany has combined its support for the Gaza genocide, with domestic repression of Palestine solidarity activities. The authorities have even sought to deport protesters for disobeying Staatsräson – a German declaration that ensuring Israel’s security is a fundamental duty (literally “reason of state”).
Four Berlin-based activists have successfully mounted legal challenges to their deportation orders. It is nonetheless a safe bet that other attempts to muzzle dissent will continue.
Katharina von Schnurbein, the Bavarian who has spent the past decade as the EU’s coordinator for combating anti-Semitism, wants the muzzling intensified.
Speaking in Berlin, she recently urged “decisive action, and where necessary prosecution” to “prevent further poisoning of the public space.”
Von Schnurbein complained particularly about the slogan “from the river to the sea, Palestine will be free”, alleging that it amounts to a wish for “the annihilation” of Israel and “the people living in it.”
To use an old German expression, that is a big lie. Far from being a plea for annihilation, the slogan embraces equality between all the people living in historic Palestine, which includes Israel.
Liberation in Palestine would require destroying Israel’s apartheid system, not Israeli Jews as a community. Von Schnurbein ought to know that but given that she is essentially a pro-Israel lobbyist masquerading as a civil servant, telling the truth would not serve her agenda.
Now that some EU governments are belatedly questioning the alliance with Israel, the position of von Schnurbein and other Germans is looking increasingly absurd. How can they spout nonsense about a “great treasure” or “richness and vitality” when Palestinian children go to bed with empty stomachs?
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