Rights and Accountability 29 August 2024
Benjamin Netanyahu has praised ZAKA’s propaganda. (Haim Zach / GPO/Polaris)
The organization which spread the lies used as a pretext for the genocidal war against Gaza is seeking funds from the European Union.
ZAKA – nominally an emergency rescue group – won praise from Benjamin Netanyahu for playing an important role in influencing public opinion as his government sought international backing during the initial stages of the genocide. Israel’s prime minister repeated claims fabricated by the group that Hamas burned and killed dozens of children on 7 October last year.
European Union diplomats enjoy a warm relationship with ZAKA despite – or perhaps because of – its blatant dishonesty. Dimiter Tzantchev, the EU’s ambassador to Tel Aviv, has contended that the group carries out “hard and holy work.”
Documents obtained under freedom of information rules show that Tzantchev’s team has discussed the possibility that ZAKA could receive EU aid.In January, a ZAKA representative emailed the EU’s Tel Aviv embassy with a request for information about possible funding. The message – see below – referred to an earlier conversation with the embassy on Zoom.
An EU diplomat replied swiftly with a promise that “I will definitely add your name to our distribution list” on calls for funding proposals.
The diplomat notified ZAKA that one such call had just been launched. It concerned the EU Peacebuilding Initiative.
The stated aim of that scheme is “to achieve greater public and political support for the two-state solution among specific constituencies and groups in Israel and Palestine through civil society’s positive engagement.”
Who do these EU officials think they are kidding?
A two-state solution has been a mirage for years, if not decades. At a time when Israel is slaughtering and starving Gaza’s people and intensifying its colonization in the West Bank (including East Jerusalem), Western diplomats remain dedicated to a fantasy whereby historic Palestine is carved up into two viable states.
ZAKA’s correspondence with the EU’s Tel Aviv embassy indicates that it viewed the separate Partnership for Peace program as a future source of money.
That program is ostensibly focused on supporting activities that “promote peace, tolerance and nonviolence in the Middle East.”
ZAKA is committed to none of those things.
Motivated by racism
This week the organization expressed its approval for Israel’s latest ground and air attack on the West Bank.
According to ZAKA, the operation is a “critical step in securing the country” – indicating that it regards the occupied West Bank as part of Israel. The operation is concentrated, ZAKA claimed, on “ ‘refugee’ camps that have become strongholds for Palestinian terror groups.”
By putting scare quotes around the word “refugee,” ZAKA has proven that it is motivated by anti-Palestinian racism.
The camps in question host people who were driven from their homes by Zionist forces during the Nakba – the ethnic cleansing of Palestine between 1947 and 1949 – and their descendants.
No genuine humanitarian would question the accuracy of the term “refugee” in this context. Despite posing as altruistic, ZAKA is smearing victims of a mass expulsion.
ZAKA noted that this week’s operation against the West Bank involved “drones, bulldozers, military and security forces, four battalions of the Israel Border Police and an elite unit of undercover troops” before describing the attack as “necessary.”
It is by no means the first time that ZAKA has endorsed Israel’s acts of extreme violence.
In March, ZAKA defended what it called Israel’s “difficult decision” to invade al-Shifa hospital in Gaza City.
The invasion, ZAKA alleged, was “based on concrete intelligence that senior Hamas officials were using the hospital’s premises to plan and execute terror activities.”
No evidence for that accusation has ever been provided. That has not stopped ZAKA from becoming one of the world’s few, if not the only, “emergency rescue” groups to applaud an offensive in which a major hospital would be destroyed.
By inventing and spreading the main lies used to “justify” the current war on Gaza, ZAKA is complicit in genocide. Such complicity is a recognized and punishable offense under international law.
Rather than holding it and other Israeli bodies accountable, the European Union is giving ZAKA advice on how it can be funded.
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