Lobby Watch 21 March 2025
Protesters pretending to be Benjamin Netanyahu, Donald Trump and Ursula von der Leyen. (David Canales / ZUMA Press)
Israel is trying to keep secret its lobbying against a legal case aimed at halting the Gaza genocide.
Through a freedom of information request, I have established that Benjamin Netanyahu contacted Ursula von der Leyen, the European Commission’s president, over the proceedings initiated last year by South Africa.
Israel’s embassy in Brussels has objected to the disclosure of the letter from the prime minister. To their shame, officials working for von der Leyen have accepted Israel’s demand.
Why is the European Commission giving Israel a veto over what documents may be released into the public domain? What is von der Leyen and her entourage trying to hide?
The complaint filed by South Africa at the International Court of Justice proved that Netanyahu and his colleagues had displayed a clear genocidal intent as they declared war on Gaza in October 2023. In its initial January 2024 ruling, the court deemed the case as plausible and ordered a halt to Israel’s attack.
The United Nations Genocide Convention places an onus on governments around the world to prevent and punish that crime.
In my appeal against the refusal to release Netanyahu’s letter, I argued that transparency is a prerequisite for ascertaining whether or not the European Commission is respecting international law.
Based on the information available at the moment, it can only be concluded that von der Leyen has abetted a genocide.
She visited Netanyahu at a time when Israel was carrying out massacres and inflicting enormous destruction on Gaza in October 2023. Von der Leyen sought to justify the violence, even suggesting that Israel was fulfilling a duty to protect its own people.
It is not the first time that Brussels has withheld information at Israel’s behest.
The European Union has previously declined to answer simple queries about which Israeli ministries and authorities take part in “counter-terrorism dialogues” which it arranges. An internal document I obtained in 2023 stated that EU diplomats “fear that the Israelis would be offended by the disclosure.”
Pump-priming the war industry
That fear to offend can be detected in the pathetic communiqué EU leaders issued following this week’s summit. While the leaders claimed to deplore the breakdown of the Gaza ceasefire, they did not specify that Israel had caused the breakdown, killing Palestinians in their hundreds.
For her part, von der Leyen was too busy pump-priming the weapons industry to shed any tears about the resumption of Israel’s attacks.
Israel will more than likely benefit from the agenda she is dictating.
Developing new drones and “air defense” capabilities are two priorities that she has identified.
Israel has carved out a lucrative niche in the global arms market by selling drones tested out in the current genocide and during earlier offensives against Palestinians. And the “air shield” which von der Leyen is recommending for Europe appears to be a carbon copy of – or at least modeled on – Israel’s Iron Dome.
Elbit Systems and Rafael – the main Israeli companies producing drones and the Iron Dome – are already doing well from Europe’s rush to increase military spending.
The two firms have jointly announced that they have been awarded a new contract to supply unnamed European countries with “a cutting-edge naval decoy and launching system.”
The arms dealers gathering at an event called the Tel Aviv Sparks Innovation Summit in a few days’ time will undoubtedly be strategizing about how to win even more business in Europe. “Defense investment” is among the topics on their program.
The new plans for subsidizing the arms industry pushed by von der Leyen are supposed to aid firms within the EU primarily. Yet she has given an assurance that weapons financed under such plans may include 35 percent of content from outside the EU.
Israeli firms – which already cooperate closely with Europe’s weapons industry – stand to gain from her “generosity.”Through my aforementioned freedom of information request, I have also learned that the European Jewish Association (EJA) – a pro-Israel lobby group – has been in touch with von der Leyen’s office (via Israeli diplomats) about a possible award.
It would appear that the group wished to formally acknowledge her support for the war on Gaza. But that is a guess – Israel’s EU embassy has objected to the release of the EJA letter, too.
And, of course, von der Leyen’s lackeys have once again accepted Israel’s objections. Heaven forbid that they offend a state carrying out a genocide.
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