Lobby Watch 18 June 2025
Rihards Kols has gone on four trips paid for by the pro-Israel lobby since he was elected to the European Parliament.
European ParliamentOver the past 20 months, Israel has inflicted a genocide on Gaza and mass displacement on the West Bank, as well as attacking Iran, Yemen, Syria and Lebanon.
All that aggression is being overlooked by a cohort within the Brussels institutions, which insists that Iran is the main source of instability in the Middle East.
Rihards Kols, a Latvian lawmaker, is part of the cohort in question.
Considering one of his recent remarks, he may also be on a mission to make George W. Bush fashionable again. By alleging that Iran belongs to an “axis of evil,” Kols echoed a designation which Bush made as US president back in 2002.
Since he was elected to the European Parliament last year, Kols has already taken part in at least four expenses-paid trips arranged by pro-Israel groups.Two of the trips were to the US.
A few weeks ago, he visited Washington as a guest of the American Jewish Committee. There he chatted about the theory and practice of “deterrence by punishment” with Brian Mast, a Congressman who regards Palestinian civilians as Nazis.
And in November last, Kols joined an American “roadshow” at the invitation of the European Leadership Network (Elnet), another pro-Israel group.His hosts looked after him well as he grappled with “critical issues” in New York, Chicago and Palm Beach. For three nights, he stayed at the Concorde, a “boutique hotel” in Manhattan.
That sojourn appeared to fill him with certainty. When he got back to Brussels, he was adamant that Israel was not deliberately causing starvation in Gaza.
It is not known if he formulated that particular argument after consulting genuine experts on global hunger or after sitting down to a hearty meal with pro-Israel advocates.Kols did not reply to a query asking if lobbyists have written any of his speeches or contributed to his other parliamentary work. Yet it is beyond doubt that he has repeatedly said things that strongly resemble the positions taken by Israel’s support network.
He has described the warrants issued by the International Criminal Court for the arrest of Israel’s Benjamin Netanyahu and Yoav Gallant as “troubling.” And he has recommended that UNRWA, the UN agency for Palestine refugees, be shut down.
Fertile imagination
Through declaring war on Iran, Israel has once again won support from European Union governments.
With all their talk about Israel’s “right to defend itself,” EU leaders deliberately neglect to remind their citizens that Israel is the aggressor.
Their robotic responses omit essential context. None of the leaders will point out that Israel wants to preserve its status as the only Middle East state possessing nuclear weapons and has attacked Iran on the pretext that it may one day get the bomb.
It is easy to forget that just last month, most EU governments had finally registered a protest of sorts over the catastrophe inflicted on Gaza.
Most agreed that an “urgent review” should be conducted of relations with Israel. Some governments had even begun stating what anyone who has been paying attention has known since October 2023: Israel is committing a genocide.
There is no prospect of Rihards Kols uttering such a truth. Having availed of the lobby’s hospitality in the US, he has more recently enjoyed similar perks closer to home.
In May, the Israel lobby paid for him to spend a night at the five-star Hôtel du Collectionneur in Paris, where the design is “inspired by the glamor” of 1930s’ ocean liners. Kols was visiting the French capital, so that he could take part in a conference organized by the aforementioned Elnet.
The “splendor and chic” of his surroundings probably appealed to someone with a fertile imagination like Kols. When he addressed the conference, he was able to depict a world very different from the one that the rest of us live in.
In that world, Iran is hell-bent on subverting the “rules-based order.” The way that Israel has treated numerous UN conventions like toilet paper is not deemed worthy of comment.In that world, lobbyists can enjoy gala dinners, insulated from the starvation that their beloved Israel is causing.
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