EU pushed for censorship of website naming pro-genocide lobbyists

Katharina von Schnurbein, an EU official demanding the censorship of Israel’s critics.
Wolfgang Kumm DPA

A prominent European Union official pushed for the censorship of a website which published facts about how professional lobbyists have been seeking to drum up support for the Gaza genocide.

Launched a few months ago, the website in question contained downloadable posters featuring pro-Israel advocates and some details about the stances they have taken. The posters had appeared at various locations in Brussels during June.

Following a freedom of information request, I learned that Katharina von Schnurbein, the EU’s coordinator for combating anti-Semitism, urged that the city’s police make the website – named Lobby Against – “inaccessible to [internet] users.”

Nearly two weeks after the posters were first spotted on Brussels’ streets, the Lobby Against website “is still not shut down,” an internal EU paper states.

The paper – see below – cites assurances from the Belgian authorities that the website “is now not accessible via most networks.” The authorities, it adds, “have run into a technical issue.”

The posters on the website showed lobbyists including Matthijs Schüssler from the European Leadership Network, Benedetta Buttiglione from the American Jewish Committee and Alex Benjamin from the European Jewish Association.

Each poster used the slogan “He lobbies for genocide” or “She lobbies for genocide,” along with other factual observations. Among them were comments on how the lobbyists pictured organize propaganda trips for lawmakers, promote trading in arms between Europe and Israel and weaponize anti-Semitism “to fuel racist discourse about refugees and Palestinians.”

None of the posters threatened violence.

The comments found on them related to the activities of Israel and its support network. They did not express any hostility toward Jews based on their religion or ethnicity.

The internal EU paper even acknowledges that some of the lobbyists featured in the posters are not Jewish.

Flimsy excuse

And yet the posters were denounced at a high level within the Brussels bureaucracy.

Magnus Brunner, the EU commissioner for internal affairs and migration, held a discussion with representatives of pro-Israel groups on 26 June. The aforementioned internal paper states that in his opening remarks, Brunner described the poster campaign as “outrageous” and an “evil act.”

The internal paper notes that two Israeli diplomats were killed in Washington during May. The killings took place outside an event hosted by the American Jewish Committee.

Pointing to an incident on the other side of the Atlantic is a flimsy excuse for muzzling dissent in Europe.

It is, however, typical that the EU’s supposed warriors against anti-Semitism – led by Katharina von Schnurbein – would resort to such arguments. Since taking up her post a decade ago, von Schnurbein has repeatedly smeared initiatives undertaken in solidarity with Palestinians.

In May, von Schnurbein visited Tel Aviv, where she had an exchange of views with diplomats working there. As EUObserver has revealed, von Schurbein made the absurd accusation then that a bake sale held by her fellow Brussels officials to benefit a Red Cross Gaza appeal risked causing “ambient anti-Semitism.”

On 13 October 2023, Jewish Currents published an article by Raz Segal, a scholar of the Holocaust and other genocides. He called the situation in Gaza “a textbook case of genocide unfolding in front of our eyes.”

A few months later, the International Court of Justice deemed plausible South Africa’s case that Israel is committing genocide.

The evidence that a genocide is occurring has been accepted by all reputable human rights organizations and even by some governments belonging to the European Union such as Ireland, Spain and Slovenia.

This week, the International Association of Genocide Scholars adopted a resolution concluding that “Israel’s policies and actions in Gaza meet the legal definition of genocide.” That definition – acts intended to destroy partly or completely a national, racial, religious or ethnic group – has been enshrined in a 1948 United Nations convention.

Genocide experts may agree almost unanimously that Israel’s offensive against Gaza is genocidal, yet von Schnurbein has dismissed reports that Israel commits massacres in Gaza as “rumors about Jews.”

Given that she is denying hard facts, von Schnurbein’s credibility ought to be in tatters.

She has already harmed civil liberties by pushing for the censorship of the Lobby Against website. It is vital that she is removed from her post before she inflicts further damage.