Lobby Watch 8 October 2025
Michael Mann (right) presenting his credentials to Isaac Herzog, Israel’s president. (European Union)
Fresh evidence shows that Michael Mann, the EU’s envoy in Tel Aviv, was being courted by the pro-Israel lobby before taking up his post.
A document obtained via a freedom of information request indicates that Mann agreed to attend an event billed as the EU-Israel “strategic dialogue” scheduled for 23 June. The event was organized by the European Leadership Network (Elnet), a group that has fully backed the genocidal war against Gaza.
The willingness of Mann to accept such an invitation casts doubt on whether he respected rules stipulating that EU civil servants must act with impartiality.
At that time, Mann was still doing his old job as head of the division in the EU’s diplomatic service handling the “Middle East peace process.” It is impossible to see how Mann’s work could have served the cause of peace if he was accommodating toward apologists for Israeli aggression.
A week before the “strategic dialogue” was due to take place, Elnet contacted Mann. Referring to the “current developments in Israel” – an apparent euphemism for the war Israel had declared on Iran in June – the group recommended replacing the original event with a shorter online conference and expressed hope that Mann would participate.
The online conference was then framed as an “emergency briefing.”
The briefing was addressed by Zohar Palti, a man directly responsible for the oppression of Palestinians. Palti’s “distinguished” career has included playing a major role in “counterterrorism” during the second intifada.
“Counterterrorism” involved invading towns and cities for which the Palestinian Authority was nominally responsible. While Palti has written about that period, at least one of his articles fails to spell out that Israel resorted to huge violence against Palestine’s refugees.
Palti would go on to hold high-level positions in Mossad – the infamous spying and assassination agency – and Israel’s defense ministry, which oversees the occupation of the West Bank and Gaza.
Now that he is retired, Palti is considered something of an éminence grise by pro-Israel zealots. Although he has expressed views in the past that could be regarded as maverick – by, for example, insisting that Iran is not building a nuclear bomb – he has been very much on message over the past few years.
That was illustrated by a November 2023 interview with NPR. When asked what he would say to a Palestinian family living in Gaza for generations, Palti replied, “They choose Hamas,” arguing there were “consequences for that.”
His comments and the inference that Palestinians are culpable for their own suffering were similar to the expressions of genocidal intent emanating from Israel’s top politicians.
Since taking up his post with the “Middle East peace process” division in 2022, Michael Mann has repeatedly attended events organized by Elnet. There is no hint that he has ever availed of such events to protest against the group’s support for exterminationist violence.
Pandering
Mann was appointed the EU’s envoy to Israel in May this year, formally taking up his post in September.
As he prepared for his move from Brussels to Tel Aviv, Mann was contacted by the American Jewish Committee (AJC), another pro-Israel lobby group. The AJC arranged for Johnnie Moore, chair of the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation, to visit the EU’s headquarters in July and inquired if Mann would be available for a discussion.
I emailed Mann asking if he agreed to such a meeting. “No, he did not meet the GHF,” the EU’s embassy in Tel Aviv replied.
I followed up by asking if anyone from the team of officials which Mann headed at the time attended such a meeting. The embassy did not respond.
The embassy’s failure to reply raises suspicions that Mann is hiding something.
The AJC has already confirmed in a social media post that Moore had dinner with EU diplomats. Although it did not name the diplomats in question, there is a high probability that Mann’s colleagues were among them.
The dinner took place on 2 July.By that date, the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation was synonymous with massacres. More than 500 Palestinians had been killed and thousands wounded as they sought access to food.
As the GHF has been responsible for heinous crimes, Moore should really have been arrested when he arrived in Brussels. Instead, EU diplomats were evidently happy to grace him with their presence, enjoying a free meal as Palestinians starved.
Even if Mann did not receive Moore in Brussels, the new EU ambassador is clearly pandering to Israel and its support network now that he is ensconced in Tel Aviv.
A few weeks ago, Mann visited the Weizmann Institute of Science, praising that university’s resilience after it was damaged by Iran in June.
Mann’s horror at attacks on education appears selective. He has not publicly condemned Israel for destroying or damaging more than 90 percent of all school and university buildings in Gaza within the past two years.He is silent, too, about how the Weizmann Institute conducts joint research and development projects with Israel’s largest weapons companies.
Like all of the big Israeli universities, the Weizmann Institute is a target for the Palestinian-led boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS) movement.
People of conscience throughout the world support BDS. Michael Mann, by contrast, supports Israel.
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