Josep Borrell, the EU’s former foreign affairs high representative, has long been a critic of Israel’s conduct in Gaza. He has declared: “By failing to sanction Israel, EU leaders are complicit in its crimes. They must act now.”
Borrell’s words were retweeted, approvingly, by Omer Bartov, a leading Israeli-American historian of the Holocaust and global authority on genocide.
Bartov was brought up in Israel. In the 1970s, he served in the Israel Defence Forces (IDF), including in Gaza. He identifies as a Zionist who wants to preserve a state and self-determination for Jews.
He’s from a family of Holocaust survivors. This is not a man inclined to brush aside attacks on Jews and Israelis.
He condemns Hamas so completely that his strongest criticism of the current Israeli government is that it mirrors the thuggery and authoritarianism of its enemy, which is starving its Israeli hostages just as the people of Gaza are, by one calculation, lucky to get one light meal every three days.
Bartov can be found giving interviews across the international media because he believes that Israel’s conduct in Gaza is endangering Israel itself.
It is inciting real anti-semitism against Jews worldwide, while devaluing the term because it is being used so loosely against any critic of Israeli policy. Bartov believes Jews outside Israel will stop identifying with the country.
The evidence of Palestinian starvation, long predicted by famine experts, is horrifying popular opinion across the world. While Israel claims that Hamas is stealing the food, no evidence has been offered of large-scale looting.
It’s to save Israel that Bartov is appealing for sanctions against it. He says Israel has only ever made concessions when under great pressure. Bartov argues for a partial arms embargo. Words are not enough.
“I’m a genocide scholar,” Bartov says, “I know one when I see one.” Many genocide scholars support him.
The law on genocide is not based on the number of people killed. What’s needed is evidence of intent to eliminate individuals simply because they are members of a group – to destroy that group’s ability to perpetuate itself.
Bartov says the evidence reaches that standard. Civilians have been targeted. Great psychological and physical suffering has been imposed. The infrastructure to sustain a population and its identity – schools, hospitals and channels of food and water supplies – has been largely destroyed.
Above all, the ability to give life is under severe threat. Hospitals have been bombed, access to sanitary conditions is precarious and miscarriages are rife. Mothers have to give birth in tents, among ruins and with no anaesthetic.
When you put the words of Israeli decision-makers into the balance -calling Palestinians animals and saying none are innocent – Bartov is in no doubt that making life impossible in Gaza is a “deliberate strategy of slow-moving genocide”.
The retired IDF general, Amiram Levin, agrees: “The government’s orders are criminal. You should call it by its name – giving an order to shoot at hungry children and their parents as they seek a loaf of bread, because they’re surrounded by two Hamas guards, is a crime. It’s genocide, that’s what we’re doing.”
Before these grave words, we’ve had silence from the European institutions. No action or reaction.
Ursula von der Leyen hasn’t issued a tweet about Gaza since July 22, when she said: “The EU reiterates its call for the free, safe and swift flow of humanitarian aid. And for the full respect of international and humanitarian law. Civilians in Gaza have suffered too much, for too long. It must stop now. Israel must deliver on its pledges.”
Also on July 22, Borrell’s successor, Kaja Kallas, said that “all options remain on the table if Israel doesn’t deliver on its pledges”.
That was after she said the “IDF must stop killing people at distribution points”.
But it was Kallas, only three days before, who persuaded the EU from sanctioning Israel over genocide and crimes against humanity. Kallas hasn’t tweeted on the subject since.
The options are still on the table, untouched.
We’ve had no statement to refute Borrell, Bartov or Levin.
To be clear, there is a case to be made that what we’re seeing is not genocide. It’s made by a respected legal authority, Stefan Talmon, who is based at the University of Bonn.
Talmon says there’s no evidence that would prove genocidal intent in a court of law. Palestinians could be the victims of a range of other war crimes, which, however, do not sink to the level of genocide.
Talmon is not defending Israeli actions. He states plainly: “Israel is committing the war crime of using hunger as a weapon of war, which is prohibited under international law.” That’s hardly a defence that justifies European dithering.
Three weeks have passed since the European Commission president and the EU’s high representative blamed Israel for Palestinian starvation and deaths at food centres (while the EP president, Roberta Metsola, has fudged and waffled). What do they have to say about the civilians, not least children, who have died since?
Bartov says Israel won’t survive its policy in Gaza. We could say the same about the EU. Our leaders’ inaction is destroying Europe’s reputation.
Let them refute the critics of what’s happening in Gaza. Or accept the charges and take action.
But silence and inaction shall destroy whatever is left of the EU’s claims to moral leadership on global governance. Without that, European ambition is just delusion, smoke and mirrors.
