Santiago González Vallejo, 10/2/2025
The author is a Spanish economist who works at the Unión Sindical Obrera trade union and is a member and co-founder of the Comité de Solidaridad con la Causa Árabe (Arab Cause Solidarity Committee).
For many years now, we have accused the European Union
of being an accomplice in the occupation and colonization of the Territories occupied by Israel (Palestine territory prior to 1967, the Syrian Golan
Heights and the Shebaa Farms in Lebanon), as well as the blockade of
Palestinian Gaza. This is confirmed by its global inaction and its de facto
support for Israel in terms of arms trade, security agreements, maintenance of
trade relations – including with the settlements in the Occupied Territory, in
both directions – partnership in programs of all kinds or granting aid. All of
this forces us to consider that the EU is not only complicit but also a party
to Israel's war crimes and crimes against humanity.
The European Union (as well as NATO), through these
agreements, has been considering Israel as a partner, ally, etc., despite it
being an occupying state with supremacist laws that discriminate against
Palestinians and despise international law, including the right of return. All of this is the origin and cause of the
injustice suffered by the Palestinian people.
The European Union and other Western countries, by siding with Israel,
are participants in the crimes of repression and continuous violence that
Israel exercises to maintain that territorial domination.
An excuse sometimes alleged in the abandonment of
accepted values of the European Union (such as the respect of international
law, democracy or shared prosperity) is that many Europeans are trapped
ideologically in accepting the Israeli narrative that they are the Jews who
were massacred and discriminated against in the last century. But those
Europeans who discriminated and massacred Jewish citizens of their own country,
are not us, today’s Europeans. They were, generically, our ancestors. This
leads us to ask questions such as: do today’s European have to pay for crimes
that they did not commit, or are today’s Israelis victims of those atrocities?
Israelis cannot adduce that they are the same people
as those Jews who suffered the Holocaust along with other groups. Nor can the
actions of these Israelis against the Palestinians, with their occupation,
colonization and supremacist laws, be justified based on the suffering and
attempted annihilation of Jews by Nazi and fascist supremacist ideologies (now
recreated by many European and Israeli parties).
