Renewed strikes on Hamas targets further highlight Europe’s unsympathetic view of Israel, especially in comparison to that of President Donald Trump’s U.S. administration, which said the Gaza-based terror group bears “total responsibility for the war, and for the resumption of hostilities.”
Apparently forgetting who started the conflict by breaking the 2005 ceasefire on October 7th, 2023, top European Union diplomat Kaja Kallas asked Israel’s Foreign Minister Gideon Saar on Tuesday “Why are you doing this,” describing strikes as “unacceptable.”
Germany’s Annalena Baerbock also urged “all sides” to “show restraint” and “respect humanitarian law,” while Hugh Lovatt, a senior policy fellow at the European Council on Foreign Relations, suggested that Netanyahu approved attacks because he “sees it as being in his [domestic] political interest.”
Perhaps Hamas was referring to these European nations when it called on “friendly countries” to work towards ending Israeli airstrikes.
Israel insists its campaign of “extensive strikes” is being directed at “terror targets,” and has issued evacuation orders to civilians.
This follows Hamas’s repeated refusal to release our hostages, as well as its rejection of all of the [ceasefire] proposals it has received from U.S. Presidential Envoy Steve Witkoff and from the mediators.
Israel will, from now on, act against Hamas with increasing military strength.
The Hamas-run health ministry says almost 1,000 Palestinians have been killed in two days. It also claims a United Nations worker was killed in a strike on a UN building—which Israel denies even took place.
In the UK, Foreign Secretary David Lammy went so far as to accuse Israel of a “breach of international law” by withholding aid supplies—a statement which the Labour government has since tried to bury. Prime Minister Keir Starmer did, however, maintain that he was “deeply concerned about the resumption of Israeli military action in Gaza,” describing “the images of parents carrying their children, young children to hospitals” as “truly shocking.”
Meanwhile, a report by the Anti-Defamation League has pointed to what it described as “extensive issues with antisemitic and anti-Israel bias on Wikipedia in multiple languages.” Maybe Brussels leaders have been using the site to inform their views on the conflict.
