Bloodthirst of Israel lobby can’t be quenched
David Cronin Lobby Watch 24 February 2024
Pro-Israel advocates want even greater destruction in Rafah.
Abed Rahim Khatim DPA via ZUMA PressForeign interference in European affairs is frowned upon – unless that interference comes from Israel and its supporters.
A group called the European Leadership Network has been responsible for much of the interference.
The European Leadership Network’s goal is to make lawmakers on both sides of the Atlantic equally beholden to Israel. Its website notes that while 80 percent of US Congress members have visited Israel, “only 10 percent of European counterparts have done so.”
To rectify that imbalance, the group regularly organizes junkets to the Middle East. Since 7 October, it has hosted 12 “solidarity missions” for politicians who approve of the genocidal war against Gaza.
Involving sojourns in luxury hotels, the trips have invariably been expensive.
One British lawmaker estimated that the bill for his participation in a recent four-day visit hosted by the European Leadership Network exceeded $2,500.
Despite how it is buying influence, the activities of and the agenda pursued by the European Leadership Network have been subject to hardly any scrutiny in the mainstream media.
Although its fundraising arm is based in Illinois, many of the group’s activities are coordinated from its Tel Aviv office.
That office is headed by Emmanuel Navon, a self-proclaimed “scholar and practitioner of diplomacy.” Navon was born and raised in France before moving to Israel as an adult.
Against equality
It is a testament to Navon’s political acumen that he and his staff have cultivated strong relations with the European Union and other pillars of the West, while taking positions that are at complete variance with their stated “values.”
Navon, for example, does not believe in the principle of equality to which the EU is nominally wed.
In 2018, Navon – then part of the right-wing Kohelet Policy Forum – wrote a piece for The Jerusalem Post defending Israel’s Nation-State Law. Through that law, Israel implicitly confirmed that it operates an apartheid system, in which Jews are given a higher status than people of other religions or ethnicity.
In 2020, Navon contended that Europe should rethink its opposition to Israeli threats that it may formally annex a large part of the occupied West Bank.
Navon used convoluted reasoning to claim that annexation – “the possible extension of Israeli sovereignty” as he called it – would be “consistent with international law. ” Undoubtedly erudite – at least in his own head – Navon is not actually a trained lawyer.
His attempts over the past few weeks to dismiss how the International Court of Justice has found there is a plausible case that Israel is committing genocide are, therefore, meritless. Rather than dealing with the substance of the case, he has sought to besmirch South Africa, the government which brought it.
South Africa has displayed a moral clarity in holding Israel accountable. Yet Navon insists – without proof – that South Africa has only initiated proceedings because it is “on the payroll of Qatar and Iran.”
Sinister
Although the European Union initially backed the genocidal war on Gaza – fallaciously presenting it as an act of self-defense by Israel – the death toll is too high now for some key players the Brussels hierarchy. Josep Borrell, the EU’s foreign policy chief, has made that point.
Navon’s bloodthirst has still not been quenched. He recently described as “necessary” the threatened major offensive against Rafah – Gaza’s southernmost city, where more than 1 million displaced people are now crammed in appalling conditions.
Josep Borrell “need not worry about Gaza civilians” in the event of such an attack, Navon has said, repeating Israeli assurances that non-combatants will be safely evacuated.
Navon has made equally absurd allegations against the UN agency for Palestine refugees (UNRWA).
In a bizarre video, he has sought to dress up Israeli allegations about Hamas having tunnels beneath UNRWA’s Gaza offices as facts. UNRWA administrators surely knew about the digging under their building, according to Navon.
It would be comforting if we could simply treat such propaganda as evidence-free idiocy. Yet it is part of a concerted push to deny Palestinians the essential services that UNRWA provides.
Smear campaigns have been run against the UN agency for quite a few years. As it has been designed to distract from the slaughter and starvation which Israel is inflicting on Gaza, the latest smear campaign is surely the most sinister so far.