On the EU's indifference towards the Palestinians
Writing for Social Europe, Josep Borell, the former “foreign minister” of the European Union (technically, the “High Representative of the European Union for Foreign Affairs”) laments the Union’s apparent double standard in how it treats the Ukrainian and Palestinian peoples:
For some European countries, historical guilt over the Holocaust has arguably been transformed into a “reason of state” that justifies unconditional support for Israel, risking engaging the EU in complicity with crimes against humanity. One horror cannot justify another. Unless the values the EU claims to uphold are to lose all credibility, the bloc cannot continue to passively observe the unfolding horror in Gaza and the “Gazaification” of the West Bank.
The fact of the matter is that the Union’s vaunted values only hold true when they align with power politics. Otherwise they are a perk for privileged locals. Those who believe that European elites actually care about democracy and fundamental rights for everyone have simply not been paying attention.
In European politics there is no courage to push forward with bold ideas. It is a bureaucratic apparatus that has lots of competent administrators but few, if any, visionaries. Most policy-makers are conditioned into cowardice and fake modesty. They mince their words to the point of not saying anything, just how Josep Borell is doing here despite wanting to say something more than he does.
How many countries, dear Josep Borell, is the “some European countries” you are referring to? Why is it so difficult to speak in plain terms about what you did and who exactly turned it down?
European decision-makers are used to operating behind closed doors. It is why we do not have public discussions about EU affairs, outside whatever issue touches on some national sensitivity. This modus operandi is undemocratic. Forget about the institutions and the letter of the law. We do not need to rewrite the Treaties to change how we do politics. Josep Borell and every other person in that position has the liberty to speak his mind and to thus provide that power impulse which generates discussions. My idea of a politician is simple: if you are holding a leadership role you lead with honour and are loud about it so that we can better check on you.
Until that happens, until the spirit of democratic conduct permeates the everyday practice of Union politics, we will continue to bear witness to the machinations of a massive bureaucracy and deal with such blatant double standards as the one outlined by the former commissioner.
The supranational level where the European Commission, and thus someone like Josep Borell, operates at, is driven by the intergovernmental power dynamics at the European Council. If the Commission’s policies are implemented, it is because they flesh out the guidelines stipulated by the European Council. And, by the same token, if, say, Josep Borell’s actions do not lead to anything concrete it is because those do not align with the European Council’s agenda.
Knowing about who “some European countries” are thus takes us to the heart of the issue. It is at the intergovernmental level where those countries exert their influence, always behind closed doors.
Against this backdrop, it is pointless to think of Europeans as a bloc that has a coherent foreign policy. It will all be power politics wrapped in a neat package of euphemisms and virtue signalling.
There is no “we” in this regard. I, as a person living in Cyprus, have no impact whatsoever on the outlook of “some European countries” because those countries are not subject to my right for democratic scrutiny: they do not answer to me as a citizen. This is exactly why we cannot have democracy in the EU in its current form. There is a mismatch between the powers of the Union, which apply to the entire architecture, and the accountability they are subject to which coagulates along national lines and has no sufficient supranational counterpart. I have, in the past, termed this phenomenon “sovereignty mismatch” on the premise that sovereignty in a democracy is reified in the virtuous cycle between state power and popular control. We now are subject to the power, but have no commensurate control.
As such, “we” care about the Ukrainians simply because Russia poses a threat to “our” immediate interests. For the countries in the vicinity of Russia, this threat involves territorial claims as well and the understandable fear that what happened to Crimea and more recently in Eastern Ukraine can happen in the Baltics as well. By contrast, “we” have no immediate geopolitical interest in standing up to the human rights of the Palestinians so “we” pretend to not have seen or heard anything.
The idea that a critique of the Israeli government’s actions can be construed as antisemitism is specious. No government should be immune to criticism. If it is, then this is the hallmark of tyranny. When I write against the EU, as I am doing right now in unequivocal terms, I am not being anti-European: I care for the wellness of this continent and these people and want the norms which underpin our institutions to be upheld.
The Israelis have a right to self-determination which emanates from international law. They also have obligations stemming from the same corpus of legality. The same goes for every country. Yet international law is not featuring a sovereign, meaning that it is enforceable only when the international community acts in concert. Otherwise, international law is just a bunch of papers that powerful rulers blithely ignore.
In this regard, it is a mistake to think that the Israeli government is acting unilaterally. None of this could have happened without the support and acquiescence of global powers such as the United States and the European Union (and the long history of Western colonial powers meddling in the Middle East among other places).
What we Europeans are experiencing is the outward expression of an inner malaise. We do not have democracy in places where we need it, which empowers unaccountable elites to apply their double standards with impunity. It is a disgrace.