The wounded around me

Nidal Diab stands with his three young daughters in the narrow alleys of a Gaza refugee camp. Shot in the head during one of the protests of the Great March of Return, he has lost sight in one eye and all sense of smell. 

Abed Zagout

Hamza Abu Eltarabesh - 3 May 2019

It’s been more than a year since the Great March of Return protests started in Gaza.

The weekly demonstrations were launched as a way to draw attention to the plight of Palestinians living under a draconian siege that has left Gaza on the brink of a humanitarian disaster.

They are also a reassertion of the Palestinian right of return to the lands and homes from which Palestinians were dispossessed in 1948. Two-thirds of Gaza’s population of approximately two million people are refugees.

But the activism of demonstrators has come at a high and deadly cost. Still, people march.

More than 200 people have been killed and there have been well over 11,000 moderate to serious injuries. According to the Palestinian Center for Human Rights, up to the end of March and after one year of protests, there were 114 amputations because of injuries to protesters.

There is hardly a person in Gaza who has not, in one way or another, been affected by these stark statistics.

Relative fortune

Luckily, I haven’t lost a close friend or a relative. I know, however, plenty of friends, relatives and colleagues who have been wounded.

One of them, Wael al-Sedawi, is my cousin and childhood friend.

Wael, 28, almost lost his life on 19 October last year, when he was shot, not once, not twice, but six times, three times in each leg.

For a while, I watched him hover between life and death in the intensive care section at the Indonesian hospital in northern Gaza. The tendons in his right leg were torn and his left leg was damaged beyond the capacity of doctors in Gaza to repair.

But Wael’s father Yousef, 69, initially refused medical advice that his son’s left leg be amputated. Instead, he held out hope that he could secure a permit for his son to be treated in an Israeli hospital, the only place he could think of that might save his son’s leg in time.

The permit was refused for “security reasons.”

According to the United Nations, people injured in the Great March of Return protests were overwhelmingly refused treatment in Israel. Less than a fifth of referrals were approved, a situation only partly alleviated by the opening in May of the Rafah crossing to Egypt.

The newlyweds

With Wael’s condition deteriorating, doctors urged his family not to delay. Not amputating, they said, could risk his life.

Four days after Wael had been admitted, Yousef finally agreed to his son’s surgery, having exhausted all hope that his son, newly married, might make a full recovery.

But by then, Wael had slipped into a coma. For days after the operation, the family prayed. For nearly a week, Wael’s mother, Hanan, my mother’s sister and her spitting image, hardly slept.

On the morning of the seventh day, Wael woke and asked for water. He had survived.

Wael is home now with his wife Nadia. He has lost his cleaning job. For the couple who had been married just four months when Wael was discharged, life now consists of endless rehabilitation and medical treatments in one hospital or another.

“I don’t know what I have to do for my husband,” 19-year-old Nadia said. “It’s a really difficult situation. Instead of living as newlyweds, we’re moving from one hospital to another. I’m still in shock.”

Wael is on a waiting list for a prosthetic limb. Meanwhile, he is trying to keep his mood up.

“I lost my leg and job, but I’m grateful that I’m back from death,” he told The Electronic Intifada. “I’m waiting for a prosthetic and I hope I can live a normal life and find a job suitable to my health condition.”

He is receiving physical therapy at the Artificial Limbs and Polio Center in preparation for an artificial limb.

He might have to wait a long time. The center is under-equipped as a result of the Israeli blockade and under enormous pressure due to the number of new amputees arriving seemingly every week.

“We can’t meet all the needs of the large number of injured people we are seeing,” Muhammad Dweima, head of the center, told The Electronic Intifada. “The Israeli authorities are also restricting the entry of materials we need to produce limbs.”

So far, according to Dweima, 76 people injured in the Great March of Return protests have received artificial limbs and rehabilitation treatment from the center. The rest, including Wael, have to wait their turn.

No protection

Compared to Yasser Qudih, Wael had an easy ride.

Yasser, 35, a photojournalist who has extensively covered the Great March of Return protests, believes his survival was miraculous.

On 14 May last year, when demonstrations fell on a Monday to protest the US embassy move to Jerusalem, Yasir was covering protests in eastern Khan Younis.

It was a bloody day. In all, 60 unarmed demonstrators were killed and nearly 2,800 people were wounded as the Israeli military clearly felt no pressure to hold back.

Yasser was wearing the usual press vest that clearly marked him as a journalist.

It did him no favors. He was shot just above the pelvic area in the left side.

The bullet shattered his insides. Comatose, he was allowed to exit Gaza by the Israeli military and was transferred to al-Makassed hospital in East Jerusalem.

His wife and fellow journalist, Rana al-Shrafi, accompanied him. He underwent, she recalled, four emergency surgeries. Part of his stomach, the ureter, liver and spleen were removed. Doctors told Rana that his chances of survival were slim.

Somehow, he pulled through. On 27 May, nearly two weeks after he was shot, Yasser woke from his coma. The very next day, he had surgery to repair part of his ureter. The next day, he returned to Gaza.

Yasser had an appointment to return to Jerusalem on 28 August for a full checkup and to undertake additional surgery.

But shortly before he was due to go he received a phone call.

“An Israeli officer simply told me that Israel would provide those injured in the Great March of Return protests one permit only,” Yasser told The Electronic Intifada about his attempt in August to keep his appointment at al-Makassed hospital.

His condition deteriorated. He suffered from inflammation of the stomach and submitted another request for a permit to travel through the Erez checkpoint to Jerusalem. Again he was refused.

Back at work

When Yasser slipped back into a coma, he was taken to Gaza’s al-Shifa hospital where doctors diagnosed him with a kidney infection. He was treated and discharged in three days, but he was increasingly concerned about his health and growing ever more desperate to be seen by specialists in Jerusalem.

“I needed surgery in the urinary system. I submitted a third request on 7 October and a fourth request on 4 November. Both were rejected. I finally gave up hope that I would get a permit to al-Makassed again,” Yasser said.

He decided to have the surgery in Gaza at al-Quds hospital. The surgery, in November, was successful, but after a few days, doctors discovered that Yasser had been poisoned by a faulty disinfectant.

He went back to intensive care, this time spending 12 days there before being discharged.

In early January, he traveled to Egypt for a full examination. There, doctors gave him a clean bill of health and told him he could go back to work.

On 28 January, he was back covering the protests even though he is convinced – as is the UN’s mission of inquiry – that the Israeli military has deliberately targeted journalists.

View image on Twitter

yasser fathi qudih@yasserqudih84

صورة مضرب التنس
من مواجهات شرق خان يونس اليوم الجمعة#جمعة_عمال_فلسطين
تصوير-ياسر قديح

229

5:04 PM - May 4, 2018

In a year of protests from 30 March 2018, two journalists have been killed at Great March of Return protests and nearly 50 have been wounded with live ammunition, according to Al-Haq.

It is not deterring Yasser, who took one of the defining pictures of the protests, showing a demonstrator returning an Israeli-fired gas canister with a table tennis bat.

“I’m not used to staying at home,” Yasser said. “I was always in the field. I have to send a message with my camera. I am a witness.”

“I miss their smell”

On 10 August 2018, Nidal Diab, 32, joined thousands in eastern Jabaliya demonstrating for their right of return.

He had been there only minutes when he was hit in the face with a tear gas grenade.

The vegetable seller, whose family is originally from Barbara village just north of the Gaza Strip near Ashdod, was promptly taken to the Indonesian hospital in Gaza where doctors started to remove fragments from his face and head.

He lost consciousness, and a closer examination revealed that a 4-millimeter piece of shrapnel had lodged itself in his skull, causing a crack to the bone.

He was quickly moved to al-Shifa hospital, where the father of three stayed in a coma for nearly three weeks.

When he finally regained consciousness, Nidal felt numb.

“I saw a white color, and I heard a noise like the sound of a bird’s wings flapping.”

The injury turned out to be more extensive than first thought. Doctors told Nidal that the fragment had damaged a nerve center in the brain related to perception. His hearing was severely affected. He lost all sight in his left eye and all sense of smell.

The fragment remains lodged in his skull. Doctors have recommended that he get surgery outside of Gaza. But he has so far been unable to secure any support, financial or otherwise.

“I approached many organizations to help me travel, but I haven’t received a response,” Nidal told The Electronic Intifada. “I miss the smell of my children. I miss their voices and laughter.”

Reem, Nidal’s wife, said she was happy that her husband had survived, but was deeply concerned about his health.

“He still suffers from cramps after the injury and he feels dizzy all the time. I hear him crying at night.”

Despite the pain, Nidal still participates in the protests. He is, however, careful to stay far back.

And in this, he is similar to countless others who have participated in the Great March of Return and been injured as a result.

All of these individuals survived, if with damaged bodies. All of them hope that their sacrifices won’t be in vain.

All of us are inspired by their courage and their sacrifice.

Hamza Abu Eltarabesh is a journalist from Gaza

Palestinian journalist shot in head by rubber bullet while covering Gaza protest

Palestinian protesters, one of them waving a national flag, demonstrate to mark the first anniversary of the "March of Return" protests (AFP)

By MEE staff-3 May 2019 

Israel forces shot and injured a Palestinian journalist with a rubber-coated steel bullet on Friday, and three others were killed, including a 19-year-old protestor, as demonstrations continue in Gaza. 

 Safinaz Allouh was covering the ongoing Great March of Return campaign along the Gaza-Israel border fence when she was hit in the head and injured. 

East of Khan Younis, a teen identified as Raed Khalil Abu Tair was shot in the abdomen and later died from his wounds, according to the Gaza ministry of health. 

Two other Palestinians, both fighters, were shot and killed by Israeli drone strikes on a Hamas military facility in central Gaza Strip, a Gaza Health Ministry spokesman, Ashraf al-Qedra, said. Three more people were injured in the strike. It was not immediately clear if the injured were civilians or fighters. 

Palestinians have been marching for more than a year in support of the right to return to homes they were driven from during the creation of the state of Israel in 1948.

The initiative began in March 2018 after a call from local civil society urged local Palestinians to engage in a mass march towards the Gaza fence in opposition to Israel's ongoing siege on Gaza. 

The Gaza health ministry noted that since protests began, at least 272 Palestinians have been killed in Gaza by Israeli forces.

Israel has notably come under fire for targeting health workers and journalists - including paramedic Razan al-Najjar, whose killing in June prompted international outrage.

In March, a UN inquiry concluded that Israeli soldiers had intentionally maimed Palestinians protesting in Gaza over the past year, creating a generation of disabled youth. 

The UN report noted that over 80 percent of the 6,106 protestors wounded in the first nine months of the Great March of Return were shot in the lower limbs.

Healthcare providers told Middle East Eye that the pattern of wounds shows that Israeli soldiers are purposefully shooting to maim protesters, most of whom are in their 20s and now require long-term medical care.

The Alleged War Criminal in the U.N.’s Midst

Twenty-five years after the Rwandan genocide, will the U.N. at last pursue one of its own former officials?

Callixte Mbarushimana during a hearing at The Hague’s International Criminal Court on Sept. 15, 2011. FOREIGN POLICY ILLUSTRATION/JERRY LAMPEN/AFP/GETTY IMAGES

BY COLUM LYNCH

 | MAY 3, 2019, 12:59 PM
Charles Petrie, a retired senior official at the United Nations, has devoted a fair chunk of the past quarter century of his life to a single crusade: securing the prosecution of a former U.N. employee, Callixte Mbarushimana, for allegedly overseeing the murder of 32 people, including three other U.N. workers, in Rwanda during that country’s 1994 genocide.

So far, the endeavor has been an unmitigated bust. But in an effort to breathe new life into the case on the 25th anniversary of the genocide, Petrie has prodded U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres to support a long-standing attempt by Rwandan survivors in France to hold Mbarushimana and other alleged Rwandan mass murderers accountable.

In a March 25 letter to the U.N. chief, Petrie threw new light on a scandal that has largely remained within the U.N. walls, alleging that U.N. officials failed to pursue one of their own employees in the aftermath of the slaughter and even kept him on the payroll for years.

As the genocide of Tutsis by Hutus began in April 1994, and the U.N. withdrew most of its force of 2,500, Mbarushimana, then a computer technician with the U.N. Development Program (UNDP) in Rwanda, declared himself the agency’s officer-in-chief. He seized control of UNDP’s assets, including Motorola radio handsets, and more than 25 U.N. vehicles, making them available to the Rwandan military, which used them to hunt down Tutsi victims who were suspected of serving as a kind of fifth column for the Tutsi-dominated Rwandan Patriotic Army, according to an indictment prepared by a prosecutor for the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR). He also pointed the military to the homes of several U.N. employees who were later killed, said the indictment, which charged Mbarushimana with overseeing the murder of 32 people in all.

He later eluded prosecution by the U.N. war crimes tribunal for Rwanda and dodged extradition to Rwanda from Kosovo, where he continued to work for the U.N. He has been arrested on war crimes charges in Germany and France, only to be released. Last year, a French judge, Emmanuelle Ducos, concluded that she had insufficient evidence to proceed with a trial. Her successor, Stéphanie Tacheau, will soon weigh whether there is enough evidence to drop the case altogether.

Mbarushimana declined to comment through his lawyer, Laurence Garapin, who said the French investigation is proceeding in secret. “As a lawyer, I am also obliged by this secret,” she told Foreign Policy by email. “My client is waiting also for the conclusions of investigations, and until then, he does not wish to make any comment.” But Mbarushimana has previously denied any role in killing U.N. employees or anyone else during the Rwandan genocide.

The new appeal to the U.N. secretary-general is part of a wider effort by Petrie (who has been trying to track down eyewitnesses from Rwanda) and lawyers representing the survivors to collect more evidence of Mbarushimana’s alleged crimes to persuade Tacheau to pursue a trial.

In his letter, Petrie claims the U.N. shares the blame for Mbarushimana’s flight from justice, charging that it failed to conduct a proper investigation into the killings a quarter century ago and subsequently suppressed a critical internal review commissioned by Mbarushimana’s then-employer, the UNDP, of the U.N.’s mishandling of the case. When a French judge requested a copy of the UNDP review back in 2011, the U.N.’s top lawyer at the time denied in writing that such a document existed, according to a copy of the lawyer’s letter to the French judge, which was viewed by Foreign Policy. “Surprisingly, when asked for a copy of the internal investigation that was undertaken by UNDP in November-December 2004, the Office of Legal Affairs denied that such a report existed,” Petrie wrote to Guterres.

The French investigation into Mbarushimana was triggered by a 2008 complaint by a group of survivors known as the Collective of Civil Parties for Rwanda, or CPCR, which first initiated legal efforts to prosecute alleged Rwandan mass murderers living in France back in 2001. The case has been gradually unraveling as eyewitnesses who testified against Mbarushimana before investigators with the ICTR more than 18 years ago have “retracted their testimonies, been killed or disappeared,” Petrie wrote to Guterres. Petrie said he has contacted a key witness who is prepared to confirm testimony to international investigators. But she fears testifying at trial. “She knows that Callixte Mbarushimana remains a key member of the FDLR, and fears for the safety of her children,” Petrie wrote. The FDLR is the French acronym for a rebel Hutu militia called the Democratic Forces for the Liberation of Rwanda.

“The French judicial process is coming to an end, from what I know—there is probably insufficient cause to take the case to trial,” Petrie told Foreign Policy by email. “I am asking the new secretary general [to] instruct the U.N. to collaborate with the French judge, meaning 1) release all documents in the possession of UNDP and the rest of the U.N. system 2) protect and support U.N. staff who have information that could be of value for a case 3) consider constituting itself as a plaintiff.”

The UNDP review, whose findings have been reported previously, delivered a damning assessment of the agency’s handling of the crisis. “The organization has failed, at every step of the way, to pursue the case of CM [Callixte Mbarushimana] to a satisfactory conclusion,” the report stated. “Not only were the charges against him never properly investigated, but he was never held accountable for his actions.”

“[The U.N.] failed to provide its national staff with a minimum of protection during the emergency,” the report added. “Until now, the murder of a large number of the staff is yet to be properly investigated, at least to bring the tragic episode to a closure.”

Petrie appealed to the U.N. chief to cooperate fully with the French legal effort to prosecute Mbarushimana and the others—or at least to supply the French with all the information it requested back in 2011. He also urged Guterres to use U.N. resources to “find and protect” any witnesses, some of whom remain employed by the United Nations.

The U.N. leader’s chief of staff, Maria Luiza Ribeiro Viotti, made no concrete commitments to Petrie but noted that Guterres and his predecessors have followed the case closely. “We have been cooperating on this matter over the years with several judicial authorities both at the domestic and at the international level,” Guterres’s spokesman, Stéphane Dujarric, told Foreign Policy. “This cooperation has included the sharing of documents and consenting to the interview of United Nations staff by judicial authorities. The United Nations will continue to cooperate with any similar judicial cooperation request concerning this case in the future, in accordance with its rules and regulations.”


Petrie has long been trying to raise public awareness of a case that has remained a stain on the organization and to raise money for the group of victims. He has joined forces with a graphic illustrator, Spike Zephaniah Stephenson, to produce a book—The Triumph of Evil—that tracks Petrie’s effort to hold Mbarushimana accountable. They have set up a crowdfunding site to raise funds to publish the book. Half of the proceeds from sales will go to funding the book. The rest will be split evenly among Petrie, Stephenson, and the survivors’ collective, which will use it to support its legal campaign.

The Rwandan genocide marks one of the darkest chapters in human history since the Holocaust. In April 1994, Rwanda’s Hutu-dominated government, backed by armed militias, undertook the systematic slaughter of more than 800,000 ethnic Tutsi and moderate Hutus. It also serves as a low point in the history of the United Nations, which dismissed prior warnings of a pending mass killing and withdrew from the country once it began, leaving the population, including local U.N. employees, to fend for itself.

The killing was triggered by the April 6, 1994, assassination of Rwanda’s then-president, Juvénal Habyarimana, whose plane was shot down with surface-to-air missiles as it prepared to land in Kigali’s airport. During the next three months, Hutu extremists in the army, backed by Hutu militia, known as the Interahamwe, murdered whole communities of ethnic Tutsi, Twa, and moderate Hutus and executed 10 Belgian peacekeepers serving under the U.N. flag.

The violence led to the collapse of the U.N. mission in Rwanda, when Mbarushimana took over the UNDP. “During April, May and June 1994, Callixte Mbarushimana, contrary to his duty to protect UNDP employees from threat, violence or killings, disclosed to the soldiers, guards, Interahamwe, other militiamen and/or armed civilians, hiding places of Tutsi employees of UNDP. When he disclosed this information, Callixte Mbarushimana knew or should have known that the Tutsi UNDP employees could get killed,” the ICTR indictment read.

Among the dead was Florence Ngirumpatse, a U.N. personnel officer who was slaughtered in her home along with 10 others, including two 8-year-old children, according to witness testimony before the ICTR. Their murders—which took place sometime between April and May 1994—were attributed to Mbarushimana.

Between April 10 and April 17, Mbarushimana also led a group of soldiers and militia to the home of Augustine Ntashamanje, a driver for the World Food Program, where they “killed all persons perceived to be of Tutsi ethnic or racial group as part of a process to destroy in whole or in part, a Tutsi population, as a group,” according to the same indictment prepared by a tribunal investigator. The indictment, which drew on witness testimony from former U.N. employees, ex-militia members, and survivors, was never signed by the tribunal’s chief prosecutor, Carla Del Ponte, who ultimately dropped the case.

Following the genocide, Mbarushimana presumably fled Rwanda after a Tutsi-dominated insurgency took control of the country, driving the Hutu military and militia members across the border into eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo, where the former military established the rebel FDLR.

Despite allegations of wrongdoing, Mbarushimana encountered little difficulty in finding U.N. work, first in Angola and later in Kosovo, where he was detained in April 2001 on a Rwandan warrant and fired from his U.N. job. Kosovo’s Supreme Court rejected the extradition request on the grounds that there was “insufficient evidence to support a reasonable suspicion” that Mbarushimana had committed crimes. In September 2002, the ICTR withdrew its plans to indict Mbarushimana amid pressure from the U.N. Security Council to wind down all but the most serious cases of mass killing.

Mbarushimana appealed his firing before U.N. administrative tribunals and won twice. In a grotesque twist, a U.N. administrative tribunal treated Mbarushimana as the victim, awarding him 13 months back pay, about $45,000, in 2004 for the violation of his rights to employment. The U.N. judges argued that Mbarushimana had been fired earlier from his job in Kosovo on the basis of unproven allegations of mass murder. His U.N. supervisor, they noted, had rated his performance as “good.”

Mbarushimana, meanwhile, went on to a leadership position in the FDLR. In 2010, the International Criminal Court (ICC) prosecutor charged him with eight counts of war crimes and five counts of crimes against humanity for alleged atrocities in Congo. But that case was dropped by judges from the ICC pre-trial chamber, and Mbarushimana was released in December 2011.

“One would say that Callixte Mbarushimana was born with a silver spoon in his mouth. How else to explain the way he has been able to escape all attempts to get him to account for his actions,” Petrie said. “It is just incomprehensible how lucky this guy has been. Or is it really only a case of luck?”

EU envoy admits he doesn’t really care about Palestinian rights

Federica Mogherini, the EU’s foreign policy chief, greets Benjamin Netanyahu during his 2017 visit to Brussels. (Council of the European Union)

David Cronin -3 May 2019

Oscar Wilde wrote that “the truth is rarely pure and never simple.”

The French diplomat Gerard Araud has – unintentionally, no doubt – overturned that observation. He has shown how the truth is often simple and rarely accepted.

Shortly before stepping down as ambassador to Washington, Araud remarked that Israel is already an apartheid state.

The brief comment – made in an interview published by The Atlantic – predictably drew a hostile responsefrom Israel’s supporters.

Once the Israeli government protested, Araud claimed he had only been referring to the occupied West Bank. I challenged Araud on Twitter about why he was backpedaling on something as obvious as the fact that Israel is an apartheid state; Araud replied by effectively retracting his comment:

David Cronin@dvcronin

 · Apr 30, 2019

Why are you backpedaling @GerardAraud? Is it not obvious that Israel is an apartheid state?

Gérard Araud

✔@GerardAraud

I am not backpedaling. Israël is not an apartheid state. Why this issue is attracting so much passion from both sides?

2

4:56 AM - Apr 30, 2019

Araud was previously posted in Tel Aviv and appears to keep a close eye on Israeli politics.

He is surely aware that Benjamin Netanyahu, the prime minister, confirmed in March that Israel is not a state of all its citizens.

What is the best word to describe a state where one racial or ethnic group dominates over another? You’ve guessed it: apartheid.

Araud is surely aware, too, that last year the Knesset – Israel’s parliament – passed the so-called Nation-State Law. By restricting the right of self-determination to Jews and by removing Arabic as an official language, it similarly confirmed that Palestinians living in Israel are unwanted.

Despite his apparent U-turn, Araud remains more candid than some other representatives of Western governments.

Federica Mogherini, the European Union’s foreign policy chief, has described the Nation-State Law as “first and foremost a matter of how Israel choses to define itself,” adding that “we fully respect the internal Israeli debate on this.”

Through the Nation-State Law, Israel defined itself as an apartheid state in all but name. That is the reality which Federica Mogherini has undertaken to “fully respect.”

Autocratic

Israel has combined efforts to enshrine apartheid in a quasi-constitutional law – a “basic law,” to use its official title – with propaganda drives aimed at selling the state as progressive.

Hosting the Eurovision Song Contest and depicting – fraudulently – Israel as a beacon for gay, lesbian and transgender rights are among the more visible manifestations of such propaganda.

As Israel becomes increasingly autocratic under Netanyahu’s premiership, it is refusing to tolerate even mild protests by foreign diplomats.

Emanuele Giaufret, the EU’s envoy to Tel Aviv, was reportedly reprimanded last year for noting his displeasure with the Nation-State Law during conversations with elected politicians from Netanyahu’s party, Likud.

Giaufret’s main misgiving was that the law could damage Israel’s reputation. Does he really think advising Israel’s elite on image management is part of his job?

Since then, Giaufret has been eager to downplay any friction between him and the Israeli government.

In a recent article for The Jerusalem Post, he celebrated how Israel’s trade with the EU is now worth more than $40 billion per year. While Israel and the EU may have differences of opinion, “we cannot allow them to overshadow our entire relations,” he wrote.

Somewhere in that groveling, there is a grain of truth.

The EU’s relations with Israel are covered by a legally binding “association agreement” – which entered into effect 19 years ago. The accord describes respect for human rights and democratic principles as an “essential element” of the relations.

Ensuring an end to the oppression of the Palestinians must overshadow everything else – if that agreement is taken seriously.

Emanuele Giaufret seems to be arguing, though, that even if he may quibble with Israel on certain matters, business should either carry on as normal or expand.

In his own way, Giaufret is acknowledging that the EU does not really care about Palestinian rights, and that the fate of millions of Palestinians, ethnically cleansed, dispossessed and living under decades of military occupation, siege and violence amounts to a minor difference of opinion.

Not once since the agreement came into force has the EU invoked its human rights clause to sanction Israel. Worse, the Union has consistently hugged Israel tighter by seeking to increase trade and by showering science grants on its weapons manufacturers.

EU in Israel

✔@EUinIsrael

The EU and Israel enjoy strong mutually beneficial relations The EU is Israel first economic partner and a strong political ally fully committed to its security and well being. The EU and its Member States are one and the same, foreign policy decisions are adopted unanimously.

52

11:33 AM - Nov 1, 2018

Giaufret’s implicit admission that Palestinian rights don’t matter to him is at odds with the myths he and his colleagues perpetuate.

When the Knesset resumed proceedings after the April elections, the EU’s embassy in Tel Aviv issued a characteristically dishonest message on Twitter. It marveled at a declaration about the importance of equality delivered during the opening session.

View image on Twitter

EU in Israel

✔@EUinIsrael

Attending the inaugural sitting of the 21st @KnessetIL and the wise words of @PresidentRuvi calling for respect, civil courage, freedom of thought and equality of all citizens

24

9:05 AM - Apr 30, 2019

I don’t believe that tweet can be interpreted as a subtle protest. Giaufret regularly promotes Israel as an exemplar of “coexistence” – a term he apparently likes – between Jews and Palestinians:

Emanuele Giaufret@EGiaufretEU

I gave the kick off for Hapoel Abu Gosh Mevaseret - SC Rishon Letzion for their last match of the season. In Abu Gosh-Mevaseret Jews and Arabs players play and have fun together, wonderful spirit and example of coexistence, on the pitch and in the changing room!
Shabbat Shalom!

21

7:13 AM - Apr 5, 2019

Giaufret has plenty of information at his disposal to show how the opposite is the case. He and his colleagues have decided to ignore that evidence.

Why, they must wonder, should the truth overshadow trade?