A prominent member of the European Parliament is demanding an official investigation into the role of a high-level European Union civil servant in an Israel lobby smear campaign targeting her.
Ana Gomes, a center-left lawmaker from Portugal, is being denounced by Israel lobby groups as anti-Semitic after she publicly criticized them for attempting to block her from hosting Palestinian human rights campaigner Omar Barghouti for a talk at the European Parliament in Brussels last week.
The Israel lobby groups’ accusations against Gomes were then amplified by Katharina von Schnurbein, the EU’s top official charged with fighting anti-Semitism, and by the EU embassy in Tel Aviv, known officially as the European Union Delegation to Israel.
Gomes made her call Wednesday in a letter to Jean-Claude Juncker, the president of the European Commission – the EU’s governing bureaucracy – and EU foreign policy chief Federica Mogherini.
“I demand an investigation into the smear campaign directed against me, as an elected MEP [member of the European Parliament], by someone at the EU Delegation to Israel and Ms. von Schnurbein,” the letter states.
In line with the practice common to democratic systems, EU civil servants are required to remain politically neutral, which makes the public attack on Gomes – an elected politician – by von Schnurbein and the EU embassy in Tel Aviv an extraordinary breach of this obligation.
Gomes has also lodged her complaint with the European Ombudsman, an independent body charged with investigating allegations of wrongdoing at EU institutions.
A “perverse lobby”
On 28 February, Gomes hosted a seminar on the boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS) movement with Omar Barghouti.
Barghouti is one of the founders of the nonviolent grassroots human rights campaign and winner of the 2017 Gandhi Peace Award.
At the opening of the seminar, Gomes noted that discussions about Palestinian human rights used to be much more common, “but they became more and more rare in this parliament as a result of a very perverse lobby that tries to intimidate people.”
Gomes added that she had been subjected to such pressure in the days before the seminar by groups that “tell a lot of lies” and “misconstrue the words of many scholars.”
Watch @AnaGomesMEP defame Jewish groups as a "very perverse lobby" that tells "a lot of lies" & uses "intimidation tactics."
In response, the AJC Transatlantic Institute denounced Gomes’ remarks as “anti-Semitic,” claimed she was “demonizing Jewish civil society organizations” and demanded “disciplinary action” against her by her parliamentary faction.
The AJC Transatlantic Institute is the Brussels office of the American Jewish Committee, a lobbying organization that says it “advocates for Israel at the highest levels” from “the hallways of the UN in New York, to the corridors of the European Union.”
The EU’s Katharina von Schnurbein retweeted the AJC Transatlantic Institute’s attack, claiming that Gomes’ objections to being censored by political groups working for Israel amounted to “vile anti-Semitic expressions.”
Ali Abunimah- 9 March 2018
