EU’s anti-Israel foreign minister steps down

Josep Borrell was a fierce critic whose last statements demanded that all EU states enforce ICC arrest warrants against Israeli leaders.

By Batya Jerenberg, World Israel News

Josep Borrell, the European Union’s foreign affairs chief, stepped down Saturday as his five-year term came to an end, causing most Israelis to breathe a sigh of relief.

The High Representative of the Union for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy had been a fierce critic of the Jewish state, especially over its conduct of the war against Hamas in the Gaza Strip.

Some detractors call the Spanish politician “obsessed” with Israel, rather than focusing on problems much closer to home.

Ynet counted Borrell’s posts about the Palestinians and Israel and found that in the last nine months he had tweeted 127 times about it, twice as many as about the Ukraine-Russia war on the EU doorstep that has the real potential of spilling over into neighboring, member states.

The posts are full of condemnations of Israeli “massacres” and other unproven allegations, with barely a nod to the fact that Hamas sparked the ongoing war by brutally massacring 1,200 people, the vast majority of them civilians, and taking 251 hostage in a surprise invasion last October 7, with 101 still being held captive.

He has also called for concrete action to be taken to put pressure on the Jewish state to end the war and the “humanitarian crisis” in the enclave.

At an EU foreign ministers’ meeting earlier this month, Borrell proposed the suspension of political dialogue with Israel and a ban on importing “products from illegal settlements” due to its alleged human rights violations in the Gaza Strip, which Jerusalem strongly denies.

It did not pass because such decisions must be unanimous, and several states did not support the motion, including Germany, Austria, Hungary and the Czech Republic.

As his final act, on Thursday Borrell said all EU member states must “support fully the International [Criminal] Court” and not “undermine” its arrest warrants for Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and former defense minister Yoav Gallant on war crimes charges relating the Israel-Hamas war.

Several EU members have said they will not arrest the two if they visit, including Hungary and France.

Borrell also castigated Israeli society, saying it was “being colonized from the inside by extremism and violent people.”

The outgoing foreign minister has been leading the effort to financially sanction Jewish residents of Judea and Samaria on the basis of unproven accusations of harming Palestinians in the region, following the lead of the Biden administration.

Former prime minister of Estonia Kaja Kallas, who is considered much more amenable to Israel, will be the EU’s new foreign policy chief.