Israel is bombing Gaza to create tourist paradise: ex-EU official

Ex-European Commission vice-president Josep Borrell likens Israel’s actions in Gaza to Nazi extermination campaigns against Jews.

By Lauren Marcus, World Israel News

A former senior European Union official said last week that Israel is “ethnically cleansing” the Gaza Strip in order to turn the coastal enclave into a tourist zone.

Josep Borrell, a vehement critic of the Jewish state who served as the European Commission’s vice president, slammed Israel during an acceptance speech for the Charles V European Award in Spain.

“We are witnessing the largest ethnic cleansing operation since the end of World War II for the sole purpose of creating a splendid holiday destination once the millions of tons of Gaza’s rubble are cleared and the Palestinians are either gone or dead,” Borrell claimed during his speech.

Israel is “systematically using hunger against the civilian population as a weapon of war and causing with its bombings more than 50,000 deaths in Gaza, most of them women and children. The explosive force dropped on Gaza has been equivalent to three times the Hiroshima bomb,” the ex-diplomat added, without providing evidence for his claims.

Notably, Borell did not distinguish between the deaths of combatants and civilians during the war, and he cited casualty numbers that even Hamas has admitted are exaggerated.

“We use a double standard when judging crimes against humanity, depending on who commits them,” Borell said, referring to the Babyn Yar massacre in Ukraine, one of the largest single-day Nazi slaughters of  Jews during World War II.

Borrell then compared Israel’s actions against Hamas in Gaza to the Nazi genocide campaign targeting Jews.

“One can die from a bullet to the head. One can die in a gas chamber. One can also die of hunger. In all cases, it is the will to exterminate a people,” he said.

“The horror of Hamas does not justify the horror of Israel’s response.”