OPINION ARTICLES

Libeling Israel for Hamas's crimes has become standard procedure.

The lies of Josep Borrell

Double standards and lying are two of the best-known symptoms of antisemitism.

2024-03-22 by Fiamma Nirenstein


(March 20, 2024 / JNS) It’s easy, the door is open. Given that Israel is now routinely called genocidal, colonialist and imperialist; given that mobs are hunting Jews on university campuses and in the streets; E.U. High Representative for Foreign Affairs Josep Borrell should have no trouble joining in the fun.

 

Indeed, Borrell has effectively done so already with his accusation that Israel uses hunger as a weapon of war. That’s a lie, of course, but so are the other accusations, and nobody cares. Antisemitism is fertile soil, so the horrible accusation of starving children can metastasize as quickly as any other blood libel.

 

Borrell, however, surely knows that he’s lying. At the moment, 80% more trucks loaded with food are entering Gaza than before the war. Pre-Oct. 7, there were 70 trucks per day; there are now 126 on average and the number is growing. Israel places no limits on aid and has opened new routes to deliver it.

 

Unfortunately, Hamas and other malign actors are doing everything in their power to stop the aid from getting to the people Borrell supposedly cares about. Last week, for example, six trucks entering via a new route were forcibly seized, likely by Hamas and local criminal gangs.

 

So, the problem is not the lack of food, of which Hamas has already accumulated great quantities. The problem is Hamas. As long as the terror group reigns, it will steal the food and use it to feed its terrorists or sell it on the black market.

 

Of course, all this could end if Hamas releases the remaining hostages and then simply surrenders. Indeed, it would end if Hamas accepts the offered six-week ceasefire, for which it would receive a thousand murderers of innocent civilians in exchange for a few dozen hostages. But that, we know, will never happen.

 

If Borrell is not a liar, then he lacks any moral clarity whatsoever. It seems that he does not even know what starvation-induced extermination actually looks like. Despite being ostensibly tasked with foreign affairs, he appears not to have seen the heartbreaking images from Sudan, where Islamist militias are demanding slaves in exchange for food. Some 250,000 Sudanese children are dying of hunger at the whim of the barbarians. Their parents must kneel before these monsters and hand over their children to an unthinkable slavery. But not a word is heard about them.

 

Double standards and lying are two of the best-known symptoms of antisemitism. Here, they go together.