Denijal Jegić unpacks the European Union’s proclamations on Palestine, arguing that the racism contained therein are not exceptional, but foundational to European ideas of itself.
The Zionist colonial project is fundamental to Europe’s understanding of itself and the rest of the world. Europe needs its projection of the inferior other in order to construct itself as ‘civilized’. Palestine remains a crucial site of an ongoing European genocidal settler-colonial advance and a mechanism of meaning-making for European identity and the realization of white supremacy and other racist fantasies.
The new Israeli government has been described by some commentators as the most far-right regime in Israel’s history. While the most recent government may be more outspoken about its genocidal intentions and might increase its violent policies against Palestinians, it does not represent an extreme deviation from mainstream Zionist politics. In fact, all forms of Zionism, be they liberal, religious, or qualified with any other adjectives, are based on a settler-colonial conquest which, at its core, is genocidal.
The new Israeli government continues to transparently promote its racist ideologies. Netanyahu announced further expansion of illegal settlements and, effectively, a strengthening of the apartheid structures by furthering Jewish supremacy in Palestine, proclaiming: “Jewish people have an exclusive and unquestionable right to all areas of the Land of Israel.” While the israeli apartheid regime is transparently communicating its genocidal approach, Israel’s backers in Brussels and Washington reacted with familiar enthusiasm. Some progressive voices may have anticipated an international reaction or criticism against Israel. However, the diplomatic reactions seemed familiar, reminiscent of previous situations when Netanyahu was elected and formed an ultra-right wing government. Any expectations that the European Union or the United States may react to the more transparent rhetoric of the Israeli regime fail to understand the structural connection between the Israeli colony and its enablers. Not only is Israel a European settler-colonial outpost in Western Asia. Its continued existence in its current forms as an apartheid regime necessitates the continuity of multifaceted forms of colonial violence.
Political leaders of the European Union could not hide their enthusiasm and continued their excited copy/pasting of a standard EU political communication. The highest representatives of the European Union warmly welcomed the new Israeli government. Congratulating Netanyahu, Ursula von der Leyen, President of the EU Commission, said she was “looking forward to working on strengthening our partnership, promoting peace in the Middle East and addressing the shockwaves of Russia’s war against Ukraine.” EU Vice President Josep Borrell congratulated the new Israeli minister of Foreign Affairs, also “[l]ooking forward to working with you on further improving EU-Israel relations.” “We have a lot to do together”, Borrell added, claiming “[t]he EU is ready to contribute to a revival of #MEPP & to promote a 2 state solution.” Borrell even offered a hashtag to a so-called “Middle East Peace Process”. Similarly, the EU’s special representative for this “process”, Sven Koopmans, congratulated Netanyahu “on returning as [Israeli Prime Minister].” Koopmans expressed his “hope to work closely with the new government to contribute to a lasting peace that brings long-term security, rights and co-existence for Israelis, Palestinians and all their neighbours.” Not only does the European Union promise an even stronger cooperation, thus rewarding the israeli regime for its continuous human rights violations, it also continues its engineering of propaganda on behalf of the Zionist colony and thus perpetuates the creation of consent for anti-Palestinian violence.
The new israeli regime continues to promote the ideology that the colony has been built on, i.e., settler-colonial conquest, racist segregation, and concepts of ethnic and religious supremacy. There is no so-called “Peace Process” nor a “Two-State Solution”. Nor do these terms have any concrete meaning. Rather, in European political discourse, they serve as propagandistic distractions to Israeli violence and, in fact, potential euphemisms for genocide.
The Israeli regime has killed more than one Palestinian per day since the beginning of the year. In addition to the structural genocidal violence, recent Israeli attacks include the bloodbath in Jenin, in which Israeli forces killed nine Palestinians, including children in “the deadliest single Israeli operation in the West Bank since at least 2005.”
No atrocity committed by the Israeli regime is ever brutal enough for Israel’s backers in Brussels. Not only has the EU not condemned the targeted killing of Palestinian children and elderly, it has not even named the perpetrator. Rather, EU bureaucrats have once again distorted the situation, gaslighting European and international audiences.
The European reactions to the latest atrocity in Jenin are exemplary of the colonial structure of these regimes’ political communication. Koopmans shared “the deep concerns” of UN Special Coordinator for the so-called “Middle East Peace Process”, Norwegian diplomat Tor Wennesland, who had issued a statement that claimed: “I am deeply alarmed and saddened by the continuing cycle of violence in the occupied West Bank. The deaths today of nine Palestinians, including militants and one woman, during an Israeli arrest operation in Jenin is another stark example.” Wennesland further urged “Israeli and Palestinian authorities to de-escalate tensions, restore calm, and avoid further conflict.”
This short statement appears characteristic of numerous racist tropes that have been prominent in the Western diplomatic grammar on Palestine for decades. It commences with the expression of an emotion, such as worry, sadness, or, in this case, concern. This is followed by an outright sugarcoating of Israeli violence, in which the Western diplomat offers euphemisms on Israel’s behalf. A rather passive “death” becomes the key word rather than “killing”, “murder”, or other more concrete descriptions. Similarly, the actual action of the Israeli regime is not referred to as a targeted attack or atrocity, or a result of the brutal apartheid regime, but rather as an “arrest operation”, thus offering further legitimacy for the apartheid violence. Palestinians are not civilians, or victims of colonization, but rather “militants”. This dehumanization of Palestinian victims further constructs them as justifiable targets. Orientalist notions of alleged perpetual chaos are evident in the term “cycle of violence”, which, at the same time, cleverly distorts the power relations and equates the occupier and the colonized population as equally responsible. The Western diplomat calls on both Israeli and Palestinian authorities, thus rhetorically converting the clear imbalance between a first world, Western-backed and nuclear-armed colonial regime with defenseless indigenous people. This equation also obscures the lack of legitimacy of the PA and its colonial cooperation with the apartheid regime. Once the fallacy of “both sides” is rhetorically established, the Western diplomat evokes an equal share of responsibility, which then enables him to euphemize the genocide in Palestine into “tensions” and a “conflict”. This rhetoric culminates in the demand to indigenous people to “de-escalate”, “restore calm”, and “avoid further tensions”, thus blaming Palestinians for their own deaths.
This approach appears indeed characteristic of the EU’s political communication about Palestine. Official reactions to Israeli violence which not only fail to identify Israel as the perpetrator, but in fact blame the victims, further enable the Israeli regime’s continuous perpetuation of the same violence. Throughout the years, the European Union has produced a considerable archive of alleged concern. Bureaucrats continue to copy and paste the same phrases. Besides constantly appearing “deeply concerned”, “worried”, or “disturbed”, the EU has peddled colonial propaganda on behalf of the israeli regime and perpetuated myths about an alleged “Peace Process” and “Two-State Solution” while reaffirming Israel’s alleged “right to defend itself” through the EU’s preferred key phrases, such as “shared values”, “democracy”, “freedom”, and “human rights”.
In the European political dictionary then, the Israeli settler-colonial expansion can easily be referred to as a “peace process”. The underlying ideology of Zionism, colonial and genocidal in its nature, becomes part of European “shared values”. Indeed, there is no contradiction. Europe’s strong position in the world today can be traced back to its colonial invasions and exploitation of the rest of the world. Europeans mutilated, killed, exploited, and enslaved indigenous people, stole their resources and committed numerous genocides. Europeans justified their barbarism through racist fantasies and civilizational discourses which survive until today. France, in its genocides in Algeria and elsewhere, used secularism as a means to deprive indigenous people of their culture, language, religion, and history and to establish a European Christian dominance. The Zionist settler-colonial ideology emerged at the height of European colonialism and shares the fundamental features of European colonialism.
The EU’s fanatic support for the Israeli colony needs to be viewed within a context of global apartheid. Palestine thus serves as a symbol of the European Union’s broader outlook on the world, in which Europe views itself as morally superior and economically advanced, while identifying the overwhelming majority of the world’s population as potential demographic threats. The idea of Europe as a civilized exception in an uncivilized world, which formed the base for Europe’s colonial genocides, continues to be reproduced by European leaders. Fantasies of racist superiority continue to characterize the European self-understanding.
Josep Borrell recently proclaimed his colonial metaphor that constructs Europe as a garden and the rest of the world as a jungle. While the racist implications were obvious in Borrell’s rhetoric, his words appear rather representative of certain contemporary European political identities that continue to uphold the continent’s colonial and genocidal legacy. “Europe is a garden,” Borrel declared. “We have built a garden. Everything works. It is the best combination of political freedom, economic prosperity and social cohesion that humankind has been able to build,” he added. The Spanish politician, who held various political positions within the last 36 years, including EU president and Spain’s minister of foreign affairs, imagines his continent as the peak of human civilization. Borrell’s metaphor of the jungle and the garden represents another realization of the continuous fantasy of European superiority.
While Europe is supposedly free and prosperous, the rest of the world is, according to Borrell, “not exactly a garden”, but “a jungle” which “could invade the garden.” This rhetoric evokes the illusion that Europe was a unique place because it had achieved something superior and unprecedented, that the comfort that European citizens have stemmed from intellectual achievements or civilizational progress, rather than from colonial exploitation. The core of European identity, that is the idea of Europe as morally superior and economically advanced, only works as long as there is a construction of a culturally inferior, evil, and backward “other”. In this dominant discourse, Europe defines itself primarily in opposition to the racist fantasies it has about much of the rest of the world. At a time of heightened crises in Europe, Borrell’s comments exemplify the continuing centrality of Orientalism in the understanding of the self and the other in European terms. Borrell’s speech thus reflects the essence of European self-understanding. Europe is racist.
At the same time, the EU constructs a ‘civilized’ discourse around its racist ideologies in order to prevent actual conversations about apartheid, which have legal implications, to emerge. In January 2023, Borrell issued a statement, claiming that according to the EU Commission “it is not appropriate to use the term apartheid in connection with the State of Israel.” Referring to the controversial IHRA definition, the statement identifies that “[c]laiming that the existence of a State of Israel is a racist endeavour is amongst the illustrative examples included under the IHRA definition.” It cannot be expected that the EU would value indigenous Palestinian voices, which have been muted in Western diplomatic discourse for a century. But at a time, when even several Western and israeli organizations have, even within their liberal Zionist framework that denies the colonial dimensions and legitimacy of resistance, identified the situation in Palestine as an apartheid regime, the European Union holds on to its traditional position and weaponizes antisemitism to silence discourses about human rights violations. The statement further claims: “The EU remains committed to a negotiated two-State solution, based on international law, the 1967 lines, with equivalent land swaps, as may be agreed between the parties, with the State of Israel and an independent, democratic, contiguous, sovereign and viable State of Palestine, living side by side in peace, security and mutual recognition.” This is yet another illustration of the EU’s creation of propaganda and perpetuation of myths on behalf of its colony.
The European Union aggressively protects and promotes Israeli crimes. While the Israeli settler-colonial regime is committing a genocide of the indigenous population and openly promoting policies that justify the settler-colonial conquest, it is in particular the European Union that has invested significant efforts in legitimizing Israeli violence by establishing an entire bureaucratic apparatus based on colonial fantasies such as the “Middle East Peace Process” and reproducing an Orientalist discourse that not only blames the indigenous people for their own suffering, but romanticizes Israel’s genocide into Europe’s “shared values”.
Denijal Jegić is Visiting Assistant Professor of Communication at the Lebanese American University (LAU) in Beirut, where he teaches Communication and Multimedia Journalism. His multidisciplinary research focuses on critical theory, media representations, media activism, historiography of communication, colonialism and resistance, and lies at the intersection of media, literature, and cultural studies.
