Europe’s Gaza blindspot is boomeranging home

(Brussels) - Beware of the Gaza boomerang effect.

For two and a half years, European elites have behaved as though Palestinian lives belong in a separate moral category.

In this detached, parallel, universe, the principles of international law and human rights commitments do not apply. Palestinians’ dispossession, detention, starvation and genocide are “deeply regretted” - but never seriously enough to trigger meaningful sanctions against Israel.

The consequences of that moral collapse are now coming home.

Scholars and anti-colonial thinkers have long warned that when a political system becomes comfortable with the dehumanisation of one people, the logic does not remain neatly contained. It travels, mutates and rebounds.

And so, as predicted, the EU’s blindspot over the genocide in Gaza is now returning home like a boomerang, impacting on the rights and everyday lives of European citizens.

For proof look no further than Europe’s performative outrage at the horrific and degrading treatment of European citizens abducted by Israeli forces who stormed a Gaza aid flotilla in international waters.

Such a revolting diplay of cruelty against EU citizens should have caused a political uproar in Brussels and other European capitals. But it did not.

Yes, the condemnations of Israeli actions were slightly stronger than usual.

Waking from his usual diplomatic torpor, European Council President António Costa declared himself “appalled” by the “completely unacceptable” treatment of flotilla members and called for their immediate release.

National leaders followed by saying they were “deeply disturbed”, “indignant”, “shocked and appalled”. Some even summoned Israeli envoys - the diplomatic equivalent of sending an irritated urgent email.

Only Spain and a few other states seem to think something more is needed and renewed calls to suspend the EU-Israel Association Agreement and impose EU wide sanctions on Israeli minister for national security Itamar Ben-Gvir.

The painful reality is that the indifference Europe has cultivated toward Palestinian suffering has come back home.

The same European leaders who failed to call out Israel’s systemic abuse of Palestinian prisoners - now documented even by mainstream Western media - have done little more than wring their hands as Israel humiliates EU citizens. They watch passively as peaceful pro-Palestinian marches across Europe face police violence, intimidation and restrictions.

And since they are not shocked by Israel’s killing of Palestinian journalists, doctors, nurses, academics, aid workers and poets - and thousands of thousands of children - they care little when students and academics in Europe are disciplined for speech that would once have fallen comfortably within democratic norms.

Once you have stayed silent in the face of the destruction of Palestinian academic and cultural institutions, it is easy to look away when similar entities in Europe cancel artists and authors for showing empathy for Palestinians, when journalists self-censor to keep their jobs or EU officials are harassed and intimidated because of their stance on Gaza.

It is all par for the course. Attacks on human dignity become normal, acceptable, routine. They become banal even as they corrode from within.

The moral numbing that began with the acceptance of unbearable Palestinian suffering has spread inward, eating away at our conscience, our values and our humanity.

And yet, if our democracies are to survive, European citizens need to know that their citizenship ensures legal protection, equal dignity and the certainty that if a foreign state humiliates or harms them, their country’s government and European institutions will come to their defense.

They need to know that the abuse of European citizens has serious consequences on the EU’s relationship with the offending country. Violations of Europeans’ rights committed by official adversaries such as Russia or Iran are punished through sanctions. Israel gets away with a few reprimands.

Such selective moral outrage and double standards have already destroyed much of EU’s geopolitical credibility. The hypocrisy is now also tearing down European citizens’ trust in their national leaders, governments and in EU institutions.

I have often warned that the implications of European inaction on Gaza will travel across borders, erode our institutions and societies, reshape politics and test the very meaning of our common humanity. We are seeing that happen now.

Make no mistake: what we allow today will come to haunt us tomorrow. What happens in Gaza, will not stay in Gaza.

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