Europe continues to turn away from Israel, frustrated by a state that has doubled down on attacking its neighbours, with no regard for the global economic shock its actions are contributing to. Israel has long been warned of its increasing international pariah status, with the genocidal war on Gaza leading to large shifts in Western public opinion, along with its attacks on Lebanon and Iran. That public opinion has become difficult for European governments to ignore, despite their longstanding close ties to Israel.
Italy’s right-wing government has become the latest European state to join a growing chorus criticising the country, which in recent weeks has included the United Kingdom, Ireland, and Spain. Calls have grown for Israel to halt its attacks on Lebanon and Iran and step back from a conflict that, analysts warn, threatens to tip the world into recession. Earlier this month, Spain called for the suspension of the European Union’s trade agreement with Israel in light of its “intolerable” actions in Lebanon.
France has previously barred Israeli firms from major defence exhibitions. Even Germany, possibly Israel’s staunchest European ally, has expressed concern over what it termed Israel’s “de facto partial annexation of the West Bank”. On Monday, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu turned on his European critics, claiming to be a defender of their values.
Europe today, he said, has become “afflicted by deep moral weakness”, before using language borrowed from the European far-right to argue that Europe was “losing control of its identity, of its values, of its responsibility to defend civilisation against barbarism”. The idea that Israel is waging war on behalf of many of the states that now repudiate its actions is nothing new among the Israeli right-wing, Eva Illouz, an Israeli professor of sociology at Paris’s School for Advanced Studies in Social Sciences, told Al Jazeera. And, in recent years, the entry of religious and political extremes into the centre of politics, including the appointment of the far-right Itamar Ben-Gvir as National Security Minister and his fellow ultranationalist Bezalel Smotrich to head the Finance Ministry, has confirmed Israel’s trend away from its imagining of itself as a liberal democracy.
Accusations of land grabs and human rights abuses have run parallel to attempts by Israeli leaders to establish themselves as a liberal outpost on an apparently lawless frontier. Yet for much of this period, Western political and public support remained broadly resilient, sustained by strategic alliances, Holocaust memory, and, critically, shared security interests. Earlier this month, responding to growing tensions between his government and Spain, Netanyahu took to social media to say that “Israel will not remain silent in the face of those who attack us”.
Responding to relatively muted concern from Berlin over Israel’s policy towards the occupied West Bank, Finance Minister Smotrich went further still.
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