Eric R. Mandel
Jerusalem Post, July 12, 2025
“Years before October 7, 2023, the European political Left’s hostility toward Jews and Israel was steadily growing from the fringes and now resides in the halls of power.”
When have you heard a European leader demand that Hamas surrender, stop using its civilians as human shields, stop using its mosques, schools, and hospitals as staging grounds, or require the terrorist leadership to leave the Gaza Strip without creating a moral equivalence between Israeli and Hamas actions? The answer is “Rarely,” and that includes the first few weeks after the atrocities of October 7, before Israel had even begun its campaign to uproot Hamas.
When America’s ambassador to the UN, Dorothy Shea, vetoed a June 2025 UNSC resolution calling for Israel to accept a ceasefire leaving Hamas in place, which every nation on the Security Council, including the French and British, voted in favor of, she told the Security Council: “We would not support any measure that fails to condemn Hamas and does not call for Hamas to disarm and leave Gaza…We cannot allow the Security Council to reward Hamas’s intransigence. It is Hamas that continues to threaten Israelis and puts Palestinian civilians in Gaza in harm’s way, using them as human shields…It is inexplicable that many members of this council still refuse to acknowledge that Hamas could end this conflict tomorrow by surrendering and laying down its arms. It is unconscionable that the UN still has not labeled and sanctioned Hamas as a terrorist organization.”
One can rationalize the cowardice of the European position, as it is dealing with its own growing Islamist population and the demographic decline of its indigenous citizens. The cross-section of Muslims in Europe ranges from Pakistanis and Bangladesh natives in England, to the Algerians and Tunisians in France, to the Turks and Syrian refugees in Germany. Despite their differences, the one thing the Islamic immigrants overwhelmingly agree about is a visceral hatred of Jews and the Jewish state. ….SOURCE