Brussels, August 29th, 2025 – After a long but politically tumultuous summer recess the European Coalition for Israel will return to Brussels on Monday for the first European Parliament committee week of the autumn.
Meanwhile the Foreign Ministers from the 27 EU member states will meet in Copenhagen on Saturday for informal meetings hosted by Danish Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen as part of her government’s six-month EU presidency.
Whereas Ireland and Spain already for months have unsuccessfully pushed for sanctions against Israel because of the war in Gaza their demands have recently gained more traction. Nevertheless, a vote on cancelling part of the trade agreement between Israel and the EU fell short of a majority in the last European Council meeting at the end of July as Germany and Italy demanded more time to settle their concerns with Israel.
Meanwhile the war in Gaza continues to divide not only the EU member states but also their respective governments. Last week the Dutch Foreign Minister Caspar Veldkamp resigned over failure to secure sanctions against Israel from the other coalition partners in the government. Similar deadlocks remain in many other governments.
In a statement ahead of the informal EU Foreign Affairs meeting on Saturday ECI Founding Director Tomas Sandell called upon the EU member states to help Israel defeat Hamas and not sanction the Jewish state. He added, “Choosing between the terrorist organisation Hamas, a sworn enemy of our Western civilisation and the State of Israel, our closest ally and the only democracy in the Middle East, should not be difficult. We must support Israel at all costs. But we cannot expect Israel to defeat Hamas and the war to end if we bind their hands and give in to the lies of Hamas and its megaphones. Either we join the war and help Israel defeat Hamas, an Islamic death cult very similar to ISIS, which was defeated by an international coalition in 2019. However, it is not morally right for us to ‘let Israel do the dirty work’ while we watch and criticise from the sidelines.”
The European Union must now take concrete action to stop the Hamas propaganda machine by banning Qatar based TV station Al Jazeera from operating in all 27 EU member countries. In 2022 the European Commission banned Russian TV channels RT and Sputnik because of their Russian war propaganda. The same measures should now apply to Al Jazeera which is already banned in moderate Arab states like Egypt, Saudi Arabia, UAE and Bahrain but also by the Palestinian Authority.
Sandell concluded, “Nearly three thousand five hundred years ago the Jewish people were faced with a choice between life and death, blessing or curse. That same choice now lays before our European leaders. To ensure a democratic and prosperous future for Europe and the Middle East we must now choose a culture of life. We must choose Israel over Hamas.”
