If women ruled the world, there would be no wars. True or false? False, if all the women were Ursula von der Leyen. Because a hawk in sheep’s clothing is still a hawk.
The president of the European Commission was the most petite participant at the G7 summit in Canada last week but she landed with the force of a grenade packed with testosterone. “I spoke to prime minister Netanyahu today,” she announced after Israel had bombed Iran in an unprovoked attack. “I reiterated Europe’s commitment to peace and stability in the Middle East. In this context, Israel has the right to defend itself.”
That same day, Israeli air strikes and gunfire killed dozens of starving Gazans, including at least 17 people seeking food from the grotesquely named Gaza Humanitarian Foundation, the honeypot for daily massacres of visibly emaciated civilians by the Israel Defense Forces.
What the f***, in the parlance of the president of the United States of America, is the European Union’s chief executive doing, phoning a fugitive from the International Criminal Court to egg him on with his killing crusades? Who gave her the authority to adopt the G7 statement of “support for the security of Israel”, a statement which, by the way, three permanent members of the UN Security Council also signed up to. “Iran is the principal source of regional instability and terror,” they claimed.
Talk about the pot calling the kettle black. Ireland, one of the 27 countries that employ von der Leyen, is currently unhitching its neutrality policy from the UN mandate because the Security Council has persistently obstructed peace initiatives. Ireland is also proposing to outlaw trade with illegal Israeli settlements, something the EU has failed to do despite an explicit requirement by the International Court of Justice that UN countries must not support the settlements in the Occupied Territories.
The woman who was Germany’s minister for defence for six years and was tipped to lead Nato before her appointment as president for a second term seems coated in Teflon-strength immunity. Nothing sticks
This is not the first time von der Leyen has given the EU’s blessing to Binyamin Netanyahu’s massacring of innocents. The day after Hamas’s murderous incursion into Israel in October 2023 left 1,195 people dead and nearly 250 abducted, she ordered that the Israeli flag be projected on to the commission’s head office in Brussels. Then, as the Israeli government announced it was stopping supplies of food, water and electricity to Gaza, she flew to Tel Aviv to assure Netanyahu he could “count on” the EU’s support in waging war on Gaza. Josep Borrell, the bloc’s high representative for foreign affairs at the time, clarified that she was not entitled to decide EU foreign policy.
As a German citizen, von der Leyen may be well motivated by her country’s history to ensure the protection of Jewish people, but it does not justify siding with a genocidal regime.
Spain and Ireland’s request in February 2024 for an urgent review of the EU-Israel trade agreement does not appear to gone anywhere significant.
The woman who was Germany’s minister for defence for six years and was tipped to lead Nato before her appointment as president for a second term seems coated in Teflon-strength immunity. Nothing sticks. Even when the UN Special Rapporteur on Palestine, Francesca Albanese, accused her of complicity in Israel’s war crimes, EU leaders failed to censure her. If they need evidence, here are some facts to start with:
Israel has slaughtered more than 56,000 people in Gaza since October 2023;
Israel has attacked Lebanon, Syria, Yemen, Qatar and Iran this year;
Israeli soldiers and settlers killed 938 Palestinians in the West Bank and East Jerusalem between October 7th, 2023 and the end of last month;
Israel is the only country in the Middle East with nuclear weapons;
Israel has fired in the direction of Unifil soldiers, including Irish – ergo EU – peacekeepers in Lebanon;
Israel has fired in the direction of EU officials and diplomats in the West Bank.
Mark Twain described an uneasy conscience as “a hair in the mouth”. In her acceptance speech when she was conferred with an honorary doctorate by Ben-Gurion University of the Negev in 2022, von der Leyen said the Holocaust was “an indelible stain” on her country’s conscience and it must never be forgotten. No rational person would argue otherwise. The Nazis’ systematic extermination of Jews in Europe spread its stain beyond Germany’s borders and the world must be forever vigilant in countering anti-Semitism, but not at the price of Islamophobia. The hair in the mouth turns the heart to stone when a guilty conscience can condone thousands upon thousands of children being strafed with gunfire, blown apart by air strikes, starved to death and dying of thirst.
A new EU report has stated there is evidence that Israel has violated human rights conditions agreed in its trade deal with Europe. News so stale it is an affront to the people of Gaza. About 26,000 more have been killed there in the 16 months since von der Leyen dismissed the request from Dublin and Madrid. This week, the EU’s foreign ministers decided to postpone any decision about the trade deal until they next meet on July 15th, by which time – judging by the current daily death toll – hundreds more people will have perished. Surely Fianna Fáil MEPs who voted against von der Leyen’s reappointment as president last year are kicking up a stink with their Fine Gael government partners who are in the same EU alliance as her and who backed her nomination. It is noteworthy that more than 90 per cent of the alliance’s party leaders are men.
The creation of an EU army is central to von der Leyen’s vision for Europe. Heaven forbid that it should happen on her watch. For she is living proof of the foolishness of the hypothesis that there would be no wars if women ruled the world. See also Margaret Thatcher, darling of the Tory fraternity, who sentenced 320 people to death on board the Belgrano. As long as the patriarchy keeps choosing the women, the world will not be in safer hands. The question that will always need to be asked is which women?
