Monday, June 23, 2025

The hypocrisy of EU leaders

 


 

IN THE 'BUBBLE'


BY TAMÁS ORBÁN


Hiding Behind Israel: The hypocrisy of EU leaders when it comes to Israel can hardly be overstated. On one hand, they developed a sudden peace mentality, calling for "restraint" and diplomatic talks (after three years of pressuring Ukraine to do the opposite); and on the other, they hide behind the tiny Jewish state to “do the dirty work” of defeating the Islamist Iran which threatens the entire West, as Chancellor Merz admitted. The E3 meeting in Geneva on Friday between the foreign ministers of Germany, France, the UK, and Iran led exactly nowhere, except allowing them to wallow in their superiority as if they were saving the day—while the truth is that Iran wouldn't even sit down with any of them if not for the Israeli strikes that they openly disapprove. “They are political frauds as well as moral cowards,” writes our editor-in-chief, Mick Hume. “Any European leader worth their salt should now stand foursquare with the Israelis. If not, we will surely know they can’t be trusted to defend democracy on the home front, either. And nobody is going to do the dirty work of saving their skins.”




Europe’s Impotent Powers Are Hiding Behind Little Israel

ALAIN JOCARD / POOL / AFP and RONEN ZVULUN / POOL / AFP

Our spineless leaders expect a nation of 9.5 million souls to “do the dirty work” for Western democracy.
 
 
 
 

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It has been a remarkably good week for democratic Israel, a terrible week for Islamist Iran—and a very bad one for the leaders of Europe. The crisis in the Middle East has exposed our European elites as spineless, impotent, and irrelevant. 

Europe’s posturing leaders have also been confirmed as two-faced frauds. They try to pose on the moral high ground, looking down on Israel and tut-tutting about the Jewish state’s aggression. Yet in reality, they are relying on this tiny state of 9.5 million souls to, as the German chancellor admits, “do the dirty work” of defeating the Islamist threat to the West.

The biggest moral cowards among Europe’s governments have entirely failed the historic challenge posed by this conflict and refused to come out on Israel’s side. Instead, they call for “restraint on both sides,” a ceasefire, and negotiations, as if there was some moral equivalence between the only democracy in the Middle East and an authoritarian Islamic terror state. 

After a divided online meeting of EU foreign ministers failed to issue a pro-Israel statement this week, one anti-Israel minister told Politico that there is a “big difference” between Israel’s right to defend itself and its “pre-emptive military action” against Iran.

In other words, they claim that Israel is the aggressor here. In what imaginary world do these global statesmen live? In the real world, Islamist Iran is the aggressor which sponsors the terrorist enemies that Israel is fighting on seven fronts. 

Iran was behind the October 7th pogrom in Israel, when its Palestinian proxy Hamas massacred more Jews than have died on any day since the Nazi Holocaust. Iran’s leaders are publicly committed to wiping Israel—and the U.S.—off the face of the earth. To that end, they sponsor worldwide terror networks that threaten the West—and are trying to develop nuclear weapons. 

Anybody who believes in democracy and Western civilisation should say loud and clear that Israel has every right to defend itself by responding to Iran’s repeated attacks, aiming to prevent the Ayatollahs building the Islamist Bomb.

Instead of standing with Israel, however, top European leaders are now appealing to the Iranians, politely asking the Islamist regime if it would be so kind as to negotiate a ceasefire and agree to limit its nuclear programme. 

The EU’s top diplomat, Kaja Kallas, is reportedly due to meet the Iranian foreign minister in Geneva on Friday, along with the foreign ministers of the “E3” group—Germany, France, and the United Kingdom, traditionally Europe’s three great powers.

This is where the two-faced dishonesty of European diplomacy becomes apparent. Why would they imagine that the Iranians might now be willing to discuss a nuclear deal, having refused all previous appeals? Only because of the devastating impact of Israel’s attacks! 

In other words, while they mewl about the need for “restraint,” these European governments know that the same Israeli strikes they publicly disapprove of are the key to making any progress towards their “diplomatic solution.” They are political frauds as well as moral cowards.

Enter Germany’s chancellor, Friedrich Merz, to let that cat out of the bag. As Israel’s audacious attacks on Iranian military and nuclear targets proved more successful than any experts in Europe or the U.S. predicted, Merz apparently felt emboldened to come out as a secret cheerleader.

Thus, at this week’s G7 summit (where Europe’s irrelevance was exposed by U.S. President Trump’s decision to leave early, having more important things to do), Merz gave a political confessional to a German radio station. He admitted that, by attacking Iran’s nuclear programme, the Israelis were doing “the dirty work” for the West.

“That is the dirty work that Israel does for us all,” confessed the chancellor. “I can only say I have the greatest respect for the fact that the Israeli army and the Israeli government had the courage to do this.” 

He added that if the Iranian regime had been willing to negotiate, military intervention would not have been necessary. But now, if the negotiations Europe was seeking failed, then “complete destruction of Iran’s nuclear weapons program” would have to be on the agenda—to be executed by the Americans, of course.

Think for a moment about what Merz is saying here. It might sound like good news, that Germany’s leader had finally come out on the right side. But if Israel is doing “the dirty work for all of us”? That must mean that Europe’s top powers have been secretly hiding behind little Israel’s skirts, expecting a fighting nation of just 9.5 million souls to protect the interests of half a billion Europeans and the entire Western world. 

In expressing from afar his admiration that “the Israeli army and the Israeli government had the courage to do this,” Merz was also exposing the lack of moral courage in Europe’s top capitals. They want to see the “complete destruction” of Iran’s nuclear weapons programme—but without getting any bloody handprints on the European diplomats’ suits.

This talk of Israel “doing the dirty work” for the West came, let us remember, from a new German chancellor who is now Brussels’ poster boy. What kind of EU leadership is that supposed to be? 

It re-raises the killer question posed by U.S. vice-president JD Vance at the Munich Security Conference earlier this year. Amid all the talk of big new defence budgets, Vance asked: what exactly is it that Europe’s leaders want to defend in the world, when they are betraying the European principles of democracy and free speech? 

In the same spirit, we might now ask how they can claim to be defending democracy when they will not openly stand with Israel, on the global frontline of the war for that precious principle? What exactly do they stand for, if they refuse to take on Islamism in the battle between civilisation and barbarism? 

The Israelis remain a living, fighting example of what Europe should support: a sovereign, democratic nation defending its borders and its people. They have achieved remarkable results already whilst fighting alone, often with one hand tied behind their backs, without the reliable support of even their staunchest historical allies. 

Any European leader worth their salt should now stand foursquare with the Israelis. If not, we will surely know they can’t be trusted to defend democracy on the home front, either. And nobody is going to do the dirty work of saving their skins.

Mick Hume is the editor-in-chief of europeanconservative.com. He is an English journalist, editor, and author. These days he also writes for SpikedThe Daily Mail, and The Sun.  Hume is the author of, among other things, Revolting! How the Establishment are Undermining Democracy and What They’re Afraid Of (2017) and Trigger Warning: is the Fear of Being Offensive Killing Free Speech? (2016), both published by Harper Collins. Hume was the launch editor of Living Marxism magazine (deceased) from 1988, and the launch editor of spiked-online.com from 2001. He was a columnist for The Times (London) for 10 years. He worked in communications for Nigel Farage’s Brexit Party (2019) and for Reform UK in the 2024 General Election. He is currently a Visiting Fellow at the MCC in Budapest.

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