Europe died in Gaza

The two defining conflicts of the century — Ukraine and Palestine — mark the political death of the EU: all it has left is to invent an imaginary Russian threat to give itself a new raison d'être

Guest post by journalist and author Benedetta Sabene, originally published in Italian on her Substack.

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The two major international crises that will forever mark this decade, if not this century — the war in Ukraine and the ongoing massacre in Gaza — have laid bare the total political inconsistency of the European Union: lacking any decision-making autonomy and reduced to a hollow appendage of US foreign policy.

Despite the collective erasure of the war in Ukraine — an event that once turned almost everyone into a geopolitical expert overnight but has since faded into the background, no longer sparking public interest — it is impossible to analyse what is happening in Gaza without taking into account what is happening in Ukraine. To speak of “incompetence” in the European leadership’s handling of the two crises is an overly partial reading, since the double standard between Ukraine and Palestine is not merely a methodological error or a moral issue. It is a strategy fully consistent with the structure of international relations and the division of the world into military blocs and spheres of influence.

With Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, the European Union displayed an unprecedented humanitarian activism: sanction packages against Moscow, billions of euros in military and humanitarian aid to Kyiv, unconditional acceptance of refugees, censorship of all Russian media under the pretext of “combating propaganda” (while simultaneously boosting Kyiv’s own propaganda machine in — for months I personally debunked dozens of blatantly false reports in the Italian press, copied and pasted directly from The Kyiv Independent and other Ukrainian outlets engaged in relentless war propaganda) and a diplomatic and media mobilisation without precedent in favour of the Ukrainian government.

This is the same Ukrainian government which, under President Petro Poroshenko, committed numerous war crimes, such as bombing civilian infrastructure in the Donbas and deploying extremist paramilitary battalions, which, according to international monitors, committed horrific atrocities against dissidents and civilians. Not to mention the humanitarian disaster triggered by the civil conflict with the eastern separatists, against whom Kyiv opted for a “hardline” approach, contributing to over a million internally displaced people and thousands of civilian deaths. Back then, the European Union was far less eager to defend those Ukrainian civilians bombed by Poroshenko in the East — just as today it struggles to express solidarity with Palestinians massacred by the tens of thousands, trapped in a strip of land with no escape. Because ultimately, it’s not about the victims’ hair or eye color — the people in Donbas were blond with blue eyes, just like in Kyiv — but about which team they’re on. That said, racism, Islamophobia and Russophobia have been and still are essential elements in the narrative and public perception of the two conflicts.

In February 2022, Ursula von der Leyen did not hold back from condemning the crimes of Putin’s government against Ukrainian civilians, the violations of international law, the attacks on energy infrastructure: every conceivable measure was taken to defend Kyiv from the “butcher” Putin, a man to whom the most creative epithets were applied in those months.

Remember? At the time there was talk of a “European awakening”, of a new era in which the human and democratic world, finally united and resolute, would stand as a bulwark against the authoritarianism and violence of the “Russian orcs”. The European values of human rights and international legality, of which EU countries proudly claimed to be defenders, were invoked everywhere and became pillars of official discourse, echoed across all media.

Well, at first, it worked. When I began my work in public communication — first on Instagram and later as a journalist and essayist — trying to explain the deeper roots of the Russia–Ukraine conflict (which I had been following well before 2022, unlike the vast majority of last-minute pundits), the climate was so polarised that I received hundreds, if not thousands, of insults, death threats, rape threats and every form of public and private attack. Some accused me of being directly paid by Putin, others of parroting Russian propaganda, still others of being complicit with the invader and having blood on my hands. The collective hysteria was so frightening that there were many times I was genuinely afraid to speak. But the scariest thing is that this wave of hate and rage vanished from the public debate just as quickly as it appeared. That’s why it’s crucial, now, to connect the dots.

The speed with which Europe responded to Russian aggression proves that the political will is there — but only when it aligns with US strategic interests. There’s very little that’s genuinely humanitarian guiding the actions of Brussels and European governments: what matters is what serves the US strategy. Isolating Russia, breaking the Moscow-Berlin axis to curtail Russian influence in Europe, severing the Russo-German energy link (and thus the Russian-European one), weakening Germany as the economic engine of Europe and thus undermining its political autonomy, preventing Russia from becoming a Eurasian power and instead confining it solely to Asia — this, and only this, is what has driven US and European actions.

The clearest proof of this is that since October 2023, when Gaza came under a devastating military offensive that has caused tens — if not hundreds — of thousands of deaths (the vast majority women and children), millions of displaced persons, destroyed hospitals, famine and systematic destruction of civilian infrastructure, the European Union has been extremely timid in condemning Israel. Despite the massacre being denounced from the outset by dozens of jurists, UN rapporteurs and even the International Court of Justice as a “plausible genocide”, the EU has taken no firm stance. On the contrary. Among the most notable EU actions over the past two years are: the refusal to call for an immediate ceasefire in the early stages of the conflict, repeating instead the mantra of Israel’s right to defend itself; suspending funding to UNRWA based on unverified allegations, even as the Gazan population was already on the brink of a catastrophic food crisis; explicit support for Israel by many member states, especially Germany; and internal repression of pro-Palestinian protests, often branded as “antisemitic” even when merely calling for human rights and international law.

The Ukraine conflict has thus disappeared from the media and public discourse because the double standard is so blatant that even those with no knowledge of international politics immediately sense that something doesn’t add up. And that “something” is that Israel is a strategic ally of the United States (and thus of the European Union, which has no real autonomy in foreign policy), and that the US is willing to go to any length — including bombing Iran and sanctioning UN officials — to defend it.

The most recent example is that of Francesca Albanese, an Italian lawyer and academic who, since 2022, has served as the UN Special Rapporteur on Human Rights in the Occupied Palestinian Territories. In this role, she has published detailed reports on the illegality of the Israeli occupation, the apartheid policies and violations of humanitarian law during the Gaza offensive, becoming one of the most authoritative voices in the public debate on the plight of Palestinians in the Strip, thanks to her monumental work of information and denunciation.

Her work is rigorous and consistent with the UN mandate. Yet she has become the target of a ferocious campaign of personal and political delegitimisation, culminating in sanctions imposed by Israel and the United States. The accusations (can you guess?) are antisemitism, bias and propaganda. But, ultimately, Francesca Albanese’s only real “crime” is applying international law to the US’s allies as well.

As journalist Paolo Mossetti pointed out, Italian President Sergio Mattarella was quick to show solidarity with former Repubblica editor Molinari when he was heckled by students and just as quick to call Giorgia Meloni when a random user insulted her daughter Ginevra on X. But when an Italian citizen is sanctioned and smeared through a Google ad campaign funded by the Israeli government simply for carrying out her UN mandate — no Italian institution has yet found it appropriate to show any support.

On one hand, Europe proves totally inconsistent — so much so that since the beginning of the massacre in Gaza, public opinion has grown increasingly disillusioned and distrustful of EU policies. On the other hand, the EU is now trying to regain political legitimacy through war and the creation of a common enemy around which to unite: Russia. A Russian invasion of Europe is now being portrayed as highly probable and nearly imminent, making it “urgent” to raise military spending to 5% of GDP — despite European media simultaneously describing the Russian army as bogged down in Ukraine for over three years, fighting with shovels and struggling to gain even a few kilometres of territory.

The European Union’s crisis is not only political — it’s existential. In the absence of a shared political project, and given its glaring inconsistency in the eyes of European citizens, the only glue left to reassert political legitimacy appears to be the external threat. In this context, support for Ukraine — though legitimate in terms of international solidarity — has been instrumentalised not to defend legal principles per se, but rather to reposition the EU as a relevant international actor, albeit solely in military terms.

The war in Ukraine has accelerated a transformation already underway: the resurgence of military blocs as the primary structure of geopolitical organisation. On one side, the expansion and strengthening of NATO; on the other, the emergence of alternative alliances among Russia, China, Iran and other actors from the so-called “Global South”. This logic marks a definitive break with the post-Cold War illusion of a world where international law would gradually replace force. On the contrary, we are witnessing a brutal return to a bipolar world, whose effects are visible in both Ukraine and Palestine.

The European Union, which could have positioned itself as a third autonomous pole, as a stabiliser and mediator between the US and Russia (and in the Mediterranean, with Palestine), has chosen instead to align uncritically with the Atlantic bloc. The result is a diplomatic and military subordination from which there seems to be no way out.

And precisely because the world is regrouping around military logic, it is more urgent than ever to defend, redefine and promote the role of international law as a shared foundation. A Europe that relinquishes this task not only betrays itself but also contributes enormously to destabilising entire regions, sparking new conflicts and maintaining a state of perpetual war.

In short: Europe died in Gaza. But it will not be saved by militarism or rearmament — just as these won’t save either Ukrainians or Palestinians.

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Thomas Fazi

Website: thomasfazi.net

Twitter: @battleforeurope

Latest book: The Covid Consensus: The Global Assault on Democracy and the Poor—A Critique from the Left (co-authored with Toby Green)