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Israel tells EU to go to hell over criticism
Israel on Tuesday told members of the European Union to go hell following European criticism surrounding attacks on protesters demonstrating against Israeli violence in Gaza.
Recall that over a hundred Palestinian have been killed in the last two months at a border with Gaza following protests by Palestinians over United States decision to recognize Jerusalem as Israel’s capital.
Jafar Farah, the head of Haifa-based NGO Massawa, was injured prompting the EU to call for “a swift investigation into circumstances surrounding” Farah’s injury and detainment in Haifa.
But Israeli Energy Minister Yuval Steinitz castigated the EU’s response. He said the EU should go to a thousand thousand hells, calling the EU hypocritical.
Steinitz reportedly accused the EU of “harassing” Israel, while “Iran is carrying out executions, torturing homosexuals, violating women’s rights, supporting terrorism and Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, who is spreading chemical weapons to his people.”
Steinitz claimed that Israel had already opened an investigation into its crackdown on last week’s Haifa protests, during which Israeli police can be seen beating handcuffed demonstrators in videos, and said he “sent to hell the European Union which doesn’t really represent the European nations. This is an organization that no one is leading and is less friendly to Israel than the European states themselves.”
Farah’s knee was broken during the protests and he was arrested along with about 20 others.
Jafar Farah and his son, Basel, who was also present at the demonstrations, accused the Israeli police of brutality and claimed Israeli forces broke the elder Farah’s knee after he inquired about his son’s condition.
“The only democracy in the Middle East does not need to break legs,” Basel told the official Army Radio on Monday.
Israel and the U.S. have accused Palestinian Islamist movement Hamas to be behind the recurring “Great March of Return” protests, in which tens of thousands of Palestinians have demanded to reclaim the lands they inhabited prior to the creation of Israel in 1948.
The U.S., Israel and the EU consider Hamas to be a terrorist organization, and at least one of its officials has claimed some of the protesters killed were members of the group.
The United Nations Human Rights Council, however, has summoned an investigation into the deaths, most of which occurred during a May 14 protest against the U.S. decision to move its embassy in Israel from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, considered by both Israelis and Palestinians to be their capital.
The controversial condemned 128 to 9 in a U.N. resolution in December.
