Well done to Hannah Einbinder, who is one of many Jews worldwide of all ages and backgrounds publicly condemning the genocide of the Palestinian people by the Israeli state. They have the courage, the moral integrity and the commitment to justice and human rights that Ursula von der Leyen and the European Commission lacks.

The silence of the EU hierarchy and the national leadership particularly of Germany, Hungary, the Baltic states and Italy on the non-stop destruction of Gaza and the occupied West Bank that we see on our screens daily since 2022 has been deafening.

Europe has the economic power to help stop this genocide but deliberately chose not to do so. For the EU is Israel’s biggest trading partner, accounting for 32% of Israel's total trade in goods with the world in 2024. 34.2% of Israel’s imports came from the EU while 28.8% of the country’s exports went to the EU.

As someone that has worked across Africa, the Middle East and Central America, I recognise that the EU has totally lost the morale high ground and is looked on as a hypocrite by peoples everywhere.

No more can it lecture others about human rights when it has for decades turned a blind eye to the illegal barbaric military occupation, settler colonialisation and destruction of the mosques, churches, schools, hospitals, farms and homes of the Palestinian people. Now it watches genocide taking place, led by racist and religious fundamentalists, near its borders and decides to do nothing of real game-changing significance.