A statement by the President of the European Commission Ursula von der Leyen congratulating Israel on its 75th formation day on April 26th and calling it “a vibrant democracy” which “literally made the desert bloom” has been widely criticized and condemned by Palestinians and other human rights groups. They have termed the statement racist and a defense of colonialism and apartheid.
Von der Leyen, in her video statement, also invoked other phrases such as Israel being a “promised land,” and equating its creation with “freedom.” These phrases are usually associated with Zionism, the political and ideological campaign that originated in the late 19th century and mobilized people for the occupation of Palestine.
Reacting to the statement, the Palestinian Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Expatriates called it “inappropriate, false, and discriminatory.” It further said that “such propagandist discourse dehumanizes and erases the Palestinian people and falsifies their rich history and civilization.”
Though Israel was created on May 14, 1948, its foundation day is marked as per the Hebrew calendar. This year, the date falls on April 26.
The formation of Israel in historical Palestine, which was at the time under British colonial rule, was a bloody process as the Palestinians opposed it and suffered heavily for resisting the occupation supported by the West.
During the war with Zionist forces, thousands of Palestinians were killed. Israeli forces also forcefully expelled hundreds of thousands (according to some estimates more than 700,000 Palestinians) from their villages and towns inside what is now called 1948 borders of Israel. These Palestinians were forced to live as refugees in different parts of the world.
Palestinians remember this ethnic cleansing as Nakba or the “great catastrophe” on May 15 every year.
On April 26, when Israel was celebrating its foundation day, thousands of Palestinian organized a March of Return to commemorate their plight and dispossession.
Legitimizing Zionist myths
The Palestinian Authority’s statement notes that von der Leyen’s praise of Israel’s so-called “vibrant democracy” and equating its occupation with freedom is a kind of “narrative [which] perpetuates the continued and racial denial of the Nakba and whitewashes Israel’s illegal occupation and apartheid regime.”
It demanded that Von der Leyen apologize to the Palestinian people for her comments.
Several others, such as Mike Wallace, a member of the European Parliament, took to social media to denounce the statement, calling it a defense of colonialism and racist apartheid.
The Zionist myth propagated by the founders of Israel claimed that Palestine was the “promised land” and it was a “land without people.” Palestinians see von der Leyen’s reference to Israelis “literally making desert bloom” as backing the Zionist myth that they brought civilization to the territories.
According to a UN General Assembly resolution adopted in November 1975, Zionism was declared a form of racism. Due to Israel making its revocation a condition for joining the Madrid Peace conference with Palestinians, the resolution was revoked in 1991.
Israeli forces occupied the remaining Palestinian territories of West Bank, Gaza and East Jerusalem in 1967. Ever since, they have pursued a policy of colonial appropriation of Palestinian lands and religious and ethnic persecution in these territories. Israel has refused to follow numerous UN resolutions asking it to end its occupation and allow Palestinians to return to their native places.
In recent years, several human rights groups and UN rapporteurs have termed the Israeli occupation and its policies in the occupied territories as discriminatory and apartheid.
Noting how despite knowing Israeli atrocities in Palestine various other European heads of states such as Germany, Italy and others have wished similarly on Israel’s foundation day, Ali Abunimah, director of Electronic Intifada, pointed out that, by “supporting Israel is how Europeans can relieve their most fascist and racist colonial dreams not only without guilt, but even feeling virtuous, as if their support for this blood-soaked horror show makes them Good People who learned from History.”
