“I don’t believe you have to be a Jew to be a Zionist, and I am a Zionist.” These were the words of US President Joe Biden when he arrived in Israel after the 7 October attacks on Israel by the Palestinian group Hamas. 

His top diplomat Anthony Blinken also declared during a similar visit that “I come before you not only as the United States Secretary of State, but also as a Jew.”

Many other Western officials have also showed a strong pro-Israeli stance. “In these days we are all Israelis,” German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock was quoted as saying during her first visit to Israel after the 7 October attacks.

In the US and many parts of Europe pro-Palestinian voices have been silenced and remarks critical of Israel’s atrocities in Gaza condemned as anti-Semitism.

Few people in power have dared to stand up to protect the rights of the Palestinians and maintain their critique of Israel’s policy of oppression and deprivation in the Occupied Territories.  

However, among those who have refused to jettison their values or be intimidated is the EU’s High Representative for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy Josep Borrell, who has stood up to criticise Israel’s bare-knuckled actions.

This has been apparent not only in the content of his remarks about the Israeli war on Gaza and Lebanon, but also in the way he has urged the EU to deal fairly and objectively with the conflict.

Borrell’s denunciations of Israel’s policies started even before the Gaza war. In March 2023, Israel signalled to Borrell that he was not welcome to visit the country following critical comments he made about Israeli policies in the Occupied West Bank.

Borrell upset Israel by an article published in 2023 saying that “violence on the part of Israeli settlers in the West Bank is increasingly threatening Palestinian lives and livelihoods, almost always with impunity.”

“Moreover, Israeli military operations frequently cause civilian Palestinian deaths, often without effective accountability,” Borrell wrote in an article published by Project Syndicate.

Though Borrell condemned the Hamas attacks on Israel as “barbaric and terrorist,” he also accused Israel of breaking international law by imposing a blockade on Gaza.

On 3 January 2024, Borrell condemned the displacement of Palestinians in Gaza, writing that “forced displacements are strictly prohibited as a grave violation of [international humanitarian law].”

Again in March, Borrell said Israel’s depriving the Palestinians of food was a serious violation of international humanitarian law and blasted an Israeli attack on a food convoy as “totally unacceptable carnage.”

German Chancellor Olaf Scholz, whose government has been assiduous in attacking the Palestinian solidarity movement, confronted Borrell over his criticism of Israel, saying Borrell “did not speak for Germany.”

But Borrell continued to criticise Israel, adding his voice to calls for action to end “the human tragedy” unfolding in the Gaza Strip as a result of Israel’s military offensive.

 “The too little information coming out from North Gaza still attests to a catastrophic level of killing, destruction, and starvation, in addition to forced displacements of civilians, while an entire population is under bombings, siege and risk of starvation, as well as being forced to choose between displacement or death,” Borrell said.

On 15 May 2024, Borrell called on Israel to immediately halt its assault on Rafah, stating that it was disrupting humanitarian aid and causing a humanitarian crisis while also calling on Hamas to release all the Israeli hostages.

Borrell condemned the Tel Al-Sultan massacre in Gaza when the Israeli Air Force bombed a displacement camp in Rafah in May, saying that Israel’s military actions needed to stop.

In November, Borrell challenged Israel and its Western friends when he called on all EU member states to respect decisions by the International Criminal Court (ICC), including the arrest warrant against Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

“We cannot undermine the International Criminal Court. It is the only way of having global justice,” Borrell told reporters in Brussels. “They’re not political. It’s a legal body formed by respected people who are the best among the profession of judges.”

Though all EU member states are signatories to the ICC’s founding treaty, several members have said they believe Netanyahu has immunity to actions by the ICC.

Claims of anti-Semitism being behind the ICC’s arrest warrant for Netanyahu are wrong, Borrell later said to highlight the profound consequences of ignoring the court’s ruling.

“We cannot weaken the ICC. This is the only way to have global justice. This is the only way to implement legal accountability. If Europeans do not fully support the ICC without delay, then the ICC will not work,” he said.

As his five-year mandate as the EU’s foreign policy chief comes to an end this month, Borrell issued a final appeal last week for justice to be found for the Palestinians and for a path to peace to be adopted. 

“I would like to ask all those who are committed to supporting the two-state solution to continue working hard on this front because without it there will be no peace in the Middle East,” he told a meeting of the Global Alliance to Implement the Two-State Solution.

“And without peace in the Middle East, the entire region will be in danger, and not only the entire region,” he said.

“It is a cancer that is spreading in international relations and that is affecting European societies from within.”

 “We know how difficult it is to implement it because today Israeli society is colonised from within by extremists and violent people,” he said.

“The settlers are not only growing on Israeli soil: the colonisation of people’s minds is the greatest danger that Israeli society is facing because it is threatening the foundations of democracy,” Borrell said, adding that “after what is happening in Gaza and the West Bank, it is a different Israel.”

Borrell, who started his job at the EU in 2019, is a Spanish politician who served in several government and provincial positions in his homeland, including minister of Foreign Affairs, after entering politics in the 1970s as a member of the Spanish Socialist Workers’ Party (PSOE).

 He later switched to European politics and served as a member of the European Parliament from 2004 to 2007 and later as its president from 2018 to 2019.

Borrell was educated as an aeronautical engineer and is also an economist as well as a professor of mathematics. In the summer of 1969, Borrell worked as volunteer at a kibbutz in Israel.

It is not uncommon to hear politicians switching positions or making critical statements about controversial issues after leaving office.

But in Borrell’s case he has been outspoken while still in a sensitive job, seeming to defy a long record of hypocrisy by Western politicians in condoning Israel’s actions.

Borrell is to be lauded not for criticising Israeli actions while holding a sensitive job, but rather for being a man of principle in a just cause and making the case for supporting and defending it.

Today, it is difficult to criticise Israel in a public forum in the West, and it is impossible to hold a pro-Palestine demonstration in many countries without facing attacks from the police, intimidation from the state, and accusations of anti-Semitism from the press.

Even public figures such as politicians, journalists, and academics are subject to pressure or even dismissal on charges of anti-Semitism for making reasonable criticisms of Israel whose supporters insist should have special treatment.

Former leader of the British Labour Party Jeremy Corbyn was forced to step down and was later expelled from the party because of his advocacy of Palestinian rights and after allegations of mishandling anti-Semitism in the party under his leadership.

Corbyn has claimed he was once asked to give a “blanket undertaking” that he would automatically support any military action Israel undertakes while Labour Party leader in order to be allowed to be considered for the post of prime minister.

The question now is what to expect after Borrell leaves and his successor, Estonian politician Kaja Kallas, replaces him as the EU’s foreign policy chief. In his last speech in office, Borrell said that “words matter,” and probably he meant this as a lesson for his successor too.

* A version of this article appears in print in the 5 December, 2024 edition of Al-Ahram Weekly