Ayhan Simsek<\/p>\n
11 June 2026\u2022Update: 11 June 2026<\/p>\n
\u2018Response from European community and international community so far has been very insufficient and in fact has had no impact,\u201d Callamard tells AnadoluShe calls on EU, Germany in particular, to shift policy by suspending EU-Israel trade agreement to pressure Israeli government to end war crimes and violations of international law<\/p>\n
Agnes Callamard, secretary general of Amnesty International, has sharply criticized the EU for turning a blind eye to Israel\u2019s \u201cethnic cleansing\u201d policies against Palestinians in the West Bank.<\/p>\n
Speaking to Anadolu, Callamard said most European governments have issued only statements expressing concern about attacks by Israeli occupiers or new settlement plans, without taking concrete steps that would compel Israel to halt the violations.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhat we are documenting are a litany of violent acts which amount to war crimes or crimes against humanity, including killings, including torture, including attacks,\u201d she said, adding that violence by extremist Israeli occupiers against Palestinians has reached alarming levels.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt’s a litany of crimes being committed in order to erase everything Palestinian from this land, in order to allow for the expansion of Israeli settlement and Israeli outposts,\u201d she stressed.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt is truly a state project. The annexation, the forcible transfer, the ethnic cleansing is state-led, state-sanctioned, state-implemented.\u201d<\/p>\n
Callamard said European governments should stop treating the violence as a series of isolated incidents and instead confront what she described as a broader pattern \u2014 including the role of Israeli state actors \u2014 in a \u201chistorical project\u201d aimed at reshaping the West Bank\u2019s demographics.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe response from the European community and the international community so far has been very insufficient and in fact has had no impact,\u201d she said, adding that sanctions on a handful of extremist individuals or politicians have been largely symbolic \u2014 failing to change conditions on the ground or slow the pace of settlement expansion.<\/p>\n
Call for ‘systemic response’<\/p>\n
Callamard called on European governments to agree on stronger, coordinated measures that could have a real impact on the Israeli government, including economic and diplomatic steps that go beyond statements of concern.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhat we need is a systemic response which begins with cancelling the EU-Israel association agreement and adopting unilateral measures at the European state level to ban all trade, all financial relationships to and from the occupied territory,\u201d she said, also calling for an end to any military support.<\/p>\n
Callamard also sharply criticized Germany for its blanket support for Israel. She said Berlin repeatedly cites a historical responsibility to guarantee Israel\u2019s security \u2013 rooted in Germany\u2019s Nazi past and the Holocaust \u2013 to justify its stance.<\/p>\n
She warned that the German government\u2019s continued diplomatic, economic and military backing for Israel risks making it complicit in crimes and violations of international law under Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu\u2019s government.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhat should Germany do? It should just do the opposite. It has to use its so-called special relationship to put an end to what is happening and to say, as a friend, I cannot keep justifying or supporting what is happening,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
Callamard also referred to recent public polls showing that a majority of Germans believe Israel is committing genocide and do not support the Merz government\u2019s foreign policy toward Israel.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe German authorities also need to listen to their own people,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe majority of the German people, according to several polls, have shown that they have a very unfavorable view of what is happening right now. They need to take stock of that and they need to act on the messaging from their own people as well.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Ayhan Simsek 11 June 2026\u2022Update: 11 June 2026 \u2018Response from European community and international community so far has…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":487506,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[85,46,43,180804],"class_list":["post-487505","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-israel","tag-il","tag-israel","tag-news","tag-sitekeywords"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/487505","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=487505"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/487505\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/487506"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=487505"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=487505"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=487505"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}