Not to worry. The attacks will only be directed against Israel. - by Khaled Abu Toameh

...To its credit, and despite the clearly genocidal ECJ recommendation, Hamas has been utterly transparent concerning its intentions. In fact, Hamas has never hidden its desire to destroy Israel and prevent any peace process between Palestinians and Israelis. This position and strategy has not changed since the establishment of the Islamist movement nearly thirty years ago. And if the officials of the EU and the ECJ do not know that, they should be replaced.

Khaled Abu Toameh..
Gatestone Institute..
05 October '16..

Once again, the Europeans seem to be in Alice's Wonderland when they consider Palestinian affairs in particular and the Middle East in general. The renewed attempt by the European Union to remove the Palestinian Islamist movement Hamas from its terrorism list is a case in point.

Recently, an advisor to the European Court of Justice (ECJ) recommended that Hamas be removed from the EU's terrorism blacklist. In 2014, the EU's second-highest court ruled that Hamas should be taken off the list on "technical" grounds. It argued that Hamas's listing was not based on evidence, but on "factual imputations derived from the press and the internet."

However, the European Council then appealed this judgement, arguing that Hamas should remain on the terrorism blacklist, citing a 2001 decision by the UK and the US that designated both Hamas and the Tamil Tigers as terrorist groups. But the recent opinion by the ECJ advisor dismisses this argument. "The council cannot rely on facts and evidence found in press articles and information from the internet," Advocate General Eleanor Sharpton said. She explained that the council could not rely on terrorist listings by countries (the UK and US) outside the EU.

This latest highly dangerous European attempt to strike Hamas from the terrorism blacklist will, as the EU knows perfectly well, only serve further to embolden the Islamist movement to replace Israel with an Islamic empire.

Removing Hamas from the terrorism list would obviously be seen as a severe blow to Hamas's rivals in the Western-backed and funded Palestinian Authority (PA), and to the efforts to revive any peace process between the Palestinians and Israel.

As this is not the EU's first attempt to do this, it is hard not to conclude what many Palestinians have suspected all along: that the EU and its affiliates do not care if the Palestinians and others in the area are overrun by Hamas terrorists and are forced to live under the rule of despotic Islamist militants.

(Continue to Full Post)

Khaled Abu Toameh, an award-winning journalist, is based in Jerusalem.

Updates throughout the day at http://calevbenyefuneh.blogspot.com. If you enjoy "Love of the Land", please be a subscriber. Just put your email address in the "Subscribe" box on the upper right-hand corner of the page.Twitter updates at LoveoftheLand as well as our Love of the Land page at Facebook which has additional pieces of interest besides that which is posted on the blog. Also check-out This Ongoing War by Frimet and Arnold Roth. An excellent blog, very important work. 

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Judicial Burlesque? Meet The European Court of Justice

Michael Curtis..
Gatestone Institute..
10 January '13..

The partiality and exaggerated rhetoric of the European Union (EU) against Israel has, in recent weeks, become ever more familiar. It had been hoped that the European Court of Justice, established in 1952 to interpret EU law, and now composed of 27 judges who meet in Luxembourg, would be more impartial than the EU in its decisions on issues regarding Israel. Unfortunately, the record of the Court so far has been disappointing, and its partiality has been shown on a number of occasions. The EU condemned Israel's plans to construct housing units in the four-mile area known as E1 between Jerusalem and Ma'ale Adumim, a settlement of more than 40,000 residents; its High Representative for Foreign Affairs, Catherine Ashton, said she regarded construction plans in the neighborhoods of Givat Hamatos and Ramat Shlomo as "extremely troubling."

Yet neither the settlements nor the proposed construction have ever prevented negotiations to solve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. It is noticeable that the EU has not articulated any serious criticism of the terrorist attacks from Gaza against Israeli civilians -- actions that do make a peaceful solution less probable. Further, as Israel's former ambassador to the UN points out, the EU has never criticized the Turkish "settlers" for their "occupation" of Northern Cyprus, or "their own citizens who build beach-front villas in territory under Turkish occupation." [Israel Hayom, January 7, 2013]. There is no mention of "Chinese occupied Tibet," or "Pakistan occupied Kashmir."

The continuing criticism of Israel comes at a moment when 14 of the 27 countries in the EU voted in the UN General Assembly on November 29, 2012 for the resolution that "Palestine" become a nonmember observer state at the UN. Only the Czech Republic voted against the resolution. The EU disregarded the fact that this resolution, a unilateral action, was illegal, a violation by the Palestinians of binding obligations in the Oslo Accords and other agreements with both Israel and the U.N., including Security Council resolutions 242 and 338, which guaranteed that the final status arrangements should be reached only through direct negotiations. In addition the EU has refused to designate Hezbollah as a terrorist organization. These decisions do not exactly evidence a record for any kind of EU objectivity; Ireland, arguably the harshest European critic of Israel, just assumed the presidency of the EU on January 1, 2013.

In its judgment on February 20, 2010, the Court ruled that goods produced by Israeli companies based in the disputed territories of the West Bank did not qualify for duty-free import into the EU. The Euro-Mediterranean agreement between the European Community and Israel, signed on November 20, 1995 allows Israeli industrial products to be imported into the EU countries without customs duties. The decision in the 2010 case arose from the application by the German drinks manufacturer Brita to import soda-water makers and drink syrups manufactured by an Israeli firm, Soda Club, based in the settlement of Mishor Adumim. The European Court upheld the refusal of German customs officials to grant exemption from customs duties in this matter.

The EU and NGOs - Transparent meddling, opaque funding

European Union officials' reluctance to detail their funding of Israeli and Palestinian NGOs may arise from the EU's fear of public criticism of its role in alienating millions of Israelis - who reject neo-colonialist efforts to use these NGOs to manipulate Israeli democracy.

Gerald M. Steinberg..
Opinion/Haaretz..
08 January '13..

On 29 September 1999, a small committee of the European Commission met to allocate €5 million for "Middle East Peace Projects" to what are ostensibly non-governmental organizations (NGOs). No protocol or record was published for the public, in contrast to most meetings involving EU allocations. This committee awarded grants to a number of groups, including "The Four Mothers Movement to Leave Lebanon in Peace" (€250,000); and to Peace Now (€400,000) for, as recorded in the protocol, promoting their political agenda among "a social group that traditionally has anti-peace views and votes Likud" and among "immigrants from the former Soviet Union."

The only reason that we have this information is due to a leaked protocol from this single meeting. In the thirteen years that have followed, all documents related to EU funding for dozens of Israeli and Palestinian political NGOs have been labeled top secret - reminiscent of the most highly classified military plans and nuclear weapons designs. As a result, even members of the European Parliament are also denied substantive information.

On November 27, 2012, the European Court of Justice rejected my petition requesting the public release of meeting records and evaluations from the past decade under the EU's Freedom of Information Act. NGO Monitor was represented pro-bono by Israel’s largest UK law firm, but, after waiting almost three years, and in an extraordinary violation of the ECJ’s rules of judicial procedures, we were prevented from presenting the case. To protect the EU's most important secrets, the ECJ handed down a decision without even hearing oral arguments. It blindly accepted EU assertions that public disclosure of the details of funding decisions would lead to violence, and no attempt was made to examine the record and the implausibility of such scenarios. The identities of the NGO recipients are known – many boast about their European funding; but the EU decision making has been kept secret. The ruling - for a change, a public document - is filled with inconsistencies, and also avoids the core issues regarding due process and the public's right to know.

"Lacking Any Foundation in Law"? Meet the European Court of Justice

Douglas Murray..
Gatestone Institute..
04 January '13..

Few people would ever label the hydra-like institutions of the European Union as transparent... or responsive to the desires of we mere voters. The EU has long been in the habit of ignoring the will of the peoples of Europe, if their will is not the same as the will of the EU. Its accounting procedures are so lacking in accountability that the EU's own auditors have refused to sign off on the entity's budgets for the last 18 years running. And of course the European Court has a long and ignoble track-record of ignoring the security concerns of EU citizens in favour of the rights of terrorists to go about their lives and careers unhindered.

So nobody should be terribly surprised at the European Court of Justice's latest demonstration of opposition not merely to transparency but to the peoples it presumes to govern.

Shortly before Christmas the European Court threw out a lawsuit filed almost three years ago, which would have led to the EU being required to release the details of its funding of non-governmental organizations [NGOs]. The suit, filed in 2010 by the superb NGO Monitor, accused the European Commission [EC] -- the "executive branch" of the acronym-rich EU - of failing to fulfill the EU's own transparency obligations. These obligations -- included, for what it's worth, in European Freedom of Information law -- require that details of EC funding should be available upon request. For thirteen months, NGO Monitor has requested such information, and for all that time the EC has claimed"'privacy" and "commercial interests" among other reasons for refusing to have any transparency.

Previously, since June 2005, NGO monitor had identified almost $48 million of funding given by the EC to groups which include those actively involved in extremist anti-Israel activity.such as boycott campaigns and "lawfare" -- frivolous and malicious lawsuits to try, through the harassment and expense of lawsuits, to intimidate people from questioning or criticizing Islam.