Former prosecutor Fatou Bensouda of the International Criminal Court (ICC) in The Hague said that Israel intimidated and pressured her while she was working and living in the Dutch city. She reported the incident to the Dutch government and authorities, but they did little to nothing, the Gambian former ICC prosecutor told Al Jazeera in an interview.
It started shortly after she started investigating Israel’s actions in Palestine in 2015. Two men showed up at her home in The Hague and gave her an envelope with $500 inside, saying it was from someone she had helped. She reported the incident to the ICC and the Dutch authorities.
“The assessment that was made was that it was to show me that they know where I live, that was the purpose,” Bensouda told Al Jazeera. She said the police concluded that the car the men were using had been rented from the airport earlier in the day and that their telephone numbers were Israeli. “I do not think the Dutch authorities did more.”
She said the incident left her feeling not intimidated, but definitely insecure. “I, of course, expected more support,” Bensouda said. “When it came to support from the Dutch government, I’m not aware of anything extra that was done to support me at the time.”
Except Israel is not a Democracy, since about 30% of the people living there don’t get to vote because being born in the territory of Israel does not grant Israeli Citizenship (not to be confused with Israeli Nationality, which is different, grants more rights and only a Jewish Person can have) to a person unless they are Jewish, even when that person’s parents and grandparents have lived all their lives there.
The rest is all mainly main cheery picking and understating things, or applicable at the very start of the Israeli Genocide before it was recognized as a Genocide, but not anymore.
For example, you’re comparing something which multiple organizations including the UN have declared is a Genocide with a Blockade, which is like comparing mass murder with theft.
By the 3rd month of the Israeli Genocide in Gaza, just the list of babies, 1 year old or younger, killed in Gaza was 17 pages long.
It’s understandable that European reaction in the beginning, influenced by decades of Israeli propaganda and their very careful shaping of what came out early on about the events of 9 October to portray Israel as a pure victim, would be one of supporting Israel’s invasion of Gaza, it’s certainly not understandable by the time the list of duly identified Palestinian babies killed in Gaza by Israeli attacks had reached 17 pages long and mass graves with Hospital personnel killed by Israeli military were being found, European politicians were still proclaiming “unwavering support of the Jewish State” and sending Israel more weapons.
It’s even less understandable that by the time Israel is also invading Lebanon whilst at the same time starving Gazans to death, a large number of European governments still keep sending them weapons.
Now, maybe you’re making the point that European politicians in power are mainly cold callous sociopaths with no principles whatsoever, which I totally agree with, however that’s not the point you WERE making before and which I countered - you claimed that the EU and European countries were doing something about it and I pointed out that de facto they’re refraining from doing anything about it with any real impact and instead are just finger wagging and making zero impact loud proclamations, and I used the example of their reaction to the Russia invasion of Ukraine to show that they could have already for months done something about it with real impact if they wanted to because they have already done it in the recent past, thus one can only conclude that they do not want to do it now.
All your talkie-talkie in this post is just listing reasons that somebody who doesn’t care about mass murdering of babies could possibly give to justify keeping on letting the mass murders keep on mass murdering - totally logical stuff for sociopaths, but maybe we shouldn’t have sociopaths in positions of power in Europe.
No I’m absolutely not.
At no point have I argued we are doing too much to help Palestine. You are misrepresenting the situation, my point was originally and remains that EU is no longer one sidedly on the side of Israel. And that remains the truth.
You just refuse to see things are changing, and continue to blame EU for the atrocities of Israel. Despite EU and European countries for decades have criticized Israel for their illegal and inhumane behavior.
Opposing nations can trade, as you can see USA and China are trading. Just because we have been trading with Israel does in no way mean we support their actions.
Some of Europe absolutely and without a doubt still stand on the side of Israel, most notably Germany and Britain as well as at least part of the EU Commission, but I’ll grant you that for some or the rest it’s unclear if they’re on the side of Israel or holding a more neutral (we don’t stand by any principles but at least we aren’t giving weapons to Israel) position, whilst a tiny handful are in fact doing something to try and stop the Genocide (though very little).
Of course, how neutral is “neutral” has changed ever since the reaction of European nations to the Russian invasion of Ukraine since that has shown that Europe is perfectly capable of pushing back hard against an nation who is the aggressor in a War Of Aggression - which is the point I’m making: if the reasons given to the public then were truthful, then they would apply just as much now.
Clearly they were not, which would indicate that those maintaining neutral positions are being dishonest.
Ultimately your position seems to differ from others here by you not thinking there is a Duty Of Help - in your eyes if somebody is being beaten to death in the middle of the street and a passerby who can help does not, then that’s just fine and not a form of complicity - whilst others DO think that in such a situation not stopping what’s going on is a form of complicity.
That said, your argument of “Opposing nations can trade” is very much the Sociopath’s Rationale of “There is no such thing as Principles when there’s Money to be made”.
I mean, you do you, just don’t expect normal human beings not high in the Sociopath scale to look at that “Let’s not let mass murdering babies get in the way of Trading” way of thinking and agree with it.
Yes unfortunately some countries have a morally outdated policy that they MUST protect the security of Israel. This is of course outdated now, because Israel is generally the aggressor. Which was also very clearly seen with Iran. Also Israel is spreading false intelligence to make it look like they are defending themselves. But this has been shown again and again, so nobody should trust Israel anymore. I suppose we agree on that.
BUT the stance of Germany is actually against the values EU is built on, and I bet if somebody were to look, it would be possible to find instances where positions like the German can be shown to be illegal according to EU regulation, where for instance all member countries are required to follow human rights principles.
There is also pressure from populations in EU to stop support for Israel. Just as we have seen in USA.
I absolutely believe there is a moral duty to help, and I have already written that I think we should do more to stop Israel and Help the Palestinians from a moral standpoint. But it is not an obligation according to international law.
Again that is a strawman, there are already restrictions by many countries on military equipment,
This story is from just 3 days ago, and is evidence of the trend I described earlier.
https://www.euronews.com/my-europe/2026/05/26/restricting-trade-with-israeli-settlements-not-aggressive-but-normal-french-minister-says
It may not be a lot, but is movement, and as I have also shown earlier, EU has released statements that declare these settlers basically terrorists.
You can whine and cry about EU all you will, but EU is NOT the villain here, and that was what I originally responded to.
By you definition failing to be the hero makes you the villain. I cannot subscribe to such a totalitarian viewpoint, especially since Europe is clearly turning around regarding Israel.
That’s just a variant of the “Law equals Moral” argument beloved by Fascists.
As for your example, it makes my point way more than it makes yours - hundreds of thousands of Gaza civilians dead at the hands of Israel, far more murdered Journalists every year than in the rest of the World put together, Europeans kidnapped from international waters and tortured and now the invasion of Lebanon, and all that France and Sweden do is the smallest least impactful restrictions on Trade with Israel imaginable.
In light of what they were willing to do against Russia, doing such minimalist and symbolic “action” stinks of the modern Western political scam of taking the smallest possible step to look like you’re doing something, so as to delay pressure from the Public for much larger steps, de facto delaying effective action rather than truly trying to address the situation.
Maybe you’ve not ever been involved in Politics in Europe, but I have and in two different countries, and the actions that the Politicians in power are taking on this are so obviously the typical Delaying Actions meant to go against the wishes of the European Public and avoid putting pressure in Israel thus actually opposing “movement forward”, that it hurts.
If you genuinely believe that’s really them trying to “move forward”, then you’re spectacularly politically naive or have been sleeping under a rock for the last 20 years and still believe in 1970s-style ideological politics.
You see, Europe (in the sense of the European Public) are not to blame for this shit - as the information pilled up on what was going on in Gaza the European Public turned against Israel and it’s actions, and that happened months ago in most of Europe, even in Germany and Britain it’s already happened.
It’s the politicians in power in most of Europe who are desperately trying to protect Israel by doing all they can to NOT abide by the wishes of most people in their countries when it comes to Israel by repeatedly doing lots of talkie-talkie plus a handful of symbolic near-zero-impact actions, until the Press have moved on and the Public has become distracted with something else at which point even those things are reversed, all of which is an extremely common strategy in Western Politics in the last 2 or 3 decades.
Europe is not to blame. European politicians in power are the ones to blame, and amongst other things this massive chasm between what the Public wants and what their elected representatives actually do is an indication of a huge Democratic Deficit in most of present day Europe.