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.”
Yes unfortunately some countries have a morally outdated policy that they MUST protect the security of Israel. This is of course outdated now, because Israel is generally the aggressor.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.