EU foreign policy chief Catherine Ashton
EU foreign policy chief Catherine AshtonIsrael news photo: Flash 90 / archive

Polish Conservative MEP Michal Tomasz Kaminski has called on EU foreign policy chief Catherine Ashton to take a firm stance on European Parliament calls for EU-led action on so-called “violent settlers”, insisting that Israel, alone, deal with it as an “internal matter."

According to The European Jewish Press (EJP), Kaminski disputed the legitimacy of claims by the parliamentary Maghreb-Mashreq committee last month, which recommended the “possibilities of denying access of known violent settlers to the EU."

Appealing to Ashton, Kaminski asked, “how would a person be defined as a ‘violent settler’ if he hasn’t been convicted?" 

The classification of an individual as such, he contended, was a matter for Israeli authorities, who should equally be considered capable of taking “firm and decisive action to counter any forms of violence”, as they have done to date, EJP reported.

Slamming the committee of MEPs’ suggestion of an EU monitoring mission to observe Israel’s response to so-called “settler violence,” Kaminski contended that, “It is scandalous that such an action (usually reserved for countries with gross human rights violations such as Belarus) is recommended toward a democracy like Israel, which ardently upholds the rule of law.”

Ashton similarly denounced Israel’s new plans to build an additional 3,000 Jewish homes in Jerusalem, Judea and Samaria and the E1 area near Jerusalem, reiterating the EU’s position “that all settlement construction is illegal under international law and constitutes an obstacle to peace”. 

While the international community seizes any opportunity to censure the diminutive reports of Jewish violence, it often remains silent to the unremitting terrorist attacks perpetrated by Arab terrorists against citizens of the state of Israel.

It similarly condemns Israeli housing plans in Jewish lands as being an “obstacle to peace”, while endorsing the Palestinian Authority’s unilateral action to achieve statehood, based on its own, unjustified, territorial claims.