Israel's Foreign Ministry dismissed the European Union's demand that Israel cease its efforts to remove the Hezbollah threat in southern Lebanon as "blind."
"The European Union suffers from willful blindness." the Foreign Ministry stated. "In its statement, the EU shows blindness to the suffering of northern Israel’s residents who, on March 2nd - just as on October 8th, 2023 - were attacked unprovoked from Lebanese territory by Hezbollah."
"It is blind to the fact that those same Israelis have already endured more than 2,000 attacks from Hezbollah with missiles, rockets, and drones. These are the same Israelis who were forced to abandon their homes for more than a year due to Hezbollah’s attacks. It is blind to the unwillingness of the Lebanese government to disarm Hezbollah as required or to take any meaningful measures against Hezbollah, let alone to remove its ministers from the cabinet," the statement continued.
"And the European Union goes mute when it refrains from calling on the Lebanese government to act to stop Hezbollah’s attacks on Israelis. The European Union is willfully blind and mute when it comes to Israel," the ministry concluded.
A European Union spokesperson stated yesterday that the EU is calling on Israel to "cease its operations in Lebanon." The EU statement condemned "Hezbollah’s decision to plunge Lebanon into this war, its refusal to hand over arms and its continuation of indiscriminate attacks against Israel." However, it did not call on any part other than Israel to "cease" any actions.